It is inevitable that with Easter time comes an influx of chocolate and sweet foods. Below are some tips for managing ‘treat foods’.

Nourish’s tips:

• Serving “treat foods” alongside other foods, eg: serving easter chocolate with crackers and apples, rather than just chocolate alone. 

• Using the chocolate/sweets in other baking eg: chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip pancakes, chocolate fruit muffins. 

(Yes, that is Nutella going straight into the mouth, how great!)

Benefits of allowing ‘treat foods’:

• Serving ‘treat foods’ alongside other foods takes the power away from the ‘treat food’ 
• Encourages a balanced diet and enjoying foods in moderation 
• Reduces the ‘sugar high’ and associated behaviours that are inevitable after eating volumes of chocolate 

Research tells us that restricting ‘treat foods’ can lead to binging behaviours in those foods, maybe not straight away but certainly down the track in adolescents and adulthood. These foods need to be available to us regularly to avoid indulging when they are sudden available to us.

At the end of the day, chocolate is food and I am strongly on the motto that all food is good food. Particularly, for children where there is already a limited number of foods, the last thing we want to be doing is restricting this further.

Rebecca 🙂