Health Promotion Board : Bento Making and Healthy Eating among children

[This is an invited session by the Singapore Health Promotion Board no monetary reward. Just a bento goodie bag  :-) ]

I was invited to a very very interesting session organised by the Singapore Health Promotion Board held last Saturday morning. Hmm... I wonder if the Health Promotion Board has been monitoring what I eat! My healthiest meal is breakfast (this link shows what I eat for breakfast 6 out of 7 days!) and that's probably it for the whole day! You all know what I eat the rest of the day!

The session was a mummies day out! It was a room full of mums! I was the only male participant in the room!


The session started with a talk by a nutritionist from the Health Promotion Board. Yikes. I hope the info she talked about is meant for children nutrition and not for me. I would have failed miserably if it's not.






Now, how do you entice the little ones to eat healthy stuff? One way is to pack very cute home-made bentos for them. This is Angie, a mum who wakes up at 5 am every morning to prepare bentos for her kids before she goes to work! 5 am? How is it possible? Angie proves that it's possible! You can see her list of over 100 bentos at her blog at http://kinigu.blogspot.com/





Here's my maiden bento making adventure!

We were given a door gift when we arrived. Inside the nice little bag was two plastic bento containers with some bento tools, a recipe book and a book written by Angie. ( I forgot to get her to autograph it!)




Each participant got different bento tools. The lady beside me had 'stamps or molds'. It's to encourage participants to exchange tools. If you are wondering where you can get them in Singapore, Daiso sells them.

You might be wondering where were we? This was at the Cairnhill Community Centre's Kitchen Classroom and not in Kitchen Stadium in the Iron Chef show.  The atmosphere here is not so intimidating. We were ready for the session!




Our task was to prepare 1 bread bento and 1 rice bento in around an hour. I have absolutely no idea how to make bentos! Even little Ivan here with her mum Levine knew what to do and started work pronto! I walked around being a nosey parker.




I went to ransack Angie's bento tool box! I saw this bear shape tool. To make it easy, I reckoned 1 tool is all  I need. I took 2 slices of bread. (1 whole meal and 1 white bread) and 2 slices of ham. I started to press out patterns.




I realise I did something really really silly! One of the kind lady told me, to save time eg doing it early in the morning, stack your bread and ham up first. Press them all at one go! Now you know why they say mums knows best!

This is my bread bento, 2 slices of bread with ham, 4 cherry tomatoes and some broccoli. You think kids will eat them?




For the fruit section of the bread bento, I had 3 strawberries and 2 slices of kiwi. I figure that should give them enough Vitamin C ya? One thing I am sure is the bed of butter head leaves below the fruits will not be touched by children!

I took too much time for the bread bento and I had like 15 mins left for my rice bento. For the rice bento, I had half a container of rice, broccoli, an happy face egg, rolled carrot strips (i wanted to make a flower, but I could not figure out how!), and cucumber. I tried to make pattern rice balls, but it was so so ugly! So I flattened the rice to make it a base for the deco.

Now..... If there's a huge scoop of sambal on top of the rice, I think adults will eat it right? It will be a healthy nasi lemak bento! I had only 5 mins left to prepare the fruits, so it was just cutting the fruits into small containers.

What do you think of my bentos?
(I think they are ugly. LOL)




Visit the Health Promotion Board (www.hpb.gov.sg) to read more about Healthy Living.

If you want to talk to a Nurse Advisor about your health issues, the Health Promotion Board has a toll free number, 1800 223 1313 where you can call. The service is available in English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. More info here.