It’s so important to teach our kids about eating healthy food
The cookery writer and actress tells ROZ LEWIS about a new app that helps families enjoy better nutrition
SHE has a successful new career as a cookery writer and chef, so it’s no surprise that nutrition is high on the agenda for Lisa Faulkner. With an 11-year-old daughter, she’s also all too aware of the growing problems with obesity in children and the importance of cutting back on sugar, salt and saturated fat.
This is why the former Brookside actress and winner of BBC One’s Celebrity MasterChef in 2010, has thrown her weight behind Public Health England’s latest app, Be Food Smart, aimed at helping families eat more healthily.
“I think the app is a really fun way to teach your child about nutrition,” explains Lisa, from the London home she shares with MasterChef judge John Torode, who she met when she appeared on the show, and daughter Billie.
“I’ve already been using an app called Sugar Smart since last year, which helps you scan products to see how much sugar is in them. I found out about this new app, Be Food Smart, and we started using it at home before Christmas.”
The newly launched app is part of the NHS Change4Life’s campaign to help educate parents to reduce children’s intake of sugar, salt and fat. Recent research has shown that children in England consume almost three sugar cubes at breakfast time alone, which equates to half their daily recommended amount.
“I’m very pleased to be involved with the campaign as, like most mums, I’m worried about childhood obesity and healthy eating,” says Lisa, 44. “I want to know I am giving Billie and my nieces the best food I can. This app helps me to share and show Billie what sorts of foods are good for us and which should be saved as a bit of a treat.”
The app is easily downloaded on to smart phones and tablets and aims to help shoppers in supermarkets make smarter choices about what foods they buy.
More than 130,000 products can be scanned and a quick analysis of what food values they have will pop up on your device.
FORTUNATELY for Lisa, Billie is happy to eat healthy food anyway. “She usually starts the day with porridge and a banana,” explains Lisa. “Sometimes I make a frozen fruit smoothie when the weather is warmer. She loves Weetabix, which has very low sugar content, or wholemeal toast. I always make her a packed lunch.
“I’m a great believer in making vats of vegetable soup and freezing it, so she takes a portion to school in her flask and I might make some homemade hummus to take with some fresh sugar snap peas. As a cook, I like to be in the kitchen making healthy food for her.”
Billie is also an enthusiastic cook. “She prefers making meals rather than baking,” says Lisa.
“Yet like every young girl, she likes sugary cereal. We’ve been through my food cupboards with the app and can see those sorts of products are high in sugar and so should be left as a Saturday morning treat and not something that should be eaten that often.” The Change4Life Be Food Smart campaign to give 4.6 million Be Food Smart packs to primary-age children and their families across England via schools and local authorities is well under way. Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, says: “Through the Be Food Smart app, we’re equipping both kids and parents with the confidence and knowledge to form positive food habits that will benefit the whole family. Since the campaign was launched at the start of the year more than 5.1 million products have been scanned.”
For Lisa, who as an actress also starred in Spooks and Holby City, food has always been an important part of her life. “I grew up in a house where, at breakfast, mum would talk about what we were having for lunch and what we wanted to eat on our birthdays,” says Lisa. “Even when we came back from holiday, my grandparents would ask what we had eaten when we were away.
“As an actress I used to love cooking a meal or doing some baking after a day’s filming, just as a way of relaxing,” she says.
“Since winning Celebrity MasterChef, the past six years have just been amazing in terms of my work with food. I’ve written three cookery books and work with brands as well as doing broadcast work and of course I live with an amazing chef in John Torode.”
LISA is also used to catering for a variety of different dietary needs. “My sister is vegetarian and two nieces are both vegan, so I am used to thinking of different ingredients to cook for them,” she says. “With the cleaneating trend, I just think whatever floats your boat. If people like to eat that way that’s fine by me.”
So how does Lisa stay so slim while constantly making and being surrounded by delicious food? “My sister says I have my dad’s metabolism and eating a slice of cake doesn’t make much difference to me,” she says. “Mind you, I am pretty active. I walk, I do yoga and I ride. Yet I think the main trick is portion size. I love food of all types. Who doesn’t like a biscuit from Marks & Spencer now and then? But I have a small portion, not a huge amount of any one thing.”
Lisa stresses that she is keen for parents not to feel they are being criticised for the food choices they make for their children.
“No one is perfect. Parents feel guilty, trying to juggle work and family lives,” says Lisa. “But the app is there to give us information to make different choices. It could open doors for families and give them a new way of looking at the items that they put in their supermarket trolley.
“That has to be good news for everyone who wants to put their family’s health first.”
Lisa Faulkner is supporting Change4Life’s new Be Food Smart app, available to download for free from the App Store and Google Play