Hey Hayley.
Looking forward to making those pack-ups for your children, Henry.
Sometimes, sometimes.
Maybe a bit of fear and dread, but also, you know, we can have a plan and we can try and stick to it.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I'm so excited to talk to you about this topic,
not only from, you know, enjoying everything to do with health from a physio perspective,
but also as a mum to a daughter who has a nut and a sesame allergy.
So I think this episode is going to be really great.
It's going to help me no end.
And I want to ask you lots about how to make some nut-free and sesame
or other allergen-free foods for pack-up boxes
because that's what people have to do nowadays at school.
There's quite a good kind of policy on not taking nuts and sesame
and keeping dairy and things fairly low in people's pack-up boxes.
So it would be great to ask you how we can make those things nice and tasty.
So I'm going to start actually, Henry, just asking you, how do you make a really nice sesame free hummus?
Because everything I sort of try to buy or if I actually try and make it myself, it just does not come out the creamy hummus that you actually see in the shops or if someone else like yourself would serve it to me.
How do you make it so creamy?
Well, that's a good one because hummus, I think if you're making it properly, it's almost 50-50 tahini, which is the sesame paste and chickpeas.
So to remove kind of like half of the body of the hummus, yeah, it's a challenge.
So it's never going to be quite as nice as, you know, the perfect hummus.
But of course, yeah, you're right.
Allergens at school are a real thing.
And particularly if your child has got an allergen, but, you know, quite often things like sesame and peanuts, et cetera, are just banned from school.
So, you know, most of the shop bought ones tend to have tahini in, so you just can't use them.
But making yourself is super easy.
So to get it really creamy, obviously, the first thing you want to do is have a high quality chickpea.
So whether you're cooking your own or you're buying them, you know, I would always go for an organic one.
They're not particularly more expensive, the organic ones, you know, but they definitely have better flavor.
And obviously, you know, they're not going to be all the pesticides and stuff sprayed on.
So you want to drain them.
And then I like garlic and I think garlic is important.
So I'd add probably not as much garlic as I was making it for a dinner party,
but definitely a little bit of garlic.
Plenty of lemon that's going to, you know, kind of really freshen it up.
And then the key you need is a really good blender.
So if you're trying to do it in a magic mix, you'll never, like, it cuts,
but it doesn't puree.
And so you'll never get that really kind of creamy texture.
At home, I've got like a NutriBullet that we use for like smoothies and, you know, and
those companies.
And actually that works really well.
You have to kind of take it to bits and stir it around and put it back on again, but that's
just quite easy.
Or if you have one of those kind of like Ninja blenders that you can kind of pour from the
top, that ideally is what you need because you want that really fast motor spinning and
it's going to really kind of creamify and get the kind of the chickpea kind of really
broken down and super creamy.
So what you want to do, so you put your chickpeas in, your garlic, your lemon.
You could, you know, if your kids are into a bit of flavor, like some ground cumin, be quite nice,
or maybe even a bit of smoked paprika can add a little bit of flavor.
But if they would like a bit more neutral, just take that out.
And then plenty of good olive oil.
So, you know, I'm a big fan of extra virgin olive oil.
So, you know, probably a little bit more than you think you need.
And then start blending it up.
And then what you need to do is you then add water, which sounds a bit kind of counterintuitive,
but the water kind of really helps kind of whip up and emulsify and just make it a little bit kind
of looser and um and then it gets moving through the blender and and probably if i was doing it
properly you're talking kind of maybe two minutes of blending so you're you're doing it for longer
than you think and um and you're going to get yeah super super creamy now obviously check for
seasoning so you want to be nice and salty if it's kind of like a bit punching the garlic and
your kids like things a bit um uh softer you could always just stir in a little bit greek yogurt and
that would just kind of um uh thin it out a little bit and just add a little bit of kind of
um a bit of fat and a bit of creaminess to it and make it a bit gentler but i i personally wouldn't
bother i just keep it keep it simple the other thing if you if you want to go to like the next
level is what you need to do is you need to wash your chickpeas you need to remove the shelf so
your chickpea would have like a little jacket on it that you don't notice but when you kind of like
jostle them around in a in a colander they start to come off so when um when i used to work in
fancy restaurants and we ever had a kind of hummus or a chippy puree we would remove those shells
it's probably a bit overkill for um for kids about lunch but that you know if you want to get the
absolute you know perfect puree then removing those shells is essential but i definitely wouldn't
bother for my kids kids about lunch that's that sounds great though and actually there's loads of
tips there um like you say just keep keep mixing it and adding the the water after you've added the
oil and just keep going and then seizing it as you go. I guess, could you add avocado as well as
a bit of green yogurt to make it creamy? Does that work? Yeah, avocado definitely will, I mean,
it'll make it a little bit green. It's going to add, you know, an added veg and, you know,
obviously lots of good fats and good flavors in avocado. And yeah, again, that'll help emulsify
and give you, you know, a bit more body. I think you can, I mean, for me, it would be like if I put
avocado into hummus, I know my daughter wouldn't eat it. So I wouldn't. But if you're, you know,
if your kid's up for eating avocado yeah great get it in there and actually even it's just a few
tablespoons it's gonna um it's not gonna be that noticeable so it's not gonna be like a guacamole
or anything it's gonna be add a bit of nutrition and like like you say good top tip to not to add
too much so it doesn't turn green so they don't realize they're eating it as well which is another
thing yeah and what other kind of um swap outs and things can we do in our pack up for children
can you make because obviously we want to avoid crisps because we uh we know we need to keep salt
intake to a minimum for children. But what can we do for, can we make our own crisps easily at home?
Yeah, you can definitely make your own crisps at home if you really want to. I mean, it is,
you know, it's possibly going out there to that next level because you're going to have to get
yourself a spud and a spud that's good for frying. So like a good Maris piper or actually the kind of
root vegetable crisps are quite nice. So whether it's like parsnip or celeriac or beetroot's really
good lovely colors you know you get the heritage the kind of the golden and the candy and the the
the you know the deep purpley ones and then you need a mandolin so you need to like you know slice
them thinly and then you you could just put them into a bowl a little bit of olive oil some salt
um you could put some flavorings you know some spices if you want to just keep it keep it quite
plain and then just kind of toss it up and then just roast them in the oven and they'll be more
kind of like a kind of like a baked crisp um i mean if i was making like the best crisp i would
probably deep fry them in some tallow but again that's probably that's me thinking about what would
be like my favorite crisp again it's probably a bit overkill for kids back lunch um but probably
the thing that we do the most is actually popcorn because it's you know popcorn is really easy to
make and um i'd always do it uh my sister taught me this is the popcorn hack you you you you heat
your pan up with um so you put in some um um three kernels into a pan and um with some oil so i'd
always use coconut oil just because i think it's got a nice flavor and again it's a good good and
it's got a good smoke point whereas you know i like olive oil or something this is obviously not
a great flavor for popcorn but also the smoke point is lower and then you wait until that kernel pops
and then you take it off the heat you count to 20 seconds and then you pour in your little cup of
popcorn and you only ever want like a small layer at the bottom of the pan because obviously if you
fill it too big you're going to have popcorn flying out of the pan and a pan with a lid
essential like you do need a lid otherwise it really does fly so you count to 20 seconds pour
the rest of the popcorn in and then put the lid on and then back on a medium heat and you just
every like 30 seconds so just give it a little shimmy and it just kind of moves them around in
the fat i would always you know um if i was making a week's worth you know kind of pan of popcorn's
fine i'd put quite a lot of coconut oil in because i think it makes it more like kids like it when
it's got that kind of slightly you know it's not too like if it's just plain popcorn it's a bit
boring so actually having a bit of extra fat does make it and feel a little bit more a little bit
more kind of like a like a snag and yeah a couple minutes later it's like pop pop pop pop pop it's
great fun the glass you can watch it happen yeah there's always that bit of jeopardy when it starts
like the glass it starts lit oh of excitement with some spices you might smoke paprika or some
you know cumin or something um or if they wanted it sweet just like you know we'd probably use like
a bit of honey or a bit of maple syrup and just just go quite light on it and then just mix it
together and then that can just live in a bag you know sealed and you know last you for you know a
full week and you just chuck a bit into a tub by tub and actually that's a fairly healthy quick and
easy snack and you can do that on a sunday night and it will last you to you know monday to friday
so that i would say that's more achievable than making your own crisps if i'm being honest
it sounds like it yeah and and you can get those like little popcorn makers as well can't you to
make it fun where you have to try and catch it through the sheet yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah they're quite good i haven't got one of those but yeah yeah definitely i think i
like your idea yeah because i think if you can make it in the coconut oil as you said you're
going to get more flavor aren't you whereas it's going to be really plain if you put them in the
actual popcorn makers and then you've got to try and somehow coat it i guess afterwards which
might be more tricky yes to do yes totally yes yeah and i just yeah i mean i mean i eat quite a
lot of fat i don't know um i know that probably in the past it's had quite a bad rep but like i
kind of think like if you've got like a pot of organic coconut oil you know it's a single origin
fat it's it's it's good it's got a high smoke point so you you know you can heat it up and
it's not going to kind of break down uh and actually it has nice flavor you know like a nice
you know kind of pina colada kind of vibe you know it's not not so bad you know and um and i guess if
your kids haven't tried it and they might not eat it maybe do it you know on a saturday or friday
night and have it as popcorn with a movie and if they eat it and you're like well great i now know
that i can put that in that pet lunch and that'd be a good swap out for you know in each other's
or something else yeah yeah yeah because otherwise it's just yeah you you go around the supermarkets
and you and you see that that's that's available and it's it just makes you feel bad just picking
them up doesn't it i just don't want what want my children to particularly eat that um but it's
hard isn't it when you're busy um and you're trying to create sort of a healthy um pack up for
for your child um and that you know it's busy with school um and and knowing like the sandwich
the sandwich thing i think is um is particularly tricky i know some people i know actually make
their sandwiches and freeze them in advance which i think is really organized and really clever have
you ever done that i've never done that have you like for me a sandwich should be kind of made and
eaten almost straight away so like you know i i kind of loathe buying a pre-made sandwich just
because you know the lettuce goes soggy like the bread you know it doesn't quite hold up it's been
in a fridge like it's nicer when it's kind of ambient but again obviously you know if you're
sending your kid off to off the school you have to kind of um drop your kind of high lunch standards
But yeah, I've never quite got to the stage of freezing sandwiches.
No.
Just not that organised.
But you can still make a nice sandwich, I think.
My kids like wraps or pitters.
They seem to work quite well.
Yeah.
So tell us, can you make, because sometimes when you make fresh bread,
and I know when I make fresh bread, they always,
obviously one, it doesn't last very long in the house
because everyone wants to eat it because it's so tasty.
But you can't freeze it, can you, once you've made some of the fresher breads?
But being the expert baker that you are, is there something that we can make, you know,
either the night before, on the morning, that we could make, like, whip up really quick in the kitchen,
that we could then add some bit of quick, healthy filling and put it in our kids' pack up?
Well, first of all, I'd say actually bread is great for freezing.
You know, that's a bit of a misconception.
So we're a big fan of like, you know, if you've got bread and you're not going to finish it all,
actually the best thing to do is just slice it up pop it into a bag and freeze it and then you
can just take it from the freeze and just chuck it straight into the toaster and so you kind of
like minimize waste so actually freezing bread is is a great idea and I think of it like frozen peas
you know the you can buy fresh peas and if you've got them fresh off the pod you know they're
delicious and sweet but if they've been sat around in a warehouse for you know four or five days and
they've gone to the supermarket then you've bought them then they sat in your fridge you know by the
time you reach them, they may be a week old, a lot of those kind of natural sugars become
quite starchy and so they actually end up being a bit kind of chalky and not so nice and you have to pod them Whereas when you pick up a bag of petit pois from the freezer they always sweet and delicious And that is because they been harvested boiled and frozen all on site
So it's all done at the farm and it's life out of,
from being picked is less than, you know, it's less than a few hours.
So all of that freshness is locked in.
So actually the freezer is a really great way of preserving foods.
Actually freezing bread again is the same.
It's that as soon as you take bread out of the oven,
essentially it's a race for it to start staling and that's because a few things happen one is um
through i think it's osmosis again i'm not a scientist so i might have got this wrong but
the you've got a crispy crunch and then inside you've got your crumb and it's all lovely and
soft and then the moisture on the which is on the inside starts to kind of um move to the outside so
then you end up with a kind of um equilibrium and it's kind of like the same texture throughout so
you don't have so bread when it's you know a day out of the out of the oven tends to feel a little
bit kind of like stodgy and less kind of crispy and soft inside so one but then also then you know
as the days go on it starts to stale and it feels very dry and then it becomes good for toast now
there's a miracle that can happen is that you can chuck your bread back in the oven and five minutes
later it's like it's fresh again now we think that the moisture has left the bread but a bit has but
actually most of it is still in there but what's happened is the starch molecules have um when
they're baked they're all scrambled and then over a period of time they start to form these long
strands of starch and that's that kind of dry stale taste so the way that a lot of mass-produced
bread get around it is they put things into the bread often things that aren't on the label so
they're kind of like a non-declarable ingredient so you don't even know it's in there and that
denatures the starch is forming those strings so then bread will stay softer for longer but it's
probably not very good for your gut and so when you've made bread at home you definitely aren't
putting these ingredients in because you can't buy them you know you probably have to buy like a
you know, a pallet load from a specialist supplier, which you're not going to have access to at home.
So your bread will naturally stale quicker. So the way you can get around that is to slice it up
and then freeze it. And then it kind of locks all that freshness in. So then you just take it out,
defrost it. And it's like it's just come out the oven. Of course, it's always better fresh out the
oven. But if you, you know, if you're batch baking, freezing is a great way. So for me, like,
obviously, I run a bakery, so we have fresh bread on tap. So it's, you know, but if you don't have
run your own bakery and you want to kind of you know produce stuff that's got good ingredients and
i think like flatbreads or pitas are a great way to go because actually you can make a fairly simple
dough there's loads of recipes and you can you can you can roll them out baking fairly thin and
then you can freeze them in with a bit of grease proof paper in between and then actually on the
morning you can just whip it out of the freezer and you can either just let it defrost or just
i quite often just um um pop it into a dry frying pan just to kind of liven it back up and get a
bit of you know there'll be a bit of kind of moisture spots on it and it'll feel a bit damp
and so it just like dries it out but not kind of toasting it and now you've got a great vehicle to
you know whether that's to spread some of your delicious homemade hummus that you've made
bit of grated carrot bit of grated apple you know roll it up you know you've got a great um
you know kind of wrap you know one of my kids favorites is they're like a you know if you've
we've had a roast chicken dinner on sunday and it's now you know monday tuesday you can pick a
bit of chicken a bit of yogurt maybe a little bit of mild curry powder and you can almost have like
you know a kind of a fairly quick and easy kind of coronation chicken sandwich bit of bit of
cucumber i i've got my own veg patch so i got cucumbers coming out of out of everywhere at the
moment they just keep growing and uh and you know they're sweet and delicious and uh roll up and
you've got a nice you know i think probably a delicious sandwich and um yeah yeah so that's
That's what I would do.
But yeah, so my kids, I think, are maybe a little bit older.
And one of the things that we've noticed is that as they get older,
they start to formulate their own opinions, which is great.
We want to encourage that.
We want children with a voice who are going to grow up to be independent adults.
But it also means that they question some of my choices of what I put in their Pat Lunge.
And something that we live with is that kind of peer pressure of what other people are eating
versus what we're then giving them.
And that can be quite a challenge,
like a real challenge for parents,
particularly if it's Monday morning,
you're tired, like you just want a coffee
and, you know, ship those kids off to school.
And now you're having a battle about
why can't I have Dairy D-Dunkers?
Why can't, you know, X, Y, Z has, you know,
two chocolate bars and a can of whatever,
you know, and it's like, and that, you know,
I can really sympathize from parents
because, you know, I live that most of the year.
you know how do we how do we manage that you know because obviously you don't you want your kids to
to eat you know you don't like you know fill a lunchbox full of lovely stuff that then they just
don't eat out of embarrassment you know um so yeah it's hard for that one it's really difficult
because if you're trying to make the right choices and then um like you say there's a whoever at
school might be told that they can they're allowed a certain something or you know and for my daughter
bless her because of the nut allergy and the sesame allergy she often misses out anyway
because something might have nut in it or something might have sesame so she can't have it
although saying that i guess that's kind of set her up to understand what she can and can't have
and she sort of understands what's gone into some of the foods because we have to look at the back
of the packet and i have actually said to her before like this actually says it's got nuts in
she can't have it but actually i wouldn't want to give this to you anyway because you know it says
you know all these different emulsifiers preservatives colors e-numbers I'm like I wouldn't
I wouldn't want you to have that anyway um thankfully at the moment she's probably at the
age where she still listens to mummy but um as she gets older I know it's going to be a challenge
and I want her to be safe and looking at these food packets but I'm hoping it's kind of almost
educated her as well about looking at what is in it um because we have to then make lots of things
at home it is nice that they can see what goes into food um and there was a great thing they did
at my daughter's school where they all took in a jam jar and they were all grating different types
of vegetables and put it in and then they're all mixing it with various little bits of like salad
dressing and they all came out with these jars so excited they're all eating like the raw carrot out
of the jar and it was almost like like a trend it was brilliant to see them all so excited about it
and i was like oh that would be great if it was like that every single day but it's difficult
isn't it to try and do that well i mean that that's what you want you know if you if you if
you're at school and all the kids are eating you know like homemade you know delicious food that
you know is nutritious and just just normal food normal food you know like food that you would eat
at home and there's and there is no you know junk food and crisp and you know and triple bars etc
kids are really adaptable and they just they just want to fit in and like be kind of part of like
what their mates are doing like i totally get that like i'm probably the same and actually you know
know when you're probably when you're younger you're probably more impressionable and you know
we we've got a teenage daughter she's gonna be a teenager soon so it feels like she's a teenager
already and um and we're going through the whole kind of like phones at school thing she's at
secondary school and actually there is a movement that like um uh and it's it's i wish it happened
a couple of years earlier but like it's happening now with like you know parents and schools are
kind of getting together being actually kids don't need a smartphone like they really don't need it
let's just, if no one has it, then it's just not a problem. And I think in probably by the time your
daughter gets there, that actually, there probably won't be smartphones at schools because it's just
like, you know, everyone can see it's a bad idea. And there's more and more evidence and also the
kind of knock on of it. But with food, it just feels like it hasn't, like people still haven't
quite woken up to like, if you feed your kids a little like junk and they're at school, how are
they going to concentrate? Like, you know, if I, if I ate, you know, a chocolate bar, a pre-made
sandwich you know some dairy dunkers and a packet of crisps i would be like bouncing off the walls
and you know i'd probably have some kind of like anxiety attack halfway through and you know and
then i'd be really hungry again so how we can expect our kids to i often think that a lot of
it has to come from you know that kind of behavior that we model at home so if we're if we're drinking
fizzy drinks and you know eating crisps every night and we've got loads of chocolate bars in
the in the cupboard if we're if we're eating that as a family or as adults and our kids know to see
that well we're modeling that behavior and then we're asking them not to eat it when they're at
school it's just like well that's not you know we have to take a bit of responsibility now hey i'm
not here to preach you know that you know everyone's no no you know i'm all for that yeah i'm all for
that because um i was i was kind of sort of thinking this is really interesting because
even just this week so my daughter knows that she's not allowed um coca-cola because uh from
a physio perspective i just i just think it's terrible for everybody to drink it just because
the amount of sugar um and so like so children should you know depending on their age there's
certain amounts of sugar that you're allowed per day so if you're if you're about sort of
you know 19 grams of sugar which is about five sugar cubes is is is more than enough sugar in
a daily allowance um sometimes these coca-colas have got like 13 teaspoons of sugar in in one and
it's not just uh you know coca-cola is like all all fizzy drinks um have got that amount of sugar
that last amount of sugar in. Jess, my daughter, she was actually saying the other day, she said,
oh, mum, I can see that that child's got Coca-Cola. They've got 13 spoons of sugar in their drinks.
You can see that if you do try and teach them, she starts picking out. She's like the fizzy drink
police. It's like, I'm not allowed that. And it's so, you know, not good to have all these
carbonated sugary drinks because like you say, it affects your concentration. There's even been
studies to show how it can affect your gut health and and how it can affect absorptions and actually
destroy some of the the vitamins and nutrition that you're actually trying to put in your body
it's just entering the bloodstream far too quick is it's just it's just not a good idea so it's
you're just trying to make it obvious that you know water and sensible drinks and actually school
are very good at that um i don't know how is it your school but they're very clear on just water
Yeah. No, I think most schools don't sell Coke anymore, which I think is a good thing. I remember
my second school, we had a Coca-Cola vanimishing. It was like, gosh, it's great. It's like slot 50
p and you get half a litre of Coke. Wonderful. My mum doesn't know anything about it, but that all
went. And I think it was probably around the time Jamie Oliver was doing all his turkey twizzlers
and a school dinner thing, but maybe it hasn't gone much beyond that. I think if I'm kind of
thinking practically about like you know as a parent myself but also other people and you're
thinking like right you know it's a new term i want to you know i want to get a grip of you know
the food that we're feeding our kids at lunchtime and um and you know how am i going to do that
probably i mean i guess you could just go cold turkey and be like right you know you know we're
all of the junk's out and we're going um full on and that probably is the best approach but
you're probably going to have some tantrums and some shouting and you know it's going to be a
fairly turbulent time for you, particularly in September when everyone's, you know, getting
off the holidays.
So maybe, maybe if you, if you'd rather not kind of go completely rip the bandaid off
and you want to, you know, go, well, let's, let's like do it as a stage thing.
Actually, what you could maybe start to do is just like, you know, if, if, if you're
classically putting in, you know, crisps, a chocolate bar or some kind of like biscuity
thing, you know, maybe the odd bit of fruit and, and a, you know, a carton of juice or
so and a sandwich, you could maybe start to look and go, well, actually, what are those
like quick swaps that I could swap out.
So if you're making a sandwich,
you know, if you're going to put cheese in it,
buy like a traditional cheddar.
Like, you know, don't buy dairy-y squares
or some kind of like fake cheese
that's got loads of emulsifies.
Read the packet and just get one
that's just got milk and rennet and salt.
You know, like just keep it super basic
and buy, you know, a good quality one.
The kid's probably going to enjoy it more
because it's going to have more flavor.
They'll get used to it.
So you can just start to like swap little things out.
So, you know, whether it's the crisps,
make your own popcorn.
Great.
we'll tackle biscuits next week you know like maybe don't try and like do all of it in one go
because you know that might be too hard and i guess you've got to gauge it based on you know
your situation and your family but like um and i think you're right like talk to your kids about
it like you know kind of educate them because you know they can't be expected to know all this stuff
and actually you know but i think yeah there's probably a bit of modeling your own behavior
but then also talking to them about it so they're aware at least so then they've got the information
And as kids get older, I used to rebel against my parents if they told me not to do something.
And I was like, great, I'm going to do it.
But then you will also have kids who go, no, I trust my parents and what they say, I'll listen to it.
So, you know, it totally depends on what kind of charge you have.
You might have to adapt how you, you know, approach that.
That's unique for every parent.
Hey, kids don't come with a manual, do they?
They're all slightly different, which is wonderful.
But yeah I know for my boy we actually moved his school because he was having a bit of a difficult time And just to another school down the road the food culture was different at this new school And actually you know he was definitely someone who feels that kind of peer pressure to like oh my mates are eating you know they got all the good stuff why can why can i have food that comes with a you know comes with a football playing card hidden inside or whatever it is you
know whatever the fatty thing is and um and so that was a a real struggle and i also knew apparently
he you know when he eats you know food that's not good for him or not not nutritious actually
it affects his behavior you know so he's you know he's like full of energy or he's just like you know
he can't regulate himself properly.
And so you kind of see that
and it's really hard
when you're in that moment
to be like,
no, you can't have this
because you just feel like
the bad person,
you know,
particularly if you're tired
and you've,
you know,
it's, you know,
it's a Monday morning
and it's like,
well,
well, maybe we'll tackle
this next week.
And, um,
but actually he's gone
to this new school
and the,
they've got quite a strict culture,
which part of the reason
why we chose it,
around food.
So they basically have
like a ban on kids' food.
So there's like,
so there's no crisps,
there's no chocolate bars,
doesn't have 50 drinks so just like no one has them and he now like you know we'll we often send
him in with soup like homemade soup and a bit of bread and butter perfect and um and it and actually
it probably took him a day to be like that's right everyone else is eating it so i think actually
that peer pressure is for me i having lived through it i think is a it's a bigger thing
because our kids you know their whole childhood ate homemade natural stuff they hit an age where
they started to become quite opinionated and um and are more aware of like you know what other
people are doing and that kind of social pressure and you know it very quickly changed and if you're
not we probably were caught a bit blindsided so we just kind of we weren't quite ready for it
because we're like no i could don't eat chris and then suddenly it was like this is now just like
snuck into their life and now we have to like pull away and um so it is difficult you know i often
look back and think so many things i wish i had done differently but like but i think just you
know you know if you can make those small little small little steps that you know at least if
they're getting something nutritious in their diet you know it's going to be better than nothing so
you know if you can make a small little swap out absolutely and i think um like you say with them
with the school like making that that change um a bit like like say with the smartphones i think
if you can get a whole group or a whole class or a whole school behind it that's when you can create
change isn't it and that's why it's worked so nicely with the sort of anti-smartphone use which
is fantastic i think is a great campaign because we know the health benefits of all these things as
well so that's what kind of is the is the pushing point I think for for wanting to make these changes
like you say it's difficult if we're we're in a mindset where it's you know for a lot of families
that are busy and probably with price you know another thing when you go around supermarkets and
things sometimes they're pretty competitive on price these crisps and things you're like well
actually it's quite cheap to do that however that's totally detrimental to to a child's health
and development and nutritional development.
But it is then trying to make that kind of break away
and go, let's think differently about it.
And trying to get kids to actually make their own pack up
or their lunches is really helpful.
I know my daughter's quite good at wanting to help me
in the kitchen.
And sometimes I feel like,
oh, I just want to get this done quickly.
I know like it's going to be really good for her.
So I'm like, yeah, and of course,
pull up your stall and we'll start making it now.
It's going to take me double the time.
but actually it's great and she loves mixing it and then she's much more likely to eat it
if she's actually made it and you can see how proud she is when she's made it.
But yeah, and like you said, with your flatbread idea and putting those fillings in.
So Henry, do you have, how can we make like the fastest flatbread?
Do you have a really quick way of doing that?
I guess like a kind of Indian chapati style flatbread is probably the simplest and easiest to make.
You know, I think at its core, it's just literally wholemeal flour and water with a pinch of salt.
I'd probably add a little bit of olive oil as well, just because it helps give a little bit of stretch.
Essentially, you just want a wholemeal flour.
often if you see it in the supermarket or you know um food shop you can see one that is
specifically for bread bread making so it's come from a wheat that's got a high protein
and you need that high protein which is the gluten which gives you the stretch
so if you haven't got um if you haven't got that high protein you won't you know it's good for a
cake but if you're trying to make something that's got a bit of substance particularly like a flat
bread you need that high protein one you can always read on the ingredients where it has
nutritionals it's got the protein level you want something that's above like kind of above 11 12 13
um around about that level whereas if you look at kind of plain flour it'll often be kind of like
eight or nine so that's a lower protein so if you're buying home quite often you have to do a
little bit of digging deep because it won't necessarily say for bread making on it but just
just check that one um and then yeah just like a cup of cup of wholemeal flour little slug of
of olive oil pinch of salt and then you just want to kind of with a spoon kind of add in some some
water and just kind of mix it now the thing with whole milk flour is that because of the bran it
takes longer for the bran to absorb the moisture so you actually want a slightly wetter dough so
you'll be mixing it and it doesn't want to be like porridge but like kind of um it wants to feel kind
of quite kind of sticky but if you then kind of cover it and leave it for about 20 minutes the
bran continues to absorb that moisture and it kind of like it kind of firms up again so if you if
you're used to making white bread and you go over to wholemeal bread you need to add about 10 to 15
percent more water than you would to your white bread recipe otherwise you're going to end up with
a very kind of dry dense brick which is not going to be very nice and then yeah so then you want to
mix it like um you can either do it by hand or if you've got a mixer but just yeah kind of like
five ten minutes just to get a little bit of stretch to it um so if you're doing this on a
monday morning you know you can set your alarm at six six a.m get cracking and then you know say
say you've made, I don't know, like half a kilo of dough or, you know, 300 grams of dough,
so a small amount. You then just want to portion that up into little sections, roll it into a kind
of a rough ball and then leave them to rest for about 50 minutes or so. And the dough can quite
often be kind of quite tight. And so just by leaving it to rest, it's like, you know, going
off to the spa and, you know, having a little sit back and you become all nice and relaxed,
your muscles are all loose. And then you get the rolling pin and then you want to roll it and get
them as, you know, a decent shape, you know, nice and thin. And then the quickest way to do it is
just in a dry frying pan on a kind of medium heat and it's probably two to three minutes on each side
and turn them over if you want to kind of get some real kind of life to it you can if your
frying pan comes with a lid you can put the lid on and do a little spray of water and that adds a
little bit of steam and you'll get a little bit more bubbling but I wouldn't bother with that
that's kind of you know if you're doing like a curry for your mates on a Friday night and you
want to make them look a bit more like a naan bread that that tip can help but yeah just the
dry frying pan and again i mean if you were doing a batch i'd probably do this in the evening or you
know on the weekend and it's quite quick to you know to knock up kind of 10 or 15 or so and then
you just keep a few aside and then the rest is bit of greasy paper between in a bag and in a freezer
and they're good to go just like flot them out don't make the mistake of freezing them all together
because they won't ever come apart and then you've got to defrost i've done that gotta defrost a lot
but then but then if you that's probably the quickest probably the ones that my kids like
the most is when you make a pita bread but for a pita bread you need to make a yeasted dough
um a bit more complicated but again probably not something for a monday morning but for the weekend
but then you need a really hot oven and most domestic ovens don't get hot enough so if you've
got if you're lucky enough to have one of those like outdoor pizza uni kind of things essentially
it needs that kind of like 300 degree plus heat and it just naturally kind of springs up and you
get that pittory pocket but um but yeah just like a kind of chupati flat right perfect that sounds
delicious i'm gonna definitely try those flatbreads because i'm i don't know why but whenever i've
made fresh bread i've always assumed you weren't able to freeze it i don't know why maybe it's
because when you sometimes buy bread from bakeries and in supermarkets trying to get the fresher bread
that it does sometimes say it does say on the packet like don't don't freeze or not suitable
for freezing i've always thought why is that but um as you've said it you can actually freeze them
Well, a lot of bread in the supermarket.
So if you're buying it from the kind of the fresh bakery aisle, that bread's already been frozen.
So what they would do is, and this is quite common for bakeries to do, is that you would par-bake it and then pull it out.
So it's only been in the oven, say, like 50 minutes.
And it's kind of like, it's kind of baked enough that it's kind of, it's not going to, but it's definitely longer.
and then you blast freezer and then the supermarket would have it in their freezer and then they just
get them out the night before tray them up and then they just pop them through an oven for 10
minutes just to kind of you know give that illusion of fresh bread and then it's on the
now this is the other thing that i this is not the whole podcast but um when when bread has been
reheated in the supermarket they don't have to label it because it's an unpackaged thing and
therefore they don't have to give you the ingredients so you can ask for the allergens
but they don't have to declare all the ingredients in.
And so a lot of people go to the supermarket
and assume that the bread that's kind of like loose,
that looks like it's fresh bread,
they assume it's better.
And actually quite often it's the worst bread
and it's got all sorts of weird stuff in it.
And you can't verify it because there's no label
because unlabelled, unpackaged stuff doesn't require a label.
Well, I did not know that.
I was the person that walked around and thought,
you know, if they're in the clear bags
and they look like they're tasty and fresh,
that that's probably better option
and then some of the ones down the other aisle.
So out of all the bread, so if we don't have any time, Henry,
is there a better bread that we could buy if we're really tight on time
and we haven't got time to make anything?
What's the healthiest choice that we could make when buying bread from the supermarket?
Okay, so what I would personally do,
and I'd feel like a piece of my soul was dying as I buy bread from the supermarket,
but if I'm in the situation that I need to get some bread,
I'm away from the bakery and I have to, you know,
I'm in another part of the country.
I would always read the labels.
So I'd always look for like most supermarkets
who say sell sourdough.
So I'd always try and go for a sourdough
because if it's an authentic sourdough
that's not been, that doesn't have yeast in it.
So you always want to check the ingredients.
The flour will always be fortified.
So there'll always be some words
that you might not understand.
That's by law has to be in there.
So that's regardless.
But then you want to see salt, water.
If it's sourdough, it'll just say,
it might say like fermented flour
and then have like what those fermented flours are.
The things that you don't want to see are any kind of like weird ingredient that you've not heard of,
that you, like a kind of, I don't know, an emulsifier, or it's a mean number,
like you'd like, I don't know what that's for.
And most bread has lots of that in, so just avoid those ones.
So if it's a salad, it should just literally be flour, water, salt, and that's it.
If it's got seeds in it, it'll list the seeds.
If it's got a fat in it, you know, you want to look at something that says like olive oil or butter,
rather than like a margarine or a kind of shortening,
because again, that'll have emulsifiers and stuff.
whereas sourdough true sourdough tends to be fairly clean label but there's there's a whole
thing around okay sorry so then and there's quite often the in-house brands or there's you know
depending on the supermarket you're in there's companies that make fairly good bread it will
tend to be a little drier than like bread that has come fresh out the oven so it might be better
for toast or you know might have to reheat again when it comes to like the flatbread stuff because
you know if you're if you if your kids are into wraps and stuff and pitters quite often those
have got um like i've definitely bought flatbreads and they've lasted in the bin for months i'm like
how on earth does this thin thing not go off like there's gotta be some there's either voodoo in it
yeah yeah totally and um and then you look at the ingredients you're like oh man there's
absolutely ramajan full of preservatives that is not going to be good for your sustaining for your
your child and their brain health and all that sort of stuff but that but there are some brands
that I think is either a Spanish or Italian one.
I wrote down this, like croft molica.
I've probably said that wrong,
but we could probably put a link in the notes.
Oh, yeah, put a link in for us.
That sounds good.
Yeah, yeah, put a link.
And their stuff actually,
it's got really nice, nice-looking brand in,
but actually reading the ingredients,
they're pretty much just flour, water, salt, olive oil,
and that's it.
And they're probably a bit more expensive
than the budget ones from Aldi.
But yeah, if you're trying to go as kind of preservative
free, et cetera, then they're pretty good.
But again, they don't last as long.
So if I buy them, I would then freeze them because then, you know, because that, you
know, if you open the packet by day three, they're going to be brittle and not very nice.
So you kind of have to assume it's like you've made bread yourself and use the freezer as
your friend if you're buying.
Yeah.
And I assume you've found that particular brand across most supermarkets, have you?
Is it quite difficult to find?
Well I seen it in Sainsbury and Waitrose They probably in Tesco There isn a Tesco near me I don think they in Audi or Morta Okay We have a little look I gonna have a look for that next time but I gonna have a go at making your flatbreads because yeah I tried to make them before with like a little bit of
yogurt and things but I think I like your idea of just I don't know why I've never just thought to
do it with water to see how it comes out of olive oil well the yogurt ones are great and actually
you know if you're making like a kind of like a nice kind of naan you know the yogurt's gonna add
fat and you know it's going to give it a bit more kind of softness to it so yeah nothing the great
thing with baking is that there's you know there's a thousand and one recipes there's a million and
one recipes with flour water and some other ingredients you can you know you can just go
on forever and that's why it's a lifetime of learning but yeah but just having a go at making
them yourself is a great is a great start but i i guess my encouragement would be like don't
don't beat yourself up if you're not making flatbreads for your kids back lunch because you
there um yeah but give it a go again and get your kids involved you know they they want to get get
you know bashing around with a rolling pin it's quite fun yeah and any any healthier choice is
going to always be a win-win isn't it with your child sometimes i'm even just getting them what
i'm going to do this september is i'm going to get some stuff prepared and then i'm going to get
my daughters to pick an item from each say bowl and so you pick your own piece of fruit pick your
sandwich filling and then you know and then also you're gonna pick um maybe like a homemade kind of
like say a granola bar or something that's more homemade and or a block of chocolate i i know we
sort of often talk about um just having a cube of chocolate especially if it's if they can tolerate
and they like the kind of darker chocolate the one that's the higher percentage cocoa is obviously
better for them it's going to give them a bit of magnesium and less sugar yes and and i think
through kind of looking that once you i think once you go above 85 the chocolate tends to be quite
good like like 100 is a bit hardcore like it's probably not gonna have that but they're kind of
what i think once it goes below kind of like 80 to 70 they have to start adding in um uh emulsifiers
to kind of like bring the chocolate together and so i think mostly what they use is soy lecithin
which is kind of became from a chef in world became really famous with like heston blumenthal
and that kind of like gastronomic cooking where they were making foams and all sorts of kind of
like wonderful things and actually and it was it was using technology that's been used in
mass-produced food since like the 30s so it wasn't like modern technology it was just the
fine dining restaurants were like oh cool we can use these like wacky ingredients but we can do
some really like fabulous stuff and it's real showstopper right so soy lecithin is in pretty
much all chocolate below kind of 80 to 85 percent and um and if you like do a bit of research on how
they make soy lecithin it's like you definitely won't want to eat it it was like essentially it's
like the waste sludge from from like engine oil production and um and it's like highly toxic and
then basically some clever scientist worked out a way of purifying it but it had great fat
emulsifying properties and um and they were like oh cool so we've got this like waste sludge that
we can now use to like emulsify stuff. Look, we can take a high quality chocolate, remove
the expensive part, add in this lecithin and now we can make something that's got the lovely
kind of creamy mouthfeel. And it's literally in every single chocolate bar. Like you cannot
find a chocolate bar that doesn't have soy lecithin in it.
Yeah, you've seen that all the time. I know, yeah, you see it on the back, don't you?
In ice creams, yeah, it's in everything. And it's like, I only Googled it maybe a year
ago and I was like well you don't eat this stuff but um hey yeah yeah so so if your kids are used
to eating Kit Kats and as all kids are you know they like the milk chocolate stuff you're probably
going to have to like wean them onto a darker chocolate and so the way the way that we do it
is we just don't have chocolate under like 80 percent in the house so just like just buying a
higher quality stuff you can't eat as much of it because it's not as moorish and then actually um
one of the ways that we do it is bananas we've always seemed to have loads of bananas that are
going off and or they're on the turn i like them really um sweet the rest of the family prefer when
they're kind of like green and bitter and horrible so what my wife does really clever she just like
slices them up and chucks them in the freezer so then they're like they can go to smoothies or you
know into you know something but then when they're frozen you can um you get a little bit of peanut
butter and you can make like a little set like a little like um sandwich and then just melt some
chocolate and dip them in and because they're frozen the chocolate like hardened straight away
and then and then you can just so then you can put them in the packed lunch and obviously the
the banana will maybe get a bit soft but um but all you can just eat them straight away and you
just kind of like chew on them like and they're actually they're really tasty and that's quite a
good way to kind of get them into a darker chocolate because you've got the sweetness
from the banana so it's not it's not too kind of it's not like going straight from juice to black
coffee you know it's like it's kind of slowly weaning them onto it yeah it sounds like it would
taste a little bit like the snickers with the peanut butter yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah
yeah yeah we tend to do strawberries as well where you can like dip the good one dip the chocolate in
um you might find that like like a strawberry probably work quite well like banana maybe
might be too soft for a pat lunch so something like a date or like a piece of dried fruit you
know they they tend to be a bit more robust because there's less moisture so that's going to
kind of withstand a kind of you know your lunch box being booted around the classroom you know
being played with i'm sure my son uses it to play football in the corridor so you know a bit more
robust do you ever do your own dried fruits because again looking at packet sometimes when
you look at the back of what you'd think would be healthy dried cranberries healthy dried sultanas
some of the ingredients on the back of those packets again are pretty terrifying what you read
you know, the preservatives in them and things. So do you, I've never had a go at this myself yet,
but you know, like with your air fryer, you can often dehydrate different fruits and stuff.
Did you ever do that? I don't have an air fryer. I used to, so in the kitchens I used to work and
we used to have the dehumidifiers. So they're like kind of like a, it's like a kind of a black
box with little racks that are like perforated. And essentially you can leave them on a very low
temperature and you can dry all sorts of things. I've often thought that'd be quite a good thing
to buy we haven't bought one and i think our oven is not like the lowest setting is probably too hot
like to do overnight you just end up with kind of charcoal um so but if you've got an air fry
and you can do that yeah definitely give it a go because like i mean like apple's probably the
easiest one um because you know kind of they go super sweet because it kind of like concentrates
mango again like i don't know many kids who wouldn't nail a bag of dried mango and um yeah
give them a go yeah we can dehydrate you know i mean yeah check it all in yeah yeah check it all
in but yeah exactly but it's so i work in the food industry and and so i so i've kind of seen
behind the curtain and i know i know how murky and bad it is and it's it's it's worse than most
people think at it because i've like known it all my life you kind of i'm not shocked by it so then
And when you hear people talk about it, you're like, yeah, obviously, like this is just,
but I think, you know, even when you like are aware of it, like a bit like the bread thing,
like they make it so difficult to like, you can be reading all the labels,
but if you can't see the label, I had a friend, we were talking about
that he's been trying not to eat vegetable oils and stuff.
And we were out in a cafe and he had a pasty and it was like a kind of branded pasty,
but it was kind of served hot.
And I was like, well, you know, that pastry is absolutely full of,
but that's not that's not made with butter that's made with vegetable and he's like really and i
was like yeah obviously and i guess i just kind of know that because i'm like well i know that
you know to to make pastry with butter and sell it for like three pound fifty in a cafe there's
no way they're using butter like they just can't afford it so it's going to be a you know a cheap
vegetable um but because there's no label because you can't read it because it's in a hot cabinet
you just don't know and i guess you could ask the server like oh can i see the ingredients and they'd
have to go to the freezer and find the box and take a photo of it and they probably laid it and
And it is hard, like, you know, without kind of putting a tinfoil hat on and going and living on your own in the woods.
I know.
It is hard, isn't it?
But like you say, it is scary when you start looking at packets.
And I don't encourage anyone just to start looking at the packets.
Because it was when my daughter, particularly, I was having to check it for nuts and sesame.
And I quickly realised, don't you, how many different ingredients you like.
This has got about 50 different things in it.
That is no good for you.
And I've heard the rule of, you know, if there's more than five things in it, it's probably not good for you.
And we just try and cook from scratch.
Or if you can't pronounce it.
Yeah, if you can't pronounce it and you think that's made in a laboratory, that's not made in anyone's kitchen.
And it is scary because they're trying to shrink down price, aren't they, as well?
And they're trying to shrink down products and it's a tricky world out there with food.
But, yeah.
Well, sorry, I interrupted you, but the point you made about just trying cooking from scratch,
I think that for me, that's the thing that we can do because then we're in control.
Like if you're buying raw ingredients at their most base level, you can, you know, you can
make decisions whether you want to buy organic or non-organic or from growing yourself or
from a farmer's market.
They're all decisions you can make.
But even if you're just buying the most basic stuff, like at least, at least you're kind
of like, you're giving yourself the best chance, you know, and it does just require a bit more
effort.
And I think, you know, when you send your kids off to school, like, you know, I know it's
kind of working parent there's that kind of like relief of like oh at least they're at school we
don't have to worry about them for six hours you know we can kind of um i can just get on with my
life and just be an adult and i don't have to make decisions apart from ones that affect myself
but that kind of like outsourcing parenthood which is convenient when you've got a job but
then if you're not thinking about what they're eating and then they're coming home and they're
hungry or they're angry you know it's like actually quite often i think a lot of it you know the food
does play into it and um yeah and um so so if you can just make some yeah even just like small
changes just to you know like if they're going in with juice they don't need juice get them on water
you know or you can put you know you can get those bottles can't you where you can like load up fruit
in the top like if that helps yeah you can get those yeah and yeah and it requires effort yeah
sorry i was interrupting you then henry but you can get those cartridges as well that you put around
the nozzle of your bottles i don't know if you've seen these and uh it's basically the olfactory
system so basically the smell is convincing you that you're drinking something sweet which is
great because then you don't have to worry about the acidity on the kids teeth with um having like
lemon or lime or something in their water all day which probably after a while would go a little bit
too strong anyway but yeah that works quite nicely too yeah so i think there's things you can do and
i think you know um yeah i guess if you're if you're doing nothing just make you know one little
swap out and see how it goes you know and actually you might be surprised your kids and i think like
you know, you can get your kids involved.
So I know with my two kids,
one of them just wants to be fed
and he's not that bothered about what it is.
He just wants it to happen.
Whereas my daughter wants to be much more in control
and she likes to know what's going in there.
So if I do pack lunches for both of them,
I'll do his and I'll just pack it
and it's just like he'll just take it
and he might look at it and go, yeah, fine.
Whereas for her, I'll never put it in
because I know that she wants to have that bit of control
and that's fine.
Like, you know, you just learn who your kids are.
But the thing that I can do as an adult
is make sure that that smorgasbord of things that she's collecting from isn't, you know,
there's not loads of, you know, she's going to be like, yeah, I'll have that, that, that.
And she just make it like, here's some lovely fruit.
Here's some nuts and seeds and dried fruit, whatever.
Here's some, you know, nice, you know, some nice bread.
And here's some fillings you can put in.
Hey, you know, you can be in control of what goes into it because you're ultimately the one
going to be eating it.
But like, we can kind of like curate that kind of, you know, whether that's coosan,
I don't know, whatever, okay, we're the adults.
Yeah, exactly.
Until they're paying rent and taxes, they've got to stick to our rules.
Exactly.
And like if it's provided, but then they get to choose,
they get that element of control.
And that's what's going to hopefully set them up for good choices
into their adulthood as well, because that's why we're doing this as well, isn't it?
So they eventually will learn, you know, what should they have for lunch
when, you know, the day comes when they don't live at home.
And that's what you want for our children.
and the healthiest possible lifestyle you can possibly imagine.
Definitely.
Well, I think, Henry, that has been super insightful
and we're going to try lots of your top tips
on how to make those nice, delicious foods
and the quick and easy swap out.
Let's see how it goes with September.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks, Henry.
Thanks, Hayley.