The outbreak of a new and virulent strain of E coli in Germany serves to remind us the importance of food safety, especially with regard to preparing meals for preschool children. Usually when we think of food poisoning, we think of under-cooked meat or eggs - we don't consider that salad can kill.

The source of the E. coli outbreak has still not been traced.  Suspicion initially fell on cucumbers supplied to the German market from Spain, but increasingly this is looking unlikely.  Currently in Germany, advice is to avoid eating cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes.

How could foods as innocuous as cucumbers and tomatoes pick up deadly strains of E. coli in the first place? Researchers are focusing on the possibility that the deadly bacteria comes from manure used in growing organic crops.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) in the UK gives the following advice:-

• Wash all fruit and vegetables before cooking and/or eating
• Peel or cook fruit or vegetables
• Wash your hands regularly during food preparation to prevent the spread of E. coli bacteria

Be safe and make sure that you prepare food with care, whether you are preparing meat, fruit, vegetables or even salad!

Research published by the School Food Trust has confirmed that children who eat school lunches are more willing to try new foods that they would not normally try at home.  Over 1,000 parents were surveyed and an amazing 80% said their children had tried new things at school and some 50% said they were asked to cook new things at home, that the children had eaten at school!

School dinners therefore were a great way to encourage a varied and wide ranging menu for children.  Seeing friends eating and tucking in to un familiar dishes is a good way to tempt little ones.  Even children who were labelled as "fussy" by their parents found that their children ate well.

Tips for getting children to eat:

• Get them involved: grow some vegetables, get them to pick them from the supermarket shelf
• Take a step back: go to visit a pick your own farm or a farm where crops are grown.
• Be creative: make the food look nice!  Use different coloured vegetables and make the meal attractive
• Think outside the box: name things in a more attractive way.  Try offering Squiggly sausages, monster mash and squeaky peas rather than sausage, peas and potatoes.
• Get the children helping: they can chop easy things, help lay the table, choose a plate etc.
• Keep portions reasonable: don't overload the plate it can be very off-putting.
• Find out their favourites and use them if you can: if carrots and peas are top vegetables, then use them along with others and introduce new ones gradually!

Bon appetite!

Watching the cartoon character Popeye eat spinach really does encourage children to eat more of the green leafy vegetable in real life it has been reported.

In the cartoon, Popeye the Sailor man, eats cans of spinach to give himself extra strength and becomes stronger once he has eaten.  It has been found that when children watched the cartoon, and saw him eat spinach, they copied and did the same. They too wanted to eat spinach, despite historically not wanting to.

According to a study published in the medical journal Nutrition & Diet, researchers studied children aged 4 and 5 years old.  They looked at their diet of fruit and vegetables before and after the study.  All 26 children were encouraged to plant their own seeds, tave tasting parties and watch Popeye cartoons.  The Professor in charge of the study said their intake of vegetables almost doubled!  In addition, the children become more interested overall in the fruit and vegetables forming part of their diet.

Teachers were also encouraged to get involved and were asked to be role models at lunch time in shcoold.  Teachers were invited to eat fruit and vegetables at meal times with the children.  It was reported by parents that even the talking about vegetables increased after the children were involved in the study.  They also came home proud from school having eaten their vegetables at lunchtime.

'Pick your own' fruit and vegetable farms make for a wonderful day out, and it's only as expensive as your appetite is big!  This time of year is perfect for taking the children along to a farm and sharing with them the delight of picking and digging their own crops.  If you don't know of any PYO farms near you, then use Google to try and find one.

Crops on offer will vary from farm to farm, but typically you'll find:-

• Berries which might include raspberries, strawberries, redcurrants, blackcurrents, blackberries etc.
• Other fruits such as apples, pears and plums
• Vegetables like carrots, cabbages, cauliflowers, spinach, sweetcorn, potatoes and onions
• Various beans: peas, broad beans, dwarf beans, runner beans, french beans, mange tout and sugar snap peas
• Squashes such as butternut squash, courgettes, marrows and pumpkins

The crops on offer will vary throughout the season which will run from around May to October time.

Children will delight in the fun of a day out at a fruit and vegetable farm, and the experience of choosing and picking their own produce helps them to learn about the food cycle.  When you're out in the fields at a farm, you can undertake other activities too to extend your trip.

Don't forget to take your camera and upload pictures of your day into your Daily Diary at ToucanLearn!

By the time a baby is born, its taste buds are developed and a baby has an innate sense of what foods are good, and which are bad.  Breast and formula milks are sweet, and babies initially favour sweet tastes over sour or bitter flavours.  Although they may taste similar, the difference between breast and formula milk is the difference between processed and natural food.  The first solid foods that many children experience are also processed baby foods.  The packaging will tell you that the contents are healthy and nutritional, but often the truth is that they are laden with more sugar than we would use in our own cooking, and sometimes ingredients that we wouldn't be happy to add ourselves!

There is inceasing evidence that eating high proportions of processed foods as babies leads to increased consumption of processed foods throughout life, as our tastes adapt to the foods that we eat early on.  Processed foods are typically high in salt and sugar and use cheap fats with higher saturated fat content.  This almost certainly plays a part in the rising instance of obesity in children and adults.

A study published in America in 2004 suggested that by the age of 2 years, one third of toddlers do not eat fruit and vegetable in any healthy form, instead being fed a diet consisting only of processed foods.  Other research suggests that babies exposed to a broad range of complex flavours, provided by natural foods, grow up to eat a broad and healthy diet, which in turn contributes to a better lifestyle.

If these ideas are correct, then it reinsforces just how important it is to be feeding our little ones a broad range of foods and flavours from an early age.  Don't become dependent on baby jars from the supermarket, instead, look to buying a wide selection of fruit and vegetables from which to make your own purees, and wholesome meals.

With spring upon us, now is the perfect time to start a diary project exploring how flowers and plants grow - here are some ideas for some growing fun...

• Take one flower pot for each of your children and write on their names.  If you only have a single child then take three flower pots and give each a fun name.  Fill each with soil and plant a sunflower seed in each.  Every week, chart which one is the tallest.  Is one always the winner, or do they each grow at different rates?  Which one grows to be the tallest?
• Take a flower pot and draw a face on the front, stick on googly eyes.  Fill it with soil and sprinkle grass seed on top.  Sprinkle a fine layer of soil over the seed and water it.  Watch the grass grow as green hair for your character.  Every couple of weeks, give your character a hair cut, and see if you can keep it growing throughout the summer!
• Take a discarded plastic food container, wash it out and line it with kitchen roll.  Sprinkle cress seeds over it and watch them grow over just a couple of weeks.  When they have grown, start pulling them out and eating them in sandwiches or on salads!
• Collect a variety of berries and other seeds from the trees, shrubs and plants in your garden.  Plant them in a large pot and see which ones grow.  See how quickly you can identify which is which as they appear - do they all look the same to start with?  How are they different?  Do they appear at the same time or at different times?
• Try growing plants from cuttings rather than seed!  Take a glass and fill it 3/4's full with water.  Cover the top with two or three layers of cellophane, then go into the garden and take some cuttings from your plants.  Herbs such as lavender, rosemary and thyme work well, as do climbing plants such as ivy, honeysuckle or vines; you may propagate many shrubs in this way.  Take short stems of new growth, typically 4- 5 inches in length with just one or two pairs of leaves at the top. Pierce the cellophane over your water using a skewer and poke your cuttings through so that the ends are in the water. Over time you should see roots beginning to grow and in time, you will be able to plant them into pots and later into the garden!  Seeing the root system grow in water is particularly fascinating - have your children study them and draw how the roots look.

Diary projects are lots of fun with your little ones - keep a log book with drawings of your observations over time, your children will love the ongoing project.  If you feel really ambitious, why not plant some vegetables?  ...or plant a pumpkin that can be ready for Halloween?!