THE RIGHT CHOICES

Preparing and eating healthy meals is easy if you know the basics.

Asbury Park Press, December 4, 2007

BY MICHAEL RILEY
STAFF WRITER

Robert Dell'Amore had an epiphany. The Rockville Center, N.Y., chiropractor thought he was too busy to cook healthy meals. But five years ago, as a single father, he began preparing meals for his children and decided he'd had enough of unhealthy food choices. He studied, explored and found out how to fix the problem.

In those years, he developed a food and nutrition education workshop titled "Healthy Eating and Cooking for Parents, Children and Teens." On Nov. 17, he brought that program to Dearborn Market in Holmdel.

It was a good fit, says D.J. Lucarelli, one of the owners of the market.

"Dr. Dell'Amore did a good job," he said. "When it comes to our customers who expect quality and freshness, he may have been preaching to the choir, but still — people need to know that healthy food doesn't have to be complicated."

The focus of his program, he says, is to address the epidemic levels of childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes and early coronary heart disease in children and adolescents by helping parents, caregivers, children and teens develop better eating habits through healthy, flavorful, home-prepared meals.

The program's goal is twofold: to raise awareness of these life-threatening issues and to offer, through heart-healthy food preparation and culinary/tasting classes, effective skills and solutions for the prevention of these diseases.

"The latest research on children and their eating habits clearly illustrates that portion size, food content and diet, where and when they eat, and physical activity levels all contribute to children's overall health. We know that a staggering 30 percent of our children younger than 17 are now classified as overweight and 15 to 20 percent are classified obese," Dell'Amore said. He believes that obese children become obese teens who then become obese adults.

"It's a vicious cycle that is extremely hard to break," he says.

Dell'Amore says that the place to begin to break that cycle is in the kitchen at home.

"By teaching parents and caregivers the joy and benefits of cooking at home," he says, "we can accomplish several things," including:

Developing children's and teen's palates by exposing them to fresh, great-tasting produce, herbs, lean meats and fish.

Attracting children to healthy eating by using flavorful, healthy cooking ingredients, not butter and sugar.

Educating parents and their children about the importance of increasing daily consumption of fruits and vegetables, proteins and carbohydrates, and minimizing the consumption of empty calories, fats, sugars and artificial ingredients.

Demonstrating that with just a little time and effort, healthy eating and cooking are not only possible but creative and fun.

Anything that stresses the need for people to eat minimally processed foods is a good thing, says Robyn Flipse, a registered dietitian with a practice in Bradley Beach.

"It's not where you eat but what you eat," Flipse said. "You can buy very good foods and still end up eating food that has less nutritional value and more calories than you intended."

People can boil the nutrition right out of fresh vegetables, she says.

And then there are yams.

"Yams are good food," Flipse says. "But look what happens at Thanksgiving: so much brown sugar and marshmallows that yams are more a dessert than a vegetable."

People eat what they know, says Flipse.

"Children in Japan don't fuss when their parents feed them seaweed," she says. "When it comes to the palate, older children, teens and adults usually need an internal motivation to turn away from sugars and fats."

Dell'Amore hopes his programs will initiate changes in behavior and get people to act.

His classes, he says, offer instruction and demonstrate the skills necessary to plan, purchase, prepare and store flavorful, healthy and nutritious meals that most people can work with.

He cites such dishes as oven-baked (not fried) chicken nuggets and cutlets; vegetable parmigiana (in less than 45 minutes); baked vegetables or vegetable sautes with little or no salt; healthy soups (using only vegetable water, not sodium-rich chicken stock); low-calorie salads with protein (beans, legumes) and healthy desserts.

Kathy Hila of Keyport is a working mother of two who works hard to feed her children healthy meals. Her secret, she says, is easy.

"I keep it simple," she says. "I'll steam Brussels sprouts. Bringing home fast food doesn't save me time. I still have to go grocery shopping."