Food Safety for Children

Start with the Basics

Cooking with your kids is a great way to teach them about nutrition and show them the value of food safety. For children, time spent in the kitchen learning how to cook is fun. When cooking with your kids, be sure to cover the basics of kitchen and food safety.

Lead by Example

When teaching about food safety for children, it is better to show them safe food practice rather than just tell them.

Wash Your Hands

The first thing on your list should be hand washing. Adults need to learn this as well. But, when teaching your children about food safety, "wash your hands" has to be an every time thing.

Clean as You Go

Everybody forgets this one, but if we show our kids how to clean as they go they will learn this very good habit. Keeping your work area clean and cleaning up after yourself as soon as you finish a task has several advantages. It prevents cross contamination, keeps all your tools in a place where you can find them, and leaves you with a clean work area for your next task. If you follow this practice every time you teach your kids how to cook, they will learn this good habit.

Bacteria

You can’t see bacteria and that makes it hard to teach children about them. But whether you can see them or not, bacteria are there and looking for a chance to grow. As you cook with your kids, explain to them that bacteria love food that has been left out at room temperature for hours. Also explain to your kids how bacteria like to move from one food to the other, which is called cross contamination, and how to prevent it. This is a very important point of food safety for children. If you are making a recipe that involves meat or poultry, you have an excellent opportunity to explain to your children how cross contamination can cause illness.

Kitchen Safety as Part of Food Safety

When preparing to teach your children about cooking and food safety, it would probably be a good idea to think about the recipe you want to prepare in advance. For older children, recipes that involve cutting and actual stovetop cooking might be okay, but for younger children, baking would be the best idea.

Baking gives you the opportunity to show proper food and kitchen safety procedures while whipping up a yummy pastry treat. I would suggest cookies as a great starting point for kids. Cookies bring in the elements of kitchen safety when working with machines (the mixer), food safety when working with the dough, and oven safety while baking the cookies. Although even I’m hard pressed to use cookies as an example of good nutrition, it is a great chance to explain how cookies are a "sometimes" food no matter how good they taste.

From cookies, you can move up to Macaroni and cheese, a kiddy favorite and still a baked food. Just about any macaroni and cheese recipe will suffice as long as you don’t use the box kind. Macaroni and cheese is so easy to make and tastes so much better when made from scratch that the box kind should never enter you kitchen.

Food Safety for Children

Cooking with your kids is a great way to spend quality time with your children and show them how to be safe in the kitchen. Food safety for children is only one aspect, albeit an important one. With a little guidance and some coaching, your kids will learn proper nutrition and how to make good food in a safe manner. Remember to start off slow and be sure to try the recipe once on your own so you have a good understanding of the recipe. This will allow you to focus on the fun when cooking with your kids.