Welcome to the Climate Kitchen newsletter, a new content universe for climate-curious parents.

What Does It Mean To Raise a Healthy Eater?

By Sonalie Figueiras

Note on this Series - How To Raise a Climate-Smart Eater: All of these thoughts below are meant to be suggestions and openings, not hard and fast rules. They come from me processing how I want to raise my kids on the topic of eating. They are not meant to cause any stress or anxiety, or hold folks up to an unreachable ideal. There are days when my kid will only eat cereal. There are days when my baby refuses all pureed veggies. It’s a journey and it’s messy. We do the best we can, and we celebrate that.

One of the things I’ve always found strange about the world of food and climate that I live in is the separation between human health and planetary health. When I first founded my media company Green Queen, I saw these two things as two sides of the same coin. We humans can only be healthy on a healthy planet, right? Raising climate-smart eaters means raising healthy eaters, which is what today’s essay is about, the second in the series.

Our concept of healthy food is one that we develop over many years and is informed by what we ate as a child, what kind of food environment we grew up in, what kind of media we consume, where we live…It’s also one that changes many times during our lives.

That being said, many of us end up being biased towards the concept of healthy food that we gain during our early years (read: our families/parents), so it matters, and as parents, it’s a topic worth mulling over.

In many ways, this may be the hardest essay in the series to write because everyone has a different idea of what healthy means. I had so much to say I have split this up into two parts. In today’s essay, I focus on the food culture part of ‘How to Raise a Healthy Eater’. Next time, I will talk about the diet and nutrition part of raising a healthy kid.

Focus on variety and exposure

One of the healthiest things you can do is eat as many kinds of different ingredients as possible every week. The Japanese, who have some of the lowest rates of preventable disease in the world, eat an average of 30 foods per week. Most people following a typical Western diet consume less than 10. Expose your kids to a wide variety of foods regularly. Make them try new flavors, never mind if they don’t like them. Introduce new dishes at home, at restaurants, and when travelling. Encourage them to try new foods at other people’s tables. You will not always be successful, and some kids are pickier than others, but keep trying so the concept sticks in their mind.

Talk about the foods you are eating and why

Tell your kids why you choose to serve the foods you do (though skip the Popeye spinach myth). Kids are naturally curious and tend to remember fun facts, so sitting around a table is a great time to get them engaged about why we eat specific foods and how they can help us feel better and perform better. I’m not talking about shouting about grams of protein across the dinner table. I mean explaining in an age-appropriate way why we eat the foods we do (e.g., broccoli is packed with antioxidants that help us fight off certain illnesses). Sophie uses this fun poster if you are looking for a conversation starter!

Make a big deal about traditional foods during celebratory occasions

Incorporate Indigenous and native traditions that celebrate foods at certain times of the year for certain purposes as a guide to teach your little ones about why we eat specific foods on specific occasions, and why it’s good for us to do so. Squash and corn at Thanksgiving, strawberries and tomatoes during summer, Christmas roasts. Celebratory foods anchor us to our ancestors and our food cultures. This, in turn, helps children feel rooted and connected to what they eat.

For older kids: teach the basics of nutrition, meal planning, and cooking

Of course, little kids love being in the kitchen, and most of them very much enjoy learning how to cook, so by all means, involve your toddlers and grade-schoolers in these activities. That being said, the point I want to make here is geared at older kids and preparing them for their first years at university/moving out of the family home. A healthy eater should know how to make a few simple dishes on their own.

Our Favorite Reads

Curated by Sonalie Figueiras

In every issue, we share 3-5 good reads— think: the best climate-smart shopping/eating/nutrition advice and thought-provoking essays.

• “We analyzed dozens of ultra-processed foods. Here are the healthiest options.” Another day, another heated UPF article. It feels like the topic has reached a fever pitch of late. However you look at the issue, we all could do with reducing exposure to these foods. In this practical shopping guide, The Washington Post’s Anahad O’Connor and his team of reviewers analyze popular US brands for sliced bread, Greek yogurt, chicken nuggets, and peanut butter, to help you make the most informed choice at the grocery store.

• “The secret to a great plant-based ‘cheese’ sauce.” Maybe your child is lactose-intolerant. Maybe a family member has a dairy allergy. Or maybe you just want to reduce the amount of cow cheese you consume. Whatever the reason, I love Guardian Feast editor Anna Berrill’s answer to a reader question about how to make the best homemade plant-based cheese sauce with ingredients you likely already have—no alternatives required.

• “You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill.” You can always count on The Atlantic for the definitive essay that puts into words the exact zeitgeist issue on your mind. Namely: what to make for dinner? Rachel Sugar’s ruminations on our inability to escape the daily task of putting dinner, in whatever format, on the proverbial table, is sure to become a must-read, especially for parents. As she writes so aptly: “You will always have to think about it…and it will always require too much time or too much energy or too much money or some combination of the three.” Amen. PS- I’ve been devouring ‘Dinner’, the latest cookbook by Guardian food writer Meera Sodha, if you need more inspo!

New Year Special: Resolutions for Climate-Smart Family Dinners

By Sophie Egan

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, but being trained in behavioral sciences, there is definitely good reason it’s such a popular time for forming new habits. So, in the spirit of “new year, new goals,” here are 5 practical ideas for making your family’s eating more climate-smart. Full disclosure: For me personally, these go in descending order from “I’ve got it down” to “Something to aspire to!”

1. Eat the rainbow. In the last edition, I dug into the importance of reducing food waste, and some ideas for gamifying it. Did you know that produce is the most commonly wasted type of food? It accounts for over 1/3 of all food waste. This is doubly important because of all that lost nutritional value. At the same time, I am eager to avoid the “Three more bites of peas!” dynamic at the dinner table. So, to motivate my kids to eat more veggies on their own, this month, I’ve introduced “Eat the Rainbow” charts. We print one out each week, and at dinner time, they fill in what they’ve had throughout the day. HUGE hit! I’m stunned at how many servings they’re now eating in a day compared to December, and thrilled that my usual one head of broccoli is no longer going to cut it. (I bought this digital download and this one to start, but now we’ll start making our own charts, as an easy art project on the weekends.)

2. Limit processed meats. Sound familiar? I wrote about this in Volume 4. But it remains an especially important resolution for us all to stick to, given not only the environmental impacts and cancer risk, but new research linking processed meats to a 13% greater risk of dementia.

3. Swap plant oils for butter when you can. Cooking oils are complicated, and we’ll dedicate more air time to them in future editions, but you don’t need to know all the ins and outs to warrant a quick audit of your baking and cooking routines. Consider where you can easily sub out butter, which has a significantly higher environmental impact than olive oil and other plant oils like sunflower. (For my family, I try to save butter as a special treat, like on a Saturday night movie night when we make homemade popcorn.)

4. Diversify. Sonalie’s great point about diversifying our diets has been on my mind for years now. But how to actually get started? What new ingredients should we look for when meal planning? I find this resource to be a helpful inspiration board: Published by Knorr and World Wildlife Fund, “Future 50 Foods” is a list of 50 under-consumed ingredients that are super good for people and the planet. From buckwheat to beet greens, black turtle beans to black salsify, I’m trying to pick a few ingredients each month to integrate into family dinners. Join me, and let’s see how it goes!

5. Beat the paper towel habit with beautiful cloth napkins. Paper towels sure are convenient, so this one is definitely in the #lifegoals category vs present reality. But they’re also super expensive! So for both budget and eco reasons, as I try to wean my family off of paper towels this year, I’m considering everything from fun and fancy to casual, upcycled, and misprints.