Healthy habits formed early in life set children on the best possible path and eating a wide variety of foods together at regular times is a good discipline to practise. Many of the meals, like my Meatballs with Orzo, are freezer friendly so you can make more than you need and have them on standby for another day.
Half of all the food bought by families in the UK is now ‘ultraprocessed’ – made in a factory with ingredients you can’t pronounce and additives invented by food technologists to generate products that bear little resemblance to the fruits, vegetables, meat, chicken and fish you would cook at home. Refined products such as pots of noodles with specks of dried meat and shrivelled vegetables loaded with salt and MSG, or snacks fortified with manufactured vitamins and minerals, washed down with sugary drinks, have lost virtually all their natural nutrients. We bear a responsibility to our children to allow them to grow up enjoying real food that sets them on a path of healthy eating that will last a lifetime.