‘Uuurghh, not veg! We’re on holiday!’ That is what parents concerned about balanced diets will often hear from their nutrition-weary offspring while on a family break. It often means your well-meaning healthy eating programme being abandoned, only to become a struggle to reintroduce on your return home, which is why Italy Family Holidays came up with their healthy holiday idea.
The project ‘Play, Eat and Have Fun’ (originally ‘Mangio, Gioco e mi Diverto’) was developed by ‘Studio di Consulenza Nutrizionale’, a renowned Italian nutritional institute, exclusively for Italy Family Hotels, a nationwide association of 70 family-friendly hotels. The chefs of these establishments prepare menus for children aged six months and above according to a bright and cheerful repertoire of healthy recipes, all developed by the institute.
This programme has been conceived to make use of ingredients such as vegetables or healthy carbs, in a way that kids will appreciate. They’ll be eating these appealingly-arranged meals before they even catch on that it’s not fast food. And of course all the recipes are rooted in the tasty cuisine of Italy; it’s just that they’ve been tweaked to appeal to children.
If the hotel stay coincides with a special occasion such as a birthday the chef can prepare a child-centred buffet on request. One possibility is a seaside-themed buffet: this comes centred around a loaf of bread decorated and shaped to look like a ship, with oars made out of carrot batons and resplendent with ‘Grissini’ (bread stick) masts. The beach is made of aubergine mousse.
All the children’s recipes are particularly nutritious and calculated carefully to meet the needs of growing kids, following the latest food science standards. The programme also includes recipes for healthy baby food such as puréed rice or cornmeal and vegetable purées. So babies aged six months to one year can eat fresh food too, and there’s no need to bring jars of ready-made from home.
All the members of Italy Family Hotels are committed to looking after the children (aged 0-12) who are staying with them. The hotels are normally small or medium-sized owner-managed establishments. The hotel manager may well be a mother herself. These are the optimal conditions for receiving personalised and individual service including flexible and age-based meal plans.
Italy, of course, is a much-loved holiday destination. Families delight in its sandy coasts, the mountains, lakes and the other scenery of the Italian peninsula. The weather is mild in spring and autumn and in summer ideal for the beach and sunbathing. And several regions offer families even more: the best in winter sports with kiddies' ski runs in Piedmont and Trentino-Alto Adige, for instance. In Emilia-Romagna, Liguria and The Marches sportsmen and women of all ages will find family-friendly trekking paths, rock-climbing and cycle routes.
All the history your kids learn in school comes alive when they get to Italy! Rome and Venice are absolutely fascinating for children. In Campania they can visit the site of Pompeii, buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius over two thousand years ago. The spirit of the fifteenth century Renaissance is still alive in Florence and Siena.
On the island of Sardinia children can experience the wonders of nature when they visit its caves with their stalactites. In Reggio Calabria there’s the chance to marvel at the Fata Morgana. These are mirages, similar to the desert ones, resulting from temperature inversion: from the tip of Calabria, the coastline of Sicily looks all elongated and elevated.
In the region of Abruzzo you will find what is probably the most beautiful national park in Southern Europe. Here young explorers might be lucky enough to see wolves and bears, still living in the wild!
Italy Family Hotels are committed to family-friendly standards and offer numerous services, including the following:
Italy Family Hotels have prepared a free recipe booklet for you to start cooking the ‘eat, play and have fun’ way, according to their nutritional programme. This booklet can be downloaded at the website italyfamilyhotels.com. You will also find plenty of information about the hotels, and offers, on the English part of the website. We wish you lots of fun cooking and ‘Buon appetito!’
