Maggie McKay (Host): Welcome to the Parent-ish Podcast, where experts at Children's Mercy Kansas City talk about the little everyday things parents experience with their babies, teens, and in betweens. I'm your host, Maggie McKay. Today we're talking with Chef and Educator of Nutrition Services, Rachel Finn, about Cultural Cuisines and how to incorporate those into your children's lives.

Rachel, thank you for making the time to be with us today.

Rachel Finn: Well, you're welcome and thank you for including me on this.

Host: Absolutely. So, I know it can be a challenge to get your kids to eat foods they've never tried. So how do you recommend balancing the introduction of new foods while ensuring that children receive balanced nutrition?

Rachel Finn: You know, one of the easiest ways to start talking about cultural differences, and especially with foods, is with current movies. A lot of our movies, especially geared to children, have a lot of food included with them and eating together or eating culturally diverse food is, very prevalent in a lot of our children's movies and TV shows and a lot of books out there too.

So our kids are actually hearing a lot of the cultural parts of it. We just need to engage them with that. I always say start off slow, just by talking, maybe ordering take out from different cultures, even if it's just a Mexican taco meal or a ramen something, you know, just talking about where it comes from, what ingredients there are. When you're introducing foods, a lot of times the balance of nutrition is out, but you usually get it with other meals. So, you know, just that one dish might not be 100 percent nutritionally balanced, but you're going to get the nutrition throughout the day. So giving them that opportunity just to trial something small. A lot of times it's just smelling the foods and looking at it before they will even touch it.

Host: What are some strategies for making new and unfamiliar foods appealing to kids? Because I remember when my son was little and I'd give him something he'd never had, he was so skeptical.

Rachel Finn: Yes, they are very skeptical because that's not what they're used to having. We always give them the out, at least try it and then tell me why you like it or you don't like it. A lot of times it is a textural difference. It's new colors, again, new smells. And so giving them just the opportunity to just look at it and then give the opinion. Why is it different? Or why are you not willing to try it? Or why did you like it? So it gives us an opportunity for more discussion.

Host: Rachel, what are some of your favorite cultural dishes to prepare with children and why do you think they are beneficial?

Rachel Finn: Well, I am from India, so clearly I choose Indian cuisine a lot of times. But I also like to do simple cuisines from around our country, the Americas, because we have a lot of cultural food just within our continent. So even just talking about that, what does southern food look like? What does things from the northeast look like?

My grandson and I like to talk about stories. And so he likes to help me pick out spices that we're making Indian food and that just helps him. He might not like it because it might be too spicy for him, but he's willing to put the spice blends together. He's willing to chop vegetables for me. And then we talk about it and why we're putting certain ingredients together and why that is an important part of our dietary plate.

Host: That's so great to just cook with children, but let alone a new dish from a different culture. What about food allergies or sensitivities when you're trying to introduce new cuisines to your family? How do you address that?

Rachel Finn: I think most families are very vigil about what allergies are out there and how to navigate those. If you're going to a restaurant, the first thing you do is say we have a food allergy, what dishes have those and then navigate around those dishes. It's pretty easy to make some substitutions.

There's great resources on the websites and as well as nutrition providers have great alternatives for any kind of allergens. Right now we live in a wide variety of foods that are available to us. So it's easy to make those changes. If you have a gluten or dairy or some kind of allergen asking the questions and then doing a little bit of research before actually diving into that cuisine is really important.

Maggie McKay (Host): So Rachel, from your experience, what role does food play when helping children understand and appreciate different cultures? Because that's a part of why we do it.

Rachel Finn: Absolutely. Again, it's based on your culture, what things grow in certain areas. Are they using those foods for celebrations? Is tortillas in Mexico different than the tortillas from the US or are they similar to the breads in Middle Eastern or African cultures.

So it's, a broad spectrum of where ingredients grow and the availability and how you cook it. You know in India I grew up having to grind my own spice blends and now you can actually buy spice blends ready to go. So I was taught how to actually as a child how to grind those spices. That was my job in the kitchen. And so I use

Host: That's amazing.

Rachel Finn: I use that now to teach my grandkids and my neighbor's kids how to do that as well. So that's their job. And I feel like when children are given a specific job in the kitchen or the house, they feel valued. And so then they're willing to participate and maybe try it, or at least they're contributing to that meal.

Host: That's such a good idea and a good point, that when they help make it, they've gotta try it. They just want to. Can you share a memorable experience or a story about a time that maybe you introduced a new cultural dish to a family or a classroom, like you're saying, your neighbors, kids?

Rachel Finn: Oh, sure. Well, actually I teach cooking classes at Children's Mercy to some of our patients that are on metabolic diets. And we try to do culturally different recipes just to get them one, exposed to that because they're very protective of their diet and they know what their safe foods are. So we did an Asian cooking class for some of our low protein patients that are on a very limited protein and consumption for the day, and they actually have never ventured out into doing Asian cuisine. And so just things that look differently. We actually made watermelon that looked like sushi. We made a peanut sauce using cookie butter versus peanut butter because there's too much protein in peanut butter.

And they all tried it. And we did spring rolls and so things that fit into their diet but was a different culture. Families also felt very empowered to expand their horizon a little bit more.

Host: Right. Yeah, I bet that's empowering when you have such a limited diet to know that there are some other things you could eat besides, you know the same five things. How do you involve children in the cooking process? I know you've touched on it a little bit already. But what benefits have you observed from this involvement?

Rachel Finn: I think involving them every step of the way is great. First of all, when they're toddlers, having them in the kitchen space with you, while you are preparing foods, chopping, they see you working, and then eventually you can give them tasks to do, just like I said before, you know, gathering spices, or gathering ingredients.

They can easily pull things out of the refrigerator and get them together for you. Then you can slowly work on prepping foods such as cutting, soft foods and then going to harder foods and they can eventually put them into what I always use in my kitchen is mise en place, everything in its place. So every dish you have ready to go before you actually start cooking it, they watch you do the organization. They watch you actually making their food, and then eventually they smell it, they're tasting it, and they become more involved.

Host: In closing, is there anything else you'd like to add that maybe we didn't cover?

Rachel Finn: I think that we should always just talk about cultural differences, especially with foods. It's just an easy and fun topic. I take my kids and my neighbor kids to the grocery store and we go through the ethnic side of the aisles and we talk about foods or we talk about vegetables that go in certain dishes. And I think it's just really important to talk about foods and talk about the availability and all the different cultures. They're seeing those in schools.

They're seeing in them in neighborhoods with different foods. Why do some kids eat with chopsticks or some families eat with chopsticks? Some use their hand. Those are all great conversations to have. And then it's easy when you're tying it in with a movie or a book you've read that has some food references to it to maybe mimic it.

Like let's make dumplings tonight because we watched the show or they had pupusas. Let's try those. So there's a lot of things that we can actually talk about culture and food.

Host: How fun. Well, this has been a lot of fun and very educational. A lot of good ideas. Thank you so much, Rachel.

Rachel Finn: Hey, thank you for making it easy.

Host: Of course. Again, that's Rachel Finn. And if you'd like to find out more, please visit childrensmercy.org/parentish. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out our entire podcast library for topics of interest to you.

That concludes this episode of the Parent-ish podcast. Again, for more parenting tips and tricks, visit us at parentish.org, where we help you celebrate the craziness and challenges of parenthood.