Our family is on a misson to eat more fish, chasing the omega 3 oil it contains, which is thought to improve health and child development. Adding more fish to our diet also achieves another goal – cutting back on red meat meals. (A sponsored post for the Heart Foundation and Nature’s Own)
Hubby’s family has a history of bowel cancer, and he lost his mother to the disease. It’s something we’re keenly aware of, along with the implications for our children. We recently had a couple of timely warnings that made us reassess our lifestyle and other aspects of our health where we could be doing better, starting with the most important – diet. Specifically, eating more fish.
As regular readers of this blog would know, cooking and good food nutrition are not my strong suits. I love making cakes but the day-to-day chore of preparing meals for my family is challenging, to say the least. So, to make things easy for myself, I’ve fallen into some habits that, while may not necessarily be really bad, certainly leave room for improvement. And when taken in the context of a history of bowel disease, these habits demand some scrutiny for the ongoing good health of my children.
My handy tips for easy meal prep
For example, I’ve long been in the habit of buying a bulk 2kg container of lean beef mince. Then, I cook that up as a bolognaise sauce (onion, carrot, zucchini, garlic, tomatoes and stock) and it gets used as a base for a range of meals which include gnocchi or any pasta variant (shells, spaghetti, spirals, etc). More often than not, the pasta is wholemeal, but not always. Or the bolognaise sauce is used in lasagna, or in mini meat pies, or wrapped in puff pastry for sausage rolls (afternoon tea snack when the kids get home from school), or transformed into the Mexican meat sauce for tacos for a Saturday night dinner. It’s a handy little trick, but as we’ve recently become aware, eating red meat that often (up to seven times a week) is not ideal for internal health, such as bowel and heart.
Health guidelines on red meat consumption
Current recommendations say 500g of cooked lean red meat a week is the maximum permissable level before risk of cancer goes up. But for a family with a high disposition towards bowel cancer (another member of hubby’s family is currently battling the disease) it would be more responsible to limit this amount further. The UK’s Telegraph newspaper reports that “a pigment found in red meat seems to damage the DNA of cells lining the digestive system – and DNA damage is one of the first signs of cancer“. So we’re now aiming for two or three times a week, red meat, and the rest will be white meat and fish.
Fish is rich in Omega 3
An issue to bear in mind when increasing the fish in your family’s diet is mercury. Current guidelines recommend fish no more than twice a week for children. Fish has many health benefits, including – but not limited to – Omega 3 fatty acids, which are proven to be beneficial to heart and brain health.
How to go about it
And becoming aware of cancer-risk foods, what I have found is that I’ve naturally investigated other foods linked to higher risks of cancer. We’re focused now, as a family, on eating foods that do not increase our risks of heart disease and bowel cancer. So, we’re a high fibre, low fat consuming family.
I’m going to continue to blog about my efforts to increase healthier foods into the family’s diet, because as most mothers know, kids can be tricky sometimes. They don’t necessarily want to eat what’s best for them. In fact, in my experience, if you let them, kids will eat the brightest coloured foods they can find, the highest in salt, sugar and fat, if you let them.
I’m going to begin by making Tuesday nights Fish Night. It’s an easy night for me to think about what I’m preparing and how to make creative dishes for the kids because hubby and the boys are at jujitsu until 7.30pm, giving me a good few hours to concentrate. And I’m going to make Saturday mornings my delicious Smoked Salmon and Cream Cheese on Toast mornings (one of my most favourite breakfasts EVER). See recipe below.
Recipe: Smoked Salmon, cream cheese and basil on toast/cruskit
Ingredients:
- Light cream cheese
- Smoked salmon
- Basil (preferrably homegrown, as pictured here, from our very own herb garden!)
- I normally have vine-ripened, or truss, or even home-grown tomato also, but on the day of this blog post, was all out of tomato!
- Cruskits/toast
Method:
- Lay the toast or cruskit down, spread with cheese, layer with smoked salmon, (then tomato if you have it) and garnish with home-grown basil.
- Voila! Tasty treat just for you, high in Omega 3. Eat and enjoy.
I would love to hear other people’s tips for healthier eating with the kids. Any favourite recipes? Top tips for getting healthy fish into their diet?
Great post! Food and healthy family eating – I could go on for hours (unfortunately!). I really applaud your efforts to get your family to eat less red meat as I have a family history of bowel cancer too so its a big issue for me. I’ve been vegetarian for about 18 months, and for the last 9 months I’ve eaten a vegan diet, apart from the odd special occasion when I’ll eat some dairy or egg. My family still eats meat, dairy and eggs although a lot less than before I changed my own eating habits. As a family we eat a lot more vegetarian meals. Lunch will often have some meat for them (my kids come home for lunch), dinner is almost always vegetarian (soups, risottos, veg curries).
I try not to serve red meat (beef, pork or lamb) more than 3 times a week. And I have really cut back on the amount of cured meats they eat. The sausages here are awful so we almost never eat them. I completely cut salami out as I think its probably the worst meat you can eat (despite how tasty it is!). I try not to serve ham or smoked salmon more than once a week, due to the nitrites, which I personally think are probably more dangerous in terms of bowel cancer than normal red meat. Fish is a tricky question for me ethically. I think a vegan diet with fish added is probably the healthiest diet you can eat. But oceans are over-fished, farmed fish has its own environmental issues and I often wonder whether its time my family stopped eating fish for the good of the environment. But then I try not to impose my personal beliefs on them – although I did make them all go veg for a week for veg week (my husband did it and felt great, my daughter asked for some prawns once and my son cracked and had to have meat!)
So keep up the good work with your changes in diet but really think about adding more vegetarian meals for them. You don’t have to replace red meat with fish or chicken. Meatless Mondays are a great idea. And lots of family meals can be easily adapted to vegetarian options (tacos, fajitas, lasagnes, casseroles, curries etc) by adding beans/legumes (my favourites are chickpeas, red beans, black beans, pinto beans and black eyed peas). Really, the possibilities are endless. And I think in Australia especially, it was so ingrained in our childhood that meat is good for you, that it can be a hard habit to break so well done!
Thanks Penny!
I share your concerns with the fish – overfished oceans and farmed fish concerns. But I resolve the conflict with a micro (vs macro) response – my first responsibility is to my children, then to the planet. I want to raise my children in an environmentally responsible way where possible, so we talk about those issues, and select our food products accordingly.
Changing a family diet, even a small modification like this, requires thought and planning – not my strong suit where food is concerned! But we’re determined to stick with it. We’ve cut sausages out of our diet, bacon, and smallgoods such as salami (despite how yummy they taste!). It’s not worth the risk. We have a family member battling bowel cancer that has spread to lungs and liver – and he’s only 40! I have to give my kids the best possible shot at a long and healthy life.
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Well done, Felicity ! It is really hard to make changes in your families diet, as I have discovered over the past year or so as I have slowly changed our diet from meat and three veg to veg, veg and more veg.
Still, I am concerned about my families reliance on red meat and at the moment i have been making sure that things like mince dishes – which we only consume about one a week now down from at least three nights in the past – are now made with only about 200g of mince plus veges and legumes to add in some nutrients, proteins and bulk. It has taken the kids a lot to change their palettes for this new kind of eating but slowly we are getting there. As often as possible it is vegetarian all the way for dinner though. I will admit this has been tough even for me to adapt to. I too have a history of bowel cancer in the family and am always mindful of how our food choices effect our growing children’s bodies.
Good luck with it all !
Yes, I totally agree about the fish. I think its good for them so I put their interests first in that one. I’ve very sorry to hear about your family member and I wish him all the best. Who knows where the delicate balance between genetics and diet lies, in many health issues, but as mums we can only do what we each think is best for our families. Congratulations on cutting out bacon and smallgoods. That was one of the reasons I went veg. I knew I ate too much of them – more than the rest of the family. And I am so bad at moderation (in all things!) that it was just easier to cut out all meat than to try and stop eating just my favourites (bacon, cured meats) which I knew deep down were not good for me with my family history. I admire your determination. Keep it up, I think small steps are the key – that way everyone gets to adjust to the new tastes.