Parents of students attending St Benedict's College, Kirkop, recently learned how to prepare healthy meals that their children would enjoy eating, during a programme of activities organised by members of the school's Shape-Up committee and its Healthy Eating promotion group.

Maria Ellul, a nutritionist at the Health Promotion Department, showed parents how to prepare, cook and serve nutritious healthy and well-balanced breakfasts and main meals every day, and in-between snacks.

She also dealt with their concerns, which focused mainly on their children's peer influences, time constraints, restricted tastes and meal preferences.

The parents attended food preparation workshops to observe some of Ms Ellul's recommendations in practice, such as:

• Breakfast - Well-balanced, nourishing ideas, quick to prepare and suited to young people's tastes and preferences. Some ideas demonstrated included homemade muesli with multigrain cereal, dried fruits and nuts (to give that sweet, rich taste without adding refined sugar), topped with skimmed milk for calcium enrichment.

Other alternatives included wholemeal toast, lightly spread with polyunsaturated margarine, ham and cheese with a complement of salad, light yoghurts with added fresh fruits, wholegrain cereals and freshly squeezed oranges.

• Prepared lunches - Nutritious, homemade, ideal for today's hectic lifestyle, suitable for both students to bring to school and for parents to take to work. Some quick and easy ideas included wholemeal bread slices, wholemeal pitta bread pockets or pasta salad with a rich filling of juicy, raw vegetables and a portion of lean meat, tuna or chicken breast.

To make the lunch complete, a serving from the milk and dairy group (cheeselet or a pot of light yoghurt) was also tucked into the lunchbox, not forgetting a variety of fresh fruits in season and a substantial amount of mineral water.

• Snack ideas - simple, well-balanced, savoury and sweet, using modified recipes, including tuna and blue cheese dips (substituting the cream cheese and mayonnaise with fresh ricotta), served with water biscuits.

In the sweet recipe, banana, apple and dates were used as a substitute for granulated sugar, light plain yoghurt was used instead of butter, whereas the addition of wholemeal flour not only increased the dietary level, but also provided a crunchy, dark brown texture to the baked product.

• Main meals - Adaptations of recipes for main meals that all the family can enjoy, especially the young children. Savoury and sweet dishes prepared were very easy and quick to handle, so as to make up for time constraints and to encourage the children to take part in the preparation and cooking.

Practical examples included a variety of pies, namely ricotta, spinach, meat and apple, whose fats, sugar, salt and fibre contents were adapted to make them as balanced as possible.

The taste of fresh herbs replaced that of salt; polyunsaturated margarine was used instead of butter; wholemeal flour and fresh vegetables were used in savoury pies to boost the fibre content, while dried fruit took the place of granulated sugar in the sweet recipes.

Parents are the key to their children's choice of meals, snack foods and drinks. The school's Shape-Up project aims to promote a culture that values and prioritises healthy eating practices and physical exercise in today's hectic lifestyle.

The programme of activities was planned in a way to suit the parents' tastes and interests and moreover, to work towards the project's goals and targets.

The programme's success can easily be measured both from the parents' on-going, positive feedback as well as from the fact that the organisers have taken up the suggestion of issuing a recipe booklet of healthy and nutritious meals for all the family to enjoy throughout the day.

Once this booklet is issued, a copy will be uploaded on our school Website: www.schoolnet.gov.mt/kullegg-sanbenedittubco