The Secret Life of Mitch Spinach Children's Books Get Kids To Ask Their Parents for Fruits & Veggies

March 11, 2011 - PRLog -- We have two young children, a girl and a boy. Months before our first child was born, we began to delve more deeply into infant and maternal nutrition. Health and wellness were priorities for our family, and we wanted to give our children the healthiest start possible. When our daughter started Kindergarten and was bombarded with junk food on a daily basis, we decided to do something. We know how difficult it is to raise healthy children in a fast-paced, junk-food-filled world, so we decided to combine our expertise in health (Jeff holds a BS in exercise science) and writing (Hillary holds a BA and MA in English and is an English teacher) to created Mitch Spinach, a healthy role model for children. We wrote the first book in the series, The Secret Life of Mitch Spinach, with a passion to help abate the trend in nutrition-related diseases, such as type II diabetes, childhood obesity, ADD, ADHD, and chronically low immune systems. As parents, we knew that kids don’t like to be lectured about eating. However, we also knew that kids desperately needed a cool hero who espouses a healthy lifestyle for them to emulate. We hoped that parents would catch the allusion to their old friend Popeye, and kids would love hearing about the new super kid on the block, Mitch Spinach.

We were lucky enough to collaborate with renowned family physician and best selling author Joel Fuhrman, M.D., whose books we had read and utilized in our journey to healthy eating as a family. Each book in the series contains a healthy recipe and a “Secrets for Parents and Teachers” section, written by Dr. Fuhrman, that explains many of the nutritional concepts alluded to in the book. Dr. Fuhrman is a board-certified family physician, author, and nutritional researcher who specializes in preventing and reversing disease through nutritional and natural methods.

While many books focus on a child’s dislike of a certain food (usually a vegetable), this book series is devoid of that type of negativity and instead transforms healthy eating into a behavior to be copied in order to gain “super” powers like those of Mitch Spinach. The Secret Life of Mitch Spinach children’s book series has the power to significantly change the way that children eat because it actually prompts children to ask for healthy food without preaching to them about the benefits of a healthy diet. Good health begins in childhood, and scientific evidence suggests that the food children eat in the first ten years of their lives can have a critical and profound effect on their life-long health.

We also created the The Mitch Spinach website http://www.MitchSpinach.com to serve as a resource for parents, teachers, and kids. It offers creative, multidisciplinary lesson plans and outlines the importance of sound nutrition. Kids can print educational games, such as crossword puzzles and word searches, that pertain to the healthy foods used in the books to reinforce what they have learned.

We hope that in your quest to adopt a healthy lifestyle as a family, The Secret Life of Mitch Spinach will make your transition even easier. When your kids start asking you for broccoli, carrots, or flax seeds because they want to be like Mitch Spinach, your own healthy choices will seem effortless and fun!

What else can you do when your child refuses to eat anything green and seems to subsist on chicken-fingers and French fries alone?  
Here are some of our favorite tricks:

•   Make food preparation a family affair. The more you involve your kids in the preparation and selection of meals and snacks, the more willing they are to try healthy foods. Even a simple trip to the grocery store to allow them to pick out the fruits and vegetables for the week (each child in the family should get his/her own choice) can make a world of difference. Let older children find recipes online that sound good to them using healthy foods. Allow them to choose how the vegetable of the day is prepared and even help in the preparation.

•   Have a make-your-own smoothie party. Fill bowls with various ingredients, such as berries, mango, spinach, broccoli, flax or chia seeds, and let kids pick what they want. They can even turn the blender on! They love to be in control!

•   Make your own salad. The same trick will work for salads. But don’t just include lettuce. Use seeds, fruit, dried peas—anything goes!

•   Let them dip. Make a quick salad dressing/dip or use a store-bought one and watch them eat string beans, carrots, celery, cucumbers, and any other veggie that you cut into strips for dipping.

•   Make veggie and fruit shapes. Thinly slice carrots and cucumbers and use tiny cookie cutters to make shapes. Everything is more fun when it’s in a shape (think silly bands).

•   Make a vegetarian soup at least one night of the week. Pureed soups are great because you can’t see what’s in them (kale is easy to use this way). You’ll be amazed what they’ll eat when it’s been whizzed in the blender or mixed with an immersion blender.

To get kids on the right track with healthy eating, order your copy of The Secret Life of Mitch Spinach by visiting the website: http://www.MitchSpinach.com. Our children’s book combines the fun of reading with the invaluable gift of health.

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The Mitch Spinach new kids books are a parents kids books top pick. Every parent wants a smart, healthy hero to entertain and motivate their kids to eat more fruits and veggies. The Mitch Spinach kids books are for you. Visit http://www.MitchSpinach.com