hello henry how are you yeah i'm all good thanks hayley good excellent well today we are going to
be talking about hypermobility in children and what we can do for our children who are hypermobile
discussing some of the injuries that i commonly see in clinic and then we're going to be talking
about protein for children and how we can get little sneaky bits of protein into their meals
in a tasty way and that's where you're going to come in Henry with your top tips and your
excellent knowledge of how we can just diversify maybe some of the recipes because like me I tend
to use the same sort of recipes just because it's a trusted recipe and I know how to do it but I
would like you to kind of teach us a little bit more how we can make it more exciting and get our
children involved with that too so diving straight in I know you've got children Henry and so have I
and you may or may not have come across this as a parent already because you can have parents who
send their children to lots of after school clubs or different groups and things sports teams and
things and they can sometimes end up doing a bit too much sport or they become injured and that's
when you often see them in clinic and they come in to see me and I take a little look at them and
their parents say to me they're very bendy what is what is happening with my bendy child and i
just to clarify when when you say hypermobility is that double jointed is that yes yes am i
thinking the right thing you are okay yeah so so hypermobility it's termed hypermobility spectrum
disorder even though i don't really like the disorder term because it it sounds negative
doesn't it but that's what its classification is if you if you look it up in research or documents
and things like that. But really, yes, it just simply means that your joints are flexible. So
especially if you're looking at just generalized joint hypermobility. And that could be that,
you know, they want to sit cross-legged, they overbend, they might be able to put their hands
flat to the floor, they might be able to do backbends and sort of sit in funny positions at
home that parents often say they sleep really strange. They, you know, they sleep sort of
stretched out in all kinds of positions and things like that.
And then alongside that.
Like party tricks.
Party tricks.
I can lick my elbow or I can put my legs behind my head or something.
And I've witnessed that a few times.
As in you can do that, Henry?
I definitely can't.
I can't do that.
I was once described by a chiropractor as a bit like an oak tree.
I'm kind of solid and a bit...
So you're the opposite.
I'm not very bendy.
I am the opposite.
Yeah, so you're the total opposite.
So yeah, absolutely.
So flexibility.
So you might do certain party tricks and then, you know, people might do the splits.
You know, girls often go into complete splits.
Boys might do some fancy tricks as well, but generally don't tend to do the splits.
They tend to do more sport injuries because they might play football.
And because of the high impact and the flexible joints, they're more prone to injuries and sometimes even dislocation.
So dislocations is a common issue, especially around the kneecap.
So if you dislocate your kneecap when you're young, it doesn't necessarily mean you're hypermobile.
But if you add all the evidence together, sometimes you can actually say, all right, did you used to sit cross-legged?
Did you used to dislocate your shoulders or your knees?
And it all starts to add to a bigger picture.
But in clinic, we look at children and we look and we can also look at this in adults.
Most of the time, children will grow out of hypermobility, but with adults, it can carry on.
It can continue into adulthood.
And I still see adults who are, you know, even crazy as it sounds, up to the age of 70, 80, and they still have some hypermobile joints.
So you can discover this at any point.
And it's a specialist interest area of mine where I really love to help this client base because there's so much you can do if you strengthen up the muscles in the right way.
But not everyone knows what they should be doing or what they could be doing.
And so it's more common in children and then some kids kind of grow out of it.
Is that just because their kind of bodies get bigger and the muscles get stronger and
then their tendons are a bit tougher?
I don't know, like, and they're just not able to flex as much?
Is that?
Yeah.
So as we grow, as a child, we'll go through different growth spurts and your bone length
is trying to catch up with your tender length and your muscles are trying to catch up with
your bone.
So you go through these kind of peeps and troughs of various growth spurts and growth phases.
But as children, yes, generally a lot of children, it's quite common to see a little bit of hypermobility.
Not every child is, but it is a bit more distinguishable.
You can kind of tell.
And they might have other things going on alongside their joint hypermobility.
So they might be complaining of pain.
They might have other traits.
So they might be slightly anxious.
They might also have other neurodiversity as it's termed now in terms of maybe some ADHD.
They might have some dyslexia.
They might have some control issues like dyspraxia, which is where people walk.
And they sort of almost look like they're a little bit clumsy with their walking and they sort of hit into door frames and that sort of thing.
They might find there's other issues happening around it.
So there's this bigger body. So you kind of zoom in and you can either be just generally a little bit flexible in your joints and then you can feed in other things that children might have.
So they might have soft velvety skin or they might have significant scarring because it's the type of collagen basically in their connective tissue that makes them go into these sort of unusual scar types.
And that's what we look at in clinics. We say, show us your scars. And they look slightly different to normal scars.
so there's lots of things you can look at and it's really interesting so what and the in how they
heal it you can tell from the yeah from like like a cut on their body yeah yeah that that's exactly
it so you they normally look a little bit more um sort of sort of clear sometimes the scars can
either look very white or very clear um and they look sort of shriveled up a bit like um even like
stretch marks so kids can even have stretch marks as they grow and you can see them sort of across
the back or through the bottom and even adults you can sometimes see that and they say what are
these lines on me and it's just because their skin is quite stretchy and it's just the way that the
body is made up it's uh you know it's connective tissue but if you think about where hypermobility
is happening so this is in our joints and our ligaments so our ligaments attach bone to bone
and if our ligaments are quite stretchy the bones become quite mobile because i sort of see ligaments
as sellotate like sticking the bones together okay and then and then the muscles like kind of
go around that to protect the joint and and that's why we want to maximize our muscle strength as best
we can for children because that can stop this excessive shift or lots of movement because
somebody might have lots of movement through a particular range so they might want to sit with
their legs open and sort of into that split position but we say no no no you can't do your
party tricks and you can't sit like that because if you do and you do it repetitively it can cause
problems and in adults I say don't cross your legs is a is a classic one of oh I always sit
with my legs crossed or I tuck my feet back under my chair or I sit on the sofa and I have my legs
to the side and I sit all curled up and then I'm like and I'm just in clinic going no you can't do
those can't do that because um if you you can really turn around if someone is in pain because
they've been doing this all their life and it might be a child that's doing it or an adult
you say okay let's break these habits and after breaking those habits even within one or two weeks
they can significantly be better and their pain will go down so just making little changes to that
so so people with hypermobility is it is it common is it kind of like uh is there kind of a percentage
of people who have it or like what's the what are the like stats around it or something yeah so
depending on what you read when you when you look at the statistics it can be quite variable you
might read something from 15% to 50% of the generalized population will be hypermobile.
Depending on who you are. So obviously, I would see a lot in clinic. I think it's something that's
becoming a little bit more common or something that's more recognizable. And for a long time,
hypermobility was generally considered to be, you're a little bit mobile, but not recognized
as this bigger sort of spectrum, basically, of everything else that goes on with it. And you
have to pass a certain criteria so we call it a bayton scale and it's a nine point scale and it
basically looks at how flexible are you in your little finger so can you bend your little finger
back to 90 degrees so as you can see i'm a little bit hypermobile so i'm 90 degree position so i
don't know how far you can bend your finger back henry but oh yeah there's the oakley is that bendy
so you can see if you hold up your hand though you're the comparison so i'm very flexible because
So I can basically get almost 90 degrees.
And you can even see in this joint, I'm even flexible there.
I can't touch my toes.
I'm just below the knees if I'm standing up straight and bending over.
So yeah, definitely.
I need to do more stretches.
Yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, so that's one point.
So you get one point for that.
The other one is, can you get your thumb to your forearm?
So you kind of see if you can reach your tail.
No way.
depending on the angle i hold it but yeah it's yeah it's not a chance it's multiple inches yeah
not a chance yeah even if you try and force it so you can see i'm not far off when i was younger
touch onto my forearm um as you get older you tend to grow out of it a little bit through your hands
and obviously physio hands i've probably got a little bit of degeneration when it comes but um
so yeah so you can't i can't quite get all the way over then you would look at things like your
knees can you lock out your knees and so that would be another point and these hand points are
one per side so it'd be finger one two four and then you look at your knees which would be can
you push back with your knees the other one is elbows can you hyper extend through your elbows
so how straight is your elbow through here so mine you can see is quite straight and i can even
might not pick this up on the camera but if i if i angle it with my the bottom of my picture you can
see I've gone lower than the angle of my elbow. Yeah I can just go yeah I just go flat. Whereas you
might just be most people are like that so they've got a little bit of a bend. So we look at elbows
so that's another two points and then you look at hands flat on the floor so you score that up and
it comes out as how many out of nine. So you would score zero out of nine. Yeah so not hyper
um and you have to score you know for children you have to score a good six out of nine and for
adults you would score five um it used to be four to five but i think it's generally five out of nine
and that that would say that you're generally generalized joint hypermobility and then
obviously you then need to think about are there other things going on so for children you know do
you have issues with nausea emptying your bowels when you've just eaten your dinner like you'll get
some children who eat their tea and they'll rush off to the toilet and that's due to the like the
motility through the gut and absorbencies and how it travels through the the gastrointestinal
tract so it's very interesting how the kids can have loose stools constipation they can be one
end or the other um they might have bowel obstruction the motility through the gut and
through the bowel um and then they might have issues with that too or they they might just feel
a bit sick or a bit nauseous with certain foods they might have reactions they might have allergies
so there's so much to it because it's due to the kind of histamine reaction that our body goes
through um and some people can be severely you know then they really you dive into these questions
um yeah and children and parents will say gosh yeah they do they do that they have that they
have this they have that and you kind of put that together and earlier on you mentioned about like
kind of ADHD or neurodiverse symptoms how are they connected yeah so it seems to be a little bit of a
kind of like a framework as it's put together and there's different components so if you think of
like the joint mobility is like the musculoskeletal section the neurodiversity with the word neuro tends to kind of cover kind of neurological type aspects which we obviously know could be linked with gut brain access as well and how you can have kind of even like OCD anxiety depression
all those kind of issues that children can have and that we tend to hear more about at the moment
and then you can have those skin eye irritation issues as well so adults particularly get dry eye
because it's the connective tissue and the eyelid and and and that can sometimes lead to dry eye and
they can get blockages in the inner eyelids and it's all to do with sort of certain protein buildups
and things like that and you're supposed to blink harder because although you're flexible
you don't always do a hard blink so I think we've talked before haven't we about working from home
um and I think I mentioned on that about how we should look away with our vision yes and how we
give our eyes a rest but we should also like blink really hard okay so that we kind of get the tear
otherwise breaks up across the eye quite quickly um we can close our eyes hard it kind of just
keeps the eye a little bit more lubricated and you're trying to keep keep that up so that you
just so with this so just going back to the neurodiverse things because obviously you know
kids in primary school i think since kind of post-covid this it seems to be talked about a
lot more like the teachers are writing about it they're talking about it like um and maybe there's
just more awareness or you know or there was you know kind of that period of being away from kind
of school and friends and whatnot was you know it had impacts on on certain kids is that is there
also like if people are picking up that kids have got like adhd or these or these neurodiverse
problems is there also a high chance that they'll also be hypermobile or is it or is that kind of a
direct correlation absolutely so um i haven't looked at the exact research as to how many people
with say autism are then hypermobile but i know for sure that when i see them for hypermobility
first in clinic um patients or um the parents will say they also have you know autism or we're
waiting for this or we're waiting for the hcp that's so interesting or there's elements of it
and obviously a bit like hypermobility you can be a little bit hypermobile and you can be very
hypermobile yeah of course of course that's kind of why they call them spectrums really but
yes it's just to kind of say that you can you can fit anywhere along that spectrum and it's just
basically just a little bit of a checklist of like okay how many of these things do we have and what
can we do about them and talking about the hypermobility with the autism that's some of the
reason why some children bless them they they struggle to sit still so they can't sit still
they fidget in class um they might be wriggling they might um yeah i've heard some parents say
that their children have to go out of the classroom, have movement.
So they go out, have a little move around, and then they come back in.
And that's great because it's their body sometimes from a hypermobility perspective.
I'm now talking because I'm not an ADHD or autism expert.
No.
But from a hypermobility perspective and thinking about what's happening with the body,
hypermobile children would fatigue quite quickly.
So if we don't have adequate muscle strength, we're going to tire with how we sit.
Gotcha.
And then, you know, sitting there for a long time in a classroom is going to take its toll on your body and you just want to move around.
And in a way, it's your body kind of saying, will you please move me?
Yeah, well, listen to your body.
Yeah, listen to your body. Your body's telling you, can you move now? You've sat too long.
Unless the teacher says, sit still.
And you're saying, obviously sit still. And, you know, that's, and it might just happen quicker for those hypermobile patients.
So somebody else might be able to sit for, I don't know, 45 minutes.
But somebody with hypermobility and then with other maybe neurodiversity issues will sit for maybe only half that time because they're getting distractible because maybe they're suffering with symptoms as well.
So if you have a child that is hypermobile, obviously you mentioned at the beginning about like maybe doing too much sport and that's kind of stressing on the body.
but is there also the kind of the reverse of not doing enough movement that you're then not kind of
building up the muscles so then i guess i i can imagine like if i was really hypermobile that
feeling kind of like steady like whether you were kind of walking across uneven ground or
you know you know like i guess like at the playground or something then you're kind of
you know climbing over those rubber tires and stuff if you've got really kind of wibbly wobbly
joints that then aren't kind of like got the strong muscle around that you may be likely more
likely to injure yourself or kind of overextend and then kind of you know kind of cause a yeah
cause some harm so is it kind of a mixture of not doing too much but not making sure you're doing
nothing yes you're absolutely right with that so if you if you're like climbing over the tires as
you explained um if you're very mobile in your joints you might sprain your ankle you might go
over on it um so you might do like an inversion injury um on your ankle um or you might hurt your
knee you might sort of you know overextend through your knee and then people say oh my knee's hurt at
the front and you know that sort of thing they might be jumping and and landing and they sort of
land all funny they don't land straight and solid they might they might land slightly offset and and
that's obviously repetitively doing that is going to cause you know repetitive issues for the knees
the ankles or even the hips sometimes um and then choosing the type of sport so some people if they
they do football they might say i'm keeping injured i get injured every term but so contact sports can
leave you a little bit more high risk for injuries occurring because if someone knocks you from the
side and you're already flexible you're going to kind of go with that but if you can strengthen up
and that's where the strengthening based program is is really good so sort of strengthening up from
your ankles your knees your hips your core muscles and that's where you definitely do want to be
doing lots of exercise to strengthen and not avoiding it because there's not sort of a reason
why you couldn't then play some of those sports especially if you really love it you know get a
child who that's all they want to do you don't want to be the person saying no you shouldn't
really do that because you know they might absolutely love it but you talk about the risk
of what they could do if they do play it a lot and how you can try and reduce the chances of injury
and there's certain sports so you know with girls for instance you've got somebody doing gymnastics
and dance can actually help strengthen up their joints you just have to be a bit careful from the
flexibility point of view you know again are they doing repetitive moves are they using their
flexibility or are they engaging muscles correctly and that's what we tend to look at in clinic can
we strengthen them up and something as simple as um i remember i uh with the with with my sort of
hypermobile children i like to get them doing like the um wheelbarrow walks with their upper limb
so i'll get them okay their hands and you hold their legs yeah you hold their legs like the
wheelbarrow and that's a very good scapular setting and strength loading um but in a in a
gentle way because they're sort of doing one at a time so so things like that yes can really help
to to build them up so if you've got a child that is hypermobile and they are saving like say dance
classes or play football whatever is it something that you know if you know about it and you're kind
of aware of it as a parent that you should highlight it to the you're kind of the coaches
or you know the teacher so they're they're aware you know that not to go too far but also kind of
that they could do something i don't know is that yeah yeah so so some sports teams it's about yeah
all varying sports teams you get you know the the ones that are set up by parents to the ones that
are professionally led so the the amount of support that whether they've got a physio in their team or
they don't have a physio in their team and how aware the team captains can be sometimes as well
and they're like sort of picking out that so-and-so gets injured a lot and they speak to the parents
And also whether the parents are truly kind of aware of how their children are feeling, because often I'll get kids in clinic and I'll say to them, like, do you have back pain or does it hurt your knees?
And they go, yeah. And the parents go, I didn't know that.
Why don't you talk? Because they don't.
So it's just sometimes checking in with your children, you know, just looking out, especially for the ages of around 11 to 14 is the sweet spot for where kids can pick up injuries in playing sport if they are.
Okay, so a little bit later.
A little bit later.
Unless you've had reasons to consider flexibility issues before that.
So, you know, that might be under certain things with the doctor or something's happened and you think, oh, they've dislocated, they've done something.
And they might say, actually, this child may be hypermobile, but we'll watch, wait and see and see if they grow out of it.
A lot of children will grow out of it. Some will stay with it.
And, you know, it can sometimes run in families as well.
So if your mum or your dad or your grandparents are hypermobile, it's likely that you could be as well because it does seem to follow that trend.
Coming back to the schools, you can sometimes also have issues with handwriting and things like holding your palm.
so kids will often you know say oh my handwriting's not very neat and you'll get the teacher
saying oh you know they're not joining up very well they can't hold their pen properly
and there's there's things again it's just just the strength it's the what we call the opposition
of holding a pencil or a pen and i know you can get these really cool things that you can put on
your pencils and pens like those little rubbers and that can help because that can just give a
little bit more width to the actual equipment and then you can actually hold that a little bit better
and children can find that that that works quite nicely but doing exercises that cross your midline
so if you can say say for example kids do like a little bit of boxing exercises that's going across
your midline to cross your body with weights and that has been shown in research to really help
handwriting so there's some really cool little things that you can go i know how to get you better
Not with the boxing gloves on though.
No, with the boxing gloves, I'm not with the boxing gloves.
But just getting them strong and doing some resistance work
because most of the time I'd probably say that children might focus on aerobic exercise.
They might run around, they might do like little running clubs or things like that,
but they might not always be doing core exercises per body strength is one of them.
Yeah, yeah.
But they may focus on lower limb strength.
yeah is it encompassing you know balance coordination plyometrics so things like
jumping landing you know up and down boxes that sort of stuff and you can do all that kind of
training to help children really fight off the risk of injury and then obviously building the
muscle up as best you can yes and that's not just through exercise but what we also put in our mouth
and that's where protein comes in as well.
So yeah, so protein.
Well, that's super interesting.
My daughter actually is hypermobile
and we kind of were aware of it fairly young.
And so we've kind of, I guess,
we're kind of living that kind of,
you know, she's not actually a particularly sporty person,
but, you know, she can put her legs behind her head
and, you know, do all sorts of party tricks
and it's kind of kind of fun funny and she likes doing it but then actually when we've spoken to
professional art there was just like no no please don't encourage that that's a that's not a good
thing to do and uh because of that kind of overextending and then causing issues i did the
thing for me what when i first noticed it was when we were rock pooling and you know you kind of want
a rock pool it's a little bit seaweedy and it's all kind of bumpy and you're kind of stepping
around it's kind of like you know it's like walking you know in a kind of an alien um uh
landscaped um and she was really kind of un uh um wobbly on her feet and her cousins who were kind
of similar age were just like skipping and jumping all over the place and it was that kind of noticing
like oh she's like struggling on this um this kind of uneven terrain and uh and going kind of quite
cautiously and carefully so you know kind of working with a physio we did um what did they
suggest they were talking about when we walk upstairs that she always used to do like lead
with the dominant foot yes and they were like oh you need to try and like alternate because you're
just gonna you're gonna start building up that strength and so we kind of did that for a few
years and actually and obviously as she's got older like my kind of barometer test now is if
we ever go to the beach and then kind of see her running around on the rock pools and you know
those still probably not as um you know as uh fast as her cousin she's she's definitely better
and i think just being a bit kind of aware of it and conscious but um and then that thing with the
pen grip you were talking about she holds her pen with her index finger no no no her middle finger
So it's kind of, no, sorry, with her ring finger.
So she's got like three fingers on it and it looks really kind of odd, the kind of the
pens sticking out of the wrong place.
And we we we tried to kind of you know we got all of those like jelly things and you know easy grips and stuff And actually because of her hope and mobility in her fingers she just doesn have the the strength to feel comfortable on the pen so she kind of defaults this kind of like two three fingers on it rather than two and um anyway she seems to have
got used to it now so i think we're too we're too late in the game to change it so uh but yeah but
it's kind of yeah it's it's interesting but i hadn't i didn't know about that link between
high probability and then kind of neuro um neurodiverse symptoms so i think that yeah yeah
something to be aware of really interesting yeah and like you said with that yeah not every child
gets on with the little easy grips by the way with the with the pencil and what what i do in
that situation is you can do like opposition exercises so you press your finger against your
thumb and you just push as you can see on the screen probably you push quite hard um and you
can strengthen up your fingers even like pushing your fingers just onto the desk just to try and
strengthen up and your thumbs that can also really help because yeah sometimes they don't they don't
like the the feel it maybe even sometimes the texture of them and it feels a bit awkward for
them sometimes so some people you either kind of love them or don't get on with yeah yeah um yeah
totally that that's one that's one way of doing it yeah yeah so we see we talk about building muscle
and uh so i was kind of when you kind of suggested the topic i was thinking about well what kind of
meals do we like eating as a family that i know the kids like and they get involved with
that have kind of um protein in and some of it kind of obvious protein and then other ones kind
of how can we kind of um subtly sneak some protein in yes yes you know that kind of stealth cooking
shall we start with the obvious forms of um protein henry and then we'll work down to the
sneaking it in because i like i like that that's always good yeah yeah totally well i was so i'm
thinking about kind of you know it's midweek i mean um and you know what do the kids want to
we and then how can we make it ourselves and so i guess like um you know whether it's like fish
fingers are a kind of you know probably a staple in lots of people's houses where they get that
packet and it's a box and they just shake them onto the tray and they pop them into the oven and
they don't think anything of it and actually the uh you know fish is a is a great source of protein
and um you know good for your brain and stuff good yeah omega-3 exactly and actually that's
super easy to make your own fish fingers and uh and also you not only can you get better quality
fish but you can i mean they're a little bit more effort and they're probably not going to be quite
as square and orange but i think that's a good thing personally so how but also would you make
your own fish fingers would you because in my head i would put the fish wrap it in maybe an egg and
then spread crumb yeah so so we're going to do something called panning and there's a bit so if
you're making fish fingers you want to make um like a decent batch then you can free some because
you're gonna have to like you know get your prep out so i would always you know we um just buy
whatever fish you want but like a kind of a good white fish i mean obviously cold haddock but
there's often you know in the supermarket they quite often you know they quite often have it
a discounted fish so like you know just as long as it's in date and it looks fresh it's
it's going to be fine so you want to then chop it into your um and buy enough that you can do
you know like uh enough that you can have for dinner and then a few more meals you can stick
in the freezer because then it's once you've made them they're as quick as fish fingers from the
packet you know once you've actually done the prep and uh and the prep is super easy you um
uh yeah you cut your fish up and a little bit of salt and then you just want to toss them in some
flour so just plain flour and then put that to one side now this is the the bit that most people
get wrong is that um we we're gonna go flour and then like an egg mixture with a little bit of milk
in it and that that's almost like um you're kind of like your wallpaper paste yeah and then and
then you want some kind of coating now that could just be breadcrumbs now you can buy breadcrumbs or
if you've got a loaf you could just either chop them up in the magic mix or in your little you
know blender and um so you can make fresh breadcrumbs quickly or you can use you know you can
add some oats in there if you want a you know a bit more texture a bit more flavor so you can do
different stuff but just you know regular breadcrumbs and quite often i use like you know
a wholemeal sourdough or something you know with a bit more um a bit more flavor to it but i probably
wouldn't i probably wouldn't do like a seeded loaf or something you know just keep it kind of
brown or white so then so you dust them in the the the flour and then you you wash your hands
because what you don't want you don't want flowery fingers now and then we operate the principle of
wet hand dry hand okay so say you've got say you've got 20 pieces of fish that you're going to be
bread crumbing the amateur thing to do is you get a piece of fish and you dip it into the egg
and then you lift it out and then you dip into the breadcrumbs and you shake it around but what
you also do is you very quickly start bread crumbing your fingers and um so by the time
you've done like four or five you're now in a right old pickle because you've got breadcrumbs
glued to your fingers and they're getting thicker and thicker and there's less and less breadcrumbs
on the fish anyway so um so you have a wet hand and a dry hand so you do the wet is always with
the wet hand and then you drop that into the breadcrumbs little shake off but you don't put
that wet hand into the breadcrumbs you now use your dry hand to toss and then put them onto a tray
and you can you can go for hours and honestly i mean i've panade you know let's say 500 scotch
eggs when i used to run the butchery and i you know never ended up with panade fingers because
he's just a wet hand and a dry hand um it's a bit like he's the karate kid when he's like kind of
wipe on wipe off yeah you just gotta remember that anyway now obviously you in your flour or your or
the breadcrumbs you could add some seasonings you could you know you you could put spices now
whatever or just keep it plain like personally i just keep it simple because you know kind of
weird the kids out be like oh they don't taste as they should do and then then when they're they're
done you can then just pop them in the fridge or you can cook them straight away they will they take
maybe 20 minutes for like the breadcrumbs to kind of glue themselves on they kind of need to like
settle a little bit and also you can freeze them so like i would just if you freeze them just make
sure you freeze them separately and then once they're frozen you can just put them into a bag
because then they won't glue themselves together and then you could just pick them out as you go
um and from a kind of cooking point of view either just some oil and then into a hot oven and that'd
be fine you can fry them if you want if you've got a air fryer or a deep fat fryer you could fry them
in that and that'd be great and you know you're gonna have delicious you know fresh fish you know
nice breadcrumbs can be very tasty so they're like a firm favorite but also my kids they're at
that stage where they like chicken nuggets now obviously i can't buy i can't buy chicken nuggets
so we we have to make them ourselves and um and just exactly the same principles um going down a
kind of breadcrumb route um works totally fine and again but you might want to put some you know
you could put some smoked paprika in there or a little bit of a few spices and stuff just to kind
of elevate it if you're you know trying to make it a little bit more kind of um like that kind of
occasionally flavor or whatever that is on the kind of magic stuff that they put in um
it's pre-made ones but a family recipe that we love is kind of like breaded chicken we then
roast off and get nice and crispy but with um like a katsu curry sauce so i think the kids had it at
wagamama a few years ago and actually it's a really it's a really good one because you know
it's like it's good quality rice nice bit of chicken you've made yourself and then the katsu
curry sauce which essentially is just like a kind of curry sauce but if you make it from scratch one
of the things you can do is you can add some lentils so red lentils added to the to the base
can they kind of cook down and lentils are another good source of protein but if you don't do too
many they just add like a nice kind of creaminess to them because they kind of blend down and actually
you can even blend it afterwards and so you've got all your kind of like your onions and your
garlic and your um yeah yeah um your curry powder etc but then add some um uh some red lentils to
the mix it's going to help thicken it and just give it that nice kind of bit of creaminess
and then um in with some stock i mean if you're doing chicken katsu curry you could just use some
chicken stock bring it all to the boil and then blitz it and you want it to be kind of uh fairly
thick and um but not too thick and then just to lighten it you could just add a dollop of um
a greek yogurt and obviously greek yogurt is another good source of protein so now you've got
delicious homemade crispy chicken great protein and then a nice curry sauce and uh with with two
top types of protein in it as well delicious yeah and then delicious and again you could bulk bulk
make that you know that's a um and then i would always i like mine spicy so i just add some
additional chilies or chili sauce afterwards you know but then the kids don't have to have
it so spicy and you didn't pre-cook the chicken or the fish before did you this is completely from
yeah just from yeah like you don't need to pre-cook it i mean i guess yeah there's not really
particularly if if your bits of chicken or your bits of fish are fairly thin like it's gonna take
let's say 20 minutes in a in a oven at kind of 180 200 degrees um to kind of crisp up in that time
the chicken's gonna cook fully through so and and or if you do it in an air fryer you know you're
gonna get super crispy on the outside and um and like when when you make them i mean probably the
first time if your kids are used to eating like you know bird's eye um fish fingers and uh or you
know kind of chicken nuggets from mcdonald's like they are going to taste a little bit different but
actually um you know maybe the first time they might you know tell you that they're not as good
as mcdonald's and you just have to um you know your pride is knocked but it's fine you can get
up from this and um but by the third and second time they'll be second third time yeah you know
they're totally delicious particularly if you've got good quality ingredients going in yeah and
actually pretty easy to make and then you just keep them in the freezer and you've got you know
a kind of a quick meal um for when you've got to feed the kids you know after they've just come back
from football club or dance club or whatever it is and you need you know something delicious in a
in a hurry yeah and it's good also after you have done your exercise to fuel with the protein
as well so that's even better so like that's you know they've gone and done their exercise and then
you you come home and uh and you top up your protein so that's super and i love how you
You've sort of just snuck in the red lentils because I tend to just put the red lentils.
I soak them first.
Is there a benefit of doing that?
Not really.
No, like red lentils cook down within kind of 20 minutes.
They've completely kind of mushed up.
I think the ones that would be the soaked ones, you get these like the black dhal ones
and they take, I think, about six hours to cook.
Now they are worth soaking just because then they take like two hours to cook
and you just soak them overnight.
but that's i'm trying to think what the name of them are but they're like they're quite you wouldn't
find them in the supermarket you'd need to go to like a specialist indian shop i mean the other
ones you know if you're trying to get lentils and stuff like um i like i always put them in a curry
so if ever i'm making like even if it's a chicken curry or lamb curry or you know a veggie curry i'd
always stick some red lentils in just because it's it's kind of easy filler and because it kind of
breaks down it gives that nice bit of thickness and also it's you know it's a bit of added protein
and then another you know another another veg to get in there yeah but then um like the pui lentils
which are the more kind of um like the kind of french star ones they again don't need to soak in
but they they kind of retain their texture more so they're like little little pearls um so the kids
would probably notice them more if you were sneaking them in but they're you know a great
they're a great one to add to like a like a chili or a bolognese you know or any kind of like
meaty sauce because they kind of you know that lentils have got that kind of slightly kind of
meatiness anyway and then they absorb all of the lovely you know it's you know if you're making a
bolognese you're gonna have lots of nice kind of beefy tomatoey sauces you know there and then
the lentil will soak it up and actually to be honest um it like it is cheaper than beef like
you know if you're if you're feeding a crowd and you're like oh god you know i've got to buy
quite a lot of beef actually you can bulk it out with lentils yeah and and mostly people be like
oh this is delicious you know and um and you've saved yourself a few pennies so like that's exactly
like if my wife's like oh can you cook for the the book club or school pta or something and there's
15 people and she's like oh you know just like a chili or something i'll always cut it with some
lentils um because it makes it stretch a bit further it does and i do and tell them it's good
for them yeah i do exactly that i am i sneak in the red lentils when i make a lasagna for my
daughter so yeah i'll make instead of using like their beef mince i'll try and choose like turkey
mince or chicken mince and then i'll add the lentils to that and hide it with loads of like
tomato homemade tomato sauce and then with enough homemade cheese sauce then actually she has no
idea it's in there it's great yeah yeah and then it's good it's good to get them used to like
different textures and you know different flavors yeah absolutely so have you got any other uh
excellent recipes and ways to sneak in some more protein henry well well i think my kids are a big
fan of smoothies we got um we've got one of these like a nutribullet things and we've had it for
years like i mean i'm surprised it's still going because it gets used uh pretty regularly and
actually wherever that if ever the kids are like oh i'm hungry and i want like a snack or like you
know they've maybe they've just had dinner and they didn't eat all of it and you know it's kind
of and they're still a bit peckish you know um i think a smoothie is quite a good good thing because
not only can they make it um but um uh you know it's fairly kind of quick so what we tend to do
is um like a like a really nice one we had the other day was like a mango style lassi so we did Greek yogurt frozen mango from the freezer So you could just buy from the supermarket kind of pre up
If ever we have bananas that are going over,
we always just chop them up and chuck them in the freezer.
They kind of add as like a kind of bit of sweetness and a bit of,
because they're frozen, they add a bit of like kind of thickness,
a bit like if you were adding ice cream to a smoothie,
but not it's, you know, it's frozen fruit and ice cream.
And then just some milk and then just blend it up.
you know sometimes you could add a bit of if you wanted extra sweet you could add some maple or
something but to be honest the mango and the um banana is is totally good enough and um yeah just
blitz it up until it's the kind of right kind of consistency and then just drink it and so
you've got you know the the good dose of of greek yogurt which obviously like i i would love i i am
happy to eat just greek yogurt plain but the kids kind of don't necessarily love that so then they
would be you know be adding like other stuff to it whether that's kind of like honey or something
you know something sweet where it's actually once you blend it together with the banana it it does
get pretty sweet and um yeah and you could you know that's that's just like one thing but you
can do anything like Guafin will put you know like peanut butter is quite a good one to kind
of add a little bit of kind of nutsiness my son likes that my daughter doesn't so Guafin they make
one together and then she has hers and then he puts it back on with a dollop of peanut butter
because he qualifies the flavor and um and actually it's kind of quite easy and quite fun I mean they
always make a load of mess and never put the stuff back in the freezer but that's fine you know um
And I kind of think like, well, actually, you know, they're getting something that's fairly good for them.
And it's got some protein.
Absolutely.
Better than a, I don't know, a Kit Kat or something.
I don't know.
And we go through a lot of Greek yogurt as well.
I'm glad you said that.
And so many recipes.
You can really sneak in the Greek yogurt, can't you, into a lot of things, pancakes, all sorts.
And I make those scones with them and things.
So you can really, you end up going and the pizza bases, anything like that, I make the Greek yogurt just to get that extra protein.
And half the time I'm like, I'll run out of Greek yogurt.
it's sort of like fine need to get some more yeah yeah and it's great because obviously
Greek yogurt is just made it's just cultured milk and then they they strain it to kind of remove
more of the kind of water so and does that just kind of just concentrate the proteins more so
you're just getting more bang for every spoon yeah it's high it's it's a good source of high
high protein um and it is a it's an easy thing that you can actually it's like one of the
healthiest things you can actually buy from a supermarket which is even better so you go I'm
hungry what can i eat and especially if you mix that um obviously if you're a child or adult and
depending on if you can have um seeds or nuts and things but um you could you can even add that to
it and that adds your protein you just constantly top up your protein all the time don't you and you
can mix it together with different types of nuts or you can add in some extra seeds and like
anything just to bulk it up and make it a bit more interesting and if kids are picking them out
a bit like pick a mix i tend to put them out and then jess will kind of put them put them on her
cereal or wherever or her porridge oats actually she actually has she's not allowed cereal don't
let her have cereal but if she's adding them to her onto her breakfast she then feels like she's
in control a bit more and making those choices and that's also nice too isn't it yeah definitely
definitely and then and then just on uh obviously eggs are like another really easy easy easy protein
but so the challenge i have my son loves eggs he'll eat them fried poached boiled however they come
My daughter doesn't like eggs, but she doesn't mind eggs in things.
So the way we've got around this is particularly on the weekend when we've got a bit more time,
kind of big, fluffy, American-style pancakes.
And again, start with, you know, separating the eggs.
So we can use both, but you whisk up the egg whites so they're nice and fluffy,
and then it gets folded in later.
But then into the egg yolks, you can add milk, but then also quite a lot of Greek yogurt again.
Now, quite often the recipes are asked for, like, buttermilk.
I think it's kind of like the kind of classic American one,
but actually we don't have buttermilk in the fridge.
We've got grit yogurt.
And so you're getting that protein,
but also that kind of thickness adds some,
just makes them a bit richer.
And then you add some flour and a bit of baking powder.
And then you fold back in the egg whites
and it just makes them kind of like light and fluffy.
And then when you're cooking them on your griddle pan,
you know, and then they can top them with,
you know, whether it's bacon or more...
A bit more savory?
Like frozen fruit or...
Yeah, sometimes they have them savory.
I mean, to be honest, they probably put a bit too much maple syrup on.
But again, it's that thing of like, you know, because my daughter doesn't like eggs, but
actually, well, there's plenty of egg and also the Greek yogurt.
So you kind of know you're getting, and then also so much better than pre-made ones that
you can buy from the supermarket, which will be full of all sorts of ingredients you won't
even know how to pronounce.
Yeah, exactly.
And I've done that before and I've run out of Greek yogurt and I've thrown in like cottage
cheese because that's also hard.
Yeah, yeah.
And that works just as well, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
It's like a new revelation.
I'm like, wow, that worked really nicely.
So yeah, that's another great source as well.
And all that's going to do is help repair and build muscle.
And that's going to be really crucial,
especially if kids are doing lots of exercise
and they'll sleep better, everything.
And kids do need quite a lot of protein.
So various, you can easily look it up online,
but there'll be different age ranges
of how much protein you should have,
sort of broken down into sort of every three years
roughly what you what you need to have but um and that that can be anything from about 14 grams
right up to about 28 grams as you go from about age two to three right up to about 18 years old
and as you get a little bit older kids as they get older they um obviously boys need slightly
more than girls yes so that that's important to remember but um and like you say that's great ways
of sneaking in fantastic protein in a delicious way where they feel like they're almost having a
takeaway don't they yes yes can do you can do some really exciting things i know my daughter likes
chicken drumsticks and i'll make up a little bit of a sauce now i'm no chef henry but i tend to do
it with like the best ketchup i can find so like the stokes one or something like that with uh
just adding adding little bits like let's say a little bit of hunt like the best honey i can find
so it's just a little yeah and mixing up a little bit of mustard powder and it comes out a bit
barbecue it's quite nice yeah delicious yeah great and i'm like well that's better than
you know like you say buying chicken nuggets or something like that yes yeah we need to try and
stay clear of those things because they're just full of other if you look at the back totally
it's it's quite scary what what what food's being added to to these totally products totally but
but then also they from a kind of from a kid's point of view because quite often you know i mean
I don't know why the kids discuss what they have for dinner with their friends,
but, you know, particularly they go over to their friend's house
and they might have, you know, chicken nuggets from a packet
and be like, well, you know, Jimmy Down the Road eats chicken nuggets.
Why can't we have them?
It's like, well, you can, you know, and then, you know,
they're kind of feeling like they're kind of, you know,
they're not being ostracized or not, you know, having access to those foods.
But actually, you know, as a parent, you know, that they're, you know,
it's made with not only high quality ingredients,
but also hasn't got all of the other guff in that it's just not needed and doesn't help.
Made with love.
It was made with love.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
With the best things, isn't it, as well?
You'll thank us when you're older.
Exactly, exactly.
Hopefully.
Yeah.
And like you said, I don't know about you, but I quite, I know you love cooking, Henry, anyway, because it's your job.
But I really enjoy being in the kitchen with my daughter, and she does love it.
I think it's a really good tactile thing for kids to get involved in.
And then more likely, I think we've mentioned this before, that they will eat it more if they make it.
And you can get them to see that that's how food is made as well, which is excellent education.
It helps them weigh out.
I kind of get my daughter doing a little bit of maths as she does it.
I'm like, what does that add up to?
You know, so you're trying to do as much as you can.
I know everyone's busy and you don't always get time to do that.
But that's where the bulk preparation is really handy, isn't it?
So like you say, you could make a load of fish fingers homemade in advance.
Yeah.
And you can sometimes even pick up the fish a bit cheaper, can't you?
Especially like certain supermarkets will discount things at certain times of the day
and you might pick up all the amount.
And you said you just use any type of fish, didn't you?
Any kind of white...
Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously if you use, you know, kind of smoked mackerel or smoked haddock,
the kids might not be so keen.
But yeah, but any kind of like, I mean, there's obviously,
you know the ocean is full of thousands of different types of fish and and you know i mean
we've got a morrison's near us and you know occasionally i go in and they quite often have
like a different fish you know so they'll have all the kind of regular ones but they quite often
they obviously you know i guess if they got them cheap or whatever like you know they've got a
special deal and then they just flog them out there and and um what do we picked up some um
it was like witch soul and it was basically like you know it's like a flat fish and i remember when
I was running a restaurant that it was always like it was it was on the shopping list from the fish
supplier and uh but it was kind of you know you had like Dover sole was like the really expensive
one and you had like you know kind of lemon sole or you know place whatever and then which sole was
like right down the bottom it was like super cheap the texture is not very premium like you know if
you're serving at a restaurant it's it's like it's a bit of an average fish but for fish fingers it's
like it's totally fine like your kids aren't gonna be moaning that the you know the the fine texture
of the Dover sole isn't quite right.
You know, it's like, actually,
once it's covered in breadcrumbs and it's crispy
and they've like put loads of ketchup on it
and like they're never going to notice.
So actually, yeah, it doesn't have to be,
you know, prime cod fillet or, you know, et cetera.
Like there are other types.
Maybe one day your children will come back to you
and say, you know, dad, they're great, they're great.
But, you know, you didn't use the high quality.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, my daughter would almost certainly say that
just because she's got opinions
and she will, you know,
will always share them with her father
when he's trying to feed her.
That's good.
But I find it interesting
because the cod,
is it the cod that feed
from the bottom of the seabed
and then the haddock?
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure about, yeah.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah, I mean,
like flatfish are bottom feeders,
you know,
so they will feed
directly from the bottom.
But yeah,
I'm not sure about cod.
I mean,
I think they're like deep sea fish,
but maybe, maybe.
Yeah.
I'm no fisherman.
I once went mackerel fishing
but yeah i don't think it was i'm not an angler and i assume frozen fish doesn't work quite so
well like you know like when you get them no no actually and actually this is a bit this is a bit
of a myth is that a lot of fish is um when they catch it often in these bigger trawlers they'll
actually process it and freeze it on the fish on the boat so actually lots of fish that you get in
the supermarket has already been frozen and then it's defrosted when they um sell it to you now
obviously you know it's it's it's frozen so so fresh um that by the time that you're getting it
it's still a really you know it's a better product than if it'd been sat um uh in a fridge for a week
before it you know i mean actually probably from the supermarket some of it might be like two weeks
old before it actually gets to you and that's why you're never going to get the same qualities you
can get from like a dayboat fresh off st ives or you know whitby or somewhere that they literally
catching it and you're buying it straight away so unless you happen to live you know yeah next to a
fishing port it's unlikely and actually so a lot of fish actually fish freezes really well
yeah it's got a nice tight like the the muscles are quite tight in the protein and so it freezes
fine yeah yeah so actually buying kind of the frozen fillets yeah like if are just as good
aren't they nutritionally yeah they were fine yeah totally totally yeah oh that's fantastic well i
think everyone should go and try those fish fingers and their home version yeah chicken nuggets and
And hopefully...
I'm going to...
Oh, sorry.
Just to say that I will write up the recipes
and then with a downloadable link,
because obviously rather than kind of reading through step by step
how to make a katsu curry sauce.
So if you do want to make it, then there is a downloadable link
so you can have a go yourself.
Yeah.
And they're fantastic.
The sheets that you've produced already for previous episodes
are fantastic.
Yes, if you haven't...
Thank you.
Those of you listening haven't already checked those out,
go and see what Henry's put together,
because it's super amazing and really handy as a reference guide as well, isn't it, Henry?
So yeah, super.
Well, we hope that everyone's found that useful and helpful.
Hopefully there's some top tips and yeah, there's lots we can learn from our children
and things we can do to help them.
And we can always extend the episode and talk more about how we can actually look at what
specific exercises or a little bit more detail as we go through the episodes as well.
But for now, Henry, thanks very much for your time and I'll see you on the next podcast.
Yeah. Cheers, Hayley. Take care.