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Kids Health, Family Nutrition

@therootcauseau

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Bel Smith, Author, Speaker
🤝🥰 Supporting parents & schools
🥦🍭 Build a positive relationship with food
🍎 🍫 Make better food choices
🎤🎺 Speaking

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This is such a simple meal. Salt & Pepper Tofu.

For the record, my family hasn’t always been a fan of tofu but they like it when I cook it like this.

I serve this alongside rice, stir fry veg or a heap of raw veg. Then make a simple peanut sauce.

Here’s how you make the tofu.

1. Add 1/4-1/2 of cornflour to a bowl & add a good lashing of salt and pepper & mix
2. Add your diced tofu and toss to coat
3. Heat olive oil over medium heat, then shallow fry tofu - allow to cook on one side then turn over to cook another side

That’s it.

Think S&P calamari except replace the calamari with tofu!

Have you tried this before?

If you haven’t, let me know if you give this a go. by @therootcauseau

It’s world teachers day in Australia today. I am just putting this message out there to honour all teachers.

Let me share with you just some of the extraordinary things I have witnessed teachers do over the last thirteen years of collaborating with schools and of course having our own kids go through school too.

These are things I have seen that are not in a teachers job description and often parents and carers don't even know happened:

🐍 removing a snake from the playground.
❤️ running alongside a student who was dead last in a race to give them the courage to keep going. High fiving the student and jumping ip and down with them to celebrate finishing.
💃 dressing up in the most incredible book week costumes
🥪 providing food out of their own money for students who come to school without food
😍 sitting down with a crying child on the steps and just allowing them to pour their heart out
⚽️🏀🏈🏓🏒🏏🏄‍♀️⛺️👯‍♀️ countless unpaid ours preparing kids for sports, dance concerts, end of year events, school camps

And so much more.

In other countries, teachers are put up on a pedestal and paid well. It’s widely recognised they are shaping the young people who will go on to shape this country.

AUSTRALIA'S TEACHERS DESERVE MORE RECOGNITION.👏🏆🥇

If you have a teacher that helped shape your life, or one that has helped your child, please leave a comment to reconsider them.

I’ll start - Mr Keyte, my 3 & 4 helped me have a love of all things school, especially sport. And in year 8, Mrs Schultz spent copious hours with me to build my confidence in maths. At the end of that year, I was an A level student in maths.

I’d love to do a hig shout out to our daughters year 11 & 12 teachers - Miss Jenkins (Chemistry teacher) and Miss Kerr (society and culture) for their continual encouragement to help her see her unique abilities.

And for our son, it would be remiss of me not to honour and shout out Mrs Browning - his year 9 maths teacher. She is simply the most caring teacher I have experienced in the the 15 yrs I’ve had kids in school.

Over to you. by @therootcauseau

I got this message from a mum today. Her family is part of my Kids Health Quest Membership which has resources for parents and carers, and fun food experiments for kids. Every month we have a cook-along where families can attend live or cook-along with the replay.

These cook-alongs are designed to create more adventurous eaters and empower kids to become helpful in the kitchen.

Today I received this message from a mum after they cooked along with the replay from last weekends cook-along. Love this so much.

“It was so good. We made it with chicken & without the crunchy top. I had my little helper & he brought his little helper 😝

I started a thing, where the kids have to make 1 meal a week. All 3 = 3 days a week I get help in the kitchen. They are taking turns with the same 6 recipes but they are experiencing what’s involved. Too many nights in a row of “ohhh.. I don’t like this” has given me the idea.

They are actually loving it & looking forward to their turn in the kitchen. Who knew! I am so happy & proud.
They have come a long way.”

A lot of parents and carers avoid cooking with their kids because they say it takes too long or there’s too much mess. These are short term costs. The long term gain is kids that eventually can help you out in the kitchen.

I love that both of our kids cook well and help me out.

If you’d like to know more about empowering your kids, just reach out via DM by @therootcauseau

Have you ever been to the supermarket and had one of your kids have a total melt down because they want a packet of this or that, and you've said no?

You can feel the stares at other shoppers watch you.
Perhaps you even hear someone comment about getting the kid under control.

I still remember this happening to me vividly even though it was about 13 years ago. A Star Wars movie was out and there were so many products that had Star Wars characters plastered all over them. Including microwave popcorn. A total meltdown happened because I said no to buying the microwave popcorn. We didn't even own a microwave! Even though I was down on my haunches explaining why and saying we can make our own, it wasn't making a difference.

The marketing was next level. It creates so much pester power, making our jobs more difficult.

It's one of the reasons why I developed The Mad Food Science Incursion - to empower children to become curious about food. To think:
🏃 about all the amazing things their body does
💪 about how different foods can help different parts of their bodies
🏷️ beyond what the front of a packet is telling them
🌎 about how the food we choose to eat can impact the planet too.

Even though many of the messages we share with children are similar to what you have been telling them at home, like eating more fruits and vegetables, they tend to land differently for kids. We often have parents say to us "I don't know what you said or how you said it, but now my child is telling me we need to eat a rainbow of fruit and vegetables - even though I have been saying that for years"

When children become more empowered, our jobs become easier.

This is why we are so passionate about empowering children.

Our Mad Food Science Incursion is the centre piece of our award winning and university evaluated Making Friends with Food school partnership. The university evaluation found we use simple, relatable messages and use a non-judgemental and supportive approach.

If you'd love us to help empower your primary school, make an enquiry - https://therootcause.com.au/mfsi

Schools are planning for 2027, so now is a great time to share the incursion with them. by @therootcauseau

Our Children’s health and teacher stress levels are too important not to be taking action!

For over a decade teachers have been telling us that they see and feel the difference in children’s behaviour, concentration levels, energy, and readiness to learn when children come back from their food breaks.

There’s been way too many teachers tell us this for it to be purely anecdotal.

But FINALLY now there’s scientific evidence to support that teachers have known for years.

Food can impact behaviour, energy levels, readiness to learn and even mental health.

Now that the evidence matches up with teacher experience, it’s time to do something about it!

And there’s some great things happening.

The Australian School Meals Alliance has been developed and we’re looking at a national approach to having a school meals program. It’s about time Australia catches up to the majority of the OECD.

There’s also research projects looking at language used around food in schools.

And of course, there’s the review of the Australian Dietary Guidelines,

All these things are fantastic! But because they are all looking at Public Health at a high level, they take many years to come to fruition.

We can’t afford to wait for these projects. Children’s health is too important, as is the wellbeing of our teachers who are frontline dealing with what happens in the classroom.

The evidence now matches the teachers experience and there are actions we can take now to support schools and their communities.

At The Root Cause, we have developed a Wellbeing and Food Connection Gauge for Schools. It’s a 3 minute school reflection tool designed in consultation with a number of Principals and Teachers. It helps you see how your school connects food and wellbeing through learning, teacher confidence and everyday practice. You will find out what’s working, spot your biggest opportunity and get four practical, low-cost actions.

If you’re a Principal or a Teacher, and you want to strengthen your wellbeing approach (not just for students but teachers too), you can take this FREE tool for a test drive now.

Go to
https://therootcause.com.au/wellbeing-and-food-c by @therootcauseau

I love my advocacy work where I get to discuss issues that have a chance of becoming policy with the goal of improving children’s health.

BUT

NOTHING compares to being at the grass roots with parents, caregivers, educators and children.

This is where real change can happen quickly. Every person in a room learns and can walk away and take action.

And that’s exactly what happened when I presented my Keynote Food for Thought to the Hay Branch of the Isolated Children’s Parent Association.

This is their write up for their magazine following the event. Zoom in to the article and check out some of the comments from attendees.

One of my favourites is from a year 7 girl - she ended her quote with “Overall, I really enjoyed learning how our bodies function on foods and how the foods we eat affect us. It would be great to see this kind of program in our schools!”

The article shows that people left the session more empowered and they actually made changes in their life.

One of the attendees was a principal from a local school. He spoke to me at the end of the keynote and he shared some behavioural challenges his school was facing. We discussed some strategies which he piloted one about changing eating and playtime. The pilot was successful, so it’s now become the way the school operates.

This is the power of speaking at the grass roots. I love it!

If you’re part of a grass roots organisation and you want a speaker that inspires people to take simple steps to improve their health, then I’m your gal.

Just reach out. ❤️ by @therootcauseau

I was watching the Tina Arena Unravel Me documentary last night. I grew up watching her on Young Talent Time so I really loved it but I nearly fell off the couch when I saw the most ridiculous ad promoting Coco Pops Protein Bites.

Seriously, this protein business has gone too far now.

Yes, the research shows protein is important for muscle growth and development.

So what has Kellogg done? They’ve taken a breakfast cereal low in nutrition (so low that even the HSR only gives it 2 stars) and swap out the white rice for some whole grain plus add in some wheat protein amongst other things. Then they have whacked on a label that calls them protein bites and now they get a 4 HSR.

A couple of important things to note about these protein bites:
😜 wheat protein is gluten - but from a marketing perspective gluten isn’t having a moment, protein is.

🍬 there’s more sugar per serve than there is protein. Perhaps these would be better called Sugar Bites - but I guess no one would buy them.

2/3 cup is 1 serve and 1 serve has about 2 tsp of sugar and about 1 tsp of sugar.

This is what asking what’s in our food and turning the packet over to look at ingredients is important.

Industrialised formulations are able to be manipulated. This allows them to enable food manufacturers to add words to the front that are designed to get consumers to believe the food is nutritious.

The wide variety of these sorts of products adds to consumer confusion.

What’s your thoughts on this being allowed? by @therootcauseau

Who doesn’t want dinner to feel simpler? If you don’t, feel free to scroll past this post.

As part of National Nutrition Week, here’s 3 Dinner Prep Tips to help keep dinners simple:
1️⃣Decide whats for dinner tomorrow night before you go to bed
- that way you don’t have to be thinking about working it out in the morning or thinking what’s for dinner during the day or worse, when you’re exhausted at the end of the day

2️⃣ get out the main ingredients for the meal from the pantry before you go to work and any protein and veg that needs to stay in the fridge, group it together
- this way, it’s quick to get dinner started.

3️⃣ prechop onion, grate garlic and ginger, dice carrots, pop this in a bag and put in the freezer
- I make up 3 of these bags on the weekends, they take 5 minutes to prep and it helps me get dinner started quickly. Straight out of the freezer and saute or throw in a slow cooker.

💡BONUS TIP - think about the meals you make, is there a set of core ingredients that crosses over multiple meals that allows you to cook them at the same time? Eg. Onion, garlic, ginger, carrots. Zucchini, mince - these can be cooked identically but one flavoured for bolognaise, the other for Mexican. One for this week, one for the freezer for another week.

Love what you eat! by @therootcauseau

This is for you if your kids are always starving after school or you just want more snack ideas.

As we celebrate National Nutrition Week, I want to share what food manufacturers don’t want you know. That is that afternoon snacks do not need to come in a packet to be simple.

A great afternoon snack is one that
✅ fills a tummy just enough so that it doesn’t affect your kids desire to eat dinner.
✅ can ideally be prepared ahead of time so they are quick to grab
✅ contains a good fat, a protein and a carb

There are many great snacks you can make prepare from everyday ingredients you have at home. Some ideas are:
🥤smoothies
🥚boiled eggs, quiches
🫛edamame
🥕veg sticks and dip
🍎 fruit slices with peanut butter

All can be prepared ahead as grab n go or pick n go snacks.

Download my free ebook - The Great After Snack Guide with 40 simple ideas and some snacks tips for being prepared.

https://therootcause.com.au/go/as-snackguide/

Let’s keep snacks simple.

Feel free to add any simple snacks to the comments to help others. by @therootcauseau

It’s National Nutrition Week from 12-18th October.
The theme for this year’s National Nutrition Week is love what you eat.

It’s a great theme because food can feel so complicated and hard for people in amongst their daily life. I won’t go into how this has been perpetuated by food manufacturers who offer a ridiculous amount of choice with labels designed to mislead and flavours designed to override our biology. Ok, so maybe that was a slight rant.

But here’s the thing. Food can be quite simple. We’ll explore this idea this week.

Before we start that though, I encourage you to download this easy to read paper by @nationalnutritionfoundation that gives a great overview of nutrition in Australia.

Download the report at https://nationalnutritionfoundation.org.au/advocacy/

Tomorrow we will explore keeping food simple. by @therootcauseau

Term 4 - here we go.

Who is ready for this? And who needs help? Maybe a bit of chat to get you motivated?

And…

Mumma’s, I’m going to tell you something.

We all think lunchboxes stop when kids finish school, but they don’t if we want to save money.

I pack my hubby and my lunch everyday because it saves about $20-$30 a day between the two of us if we were to buy our lunch out.

Our daughter is 20. She’s moved out of home to study and work. She packs her lunch everyday because she realised she was spending a fortune on lunches.

Lunchboxes are a money saver!

Let me know if you have any lunchbox questions or join our Certified Instructor, Suze from @bodysaysyay who is hosting a Lunchbox for Learning session on Thursday 15th October at 12.30pm.

Register for Suze’s lunchbox session here

https://marketing.bodysaysyay.com.au/lunchboxes-for-learning-parents-webinar? by @therootcauseau

Our son turned 16 today.

I’ve always made a big deal of birthdays for our kids. I’d ask the kids for a theme for their birthday and I’d make a catch to match the theme.

Cakes have always been a labour of love. I’d spend days making the different components. The night before assembling them in secret so it was a surprise for them on the day.

Sometimes the cakes could have easily have been on that show NAILED IT! (Meaning they were a total flop). But the kids always loved them. It made all the hours worthwhile.

I know it’s not everyone’s thing, but it is mine. I still ask the kids what sort of cake they want - they are now 20 and 16.

This year our son just asked for an ice cream cake. But I’m also leaning into giving myself a bit of rest, so instead of making my ice cream from scratch, I grabbed a tub of Neapolitan, and dismantled it and reassembled it as a layered cake.

It was super easy.
Our son loved it, as did all his friends he had over.

I wonder what his 17th cake request will be. And our daughter is 21 next year - now that’s going to be a big one!

Do you enjoy making birthday cakes? by @therootcauseau