Celebrate A Healthy Start During National Breakfast Month

STUDIO CITY (CBSLA.com) — September is better breakfast month!

Nationally-recognized Registered Dietician Ashley Koff visited the KCAL9 studios Wednesday to show viewers easy ways to ensure they are giving their families a better and healthier breakfast.

An easy way to ensure a Better Breakfast is to make it yourself (idea: have your older kids make or your younger kids help) AND to make it something that everyone can eat / will love.

1. Let Kids be the Chef: Playing with food IS ok, it helps occupy kids as well as studies show when kids interact with their food (grow, pick, make) they are more likely to eat it. Great idea for while you are prepping dinner – Have them decorate waffles - savory or sweet (show waffles, coconut flakes, berries, nut butter, cheese, chicken sausage slices etc).

Or make their own trail mix - just show the ingredients (includes different cereals, nuts & seeds, dried fruit, and chocolate ...the key point will be to show that there are just a few pieces of chocolate and dried fruit (I often say you get the number of pieces that equals your age so a 6 year old can have 6 chocolate chips etc).
2. Break the rules: - there's no such thing as Breakfast Foods - you just need nutrition to Break the Fast (Applegate farms chicken nuggets & Dr Pragers broccoli or spinach bites (in dinosaur shapes).

Hummus & veggies - great portable breakfast option too. Leftover or frozen pizza with a greens juice (kid-friendly like Evolution Fresh which has some apple in it).

3. Do as you say: your kids are always watching what you do - are you getting a Better Breakfast?

Recipe:

The AKA High Pro bar

Ingredients:

3 scoops Wholesome Chow High Protein pancake mix
1 ripe organic banana, mashed
3 cups So Delicious unsweetened vanilla coconut milk
½ cup Nature's Path Qi'a cereal
1 cup Tcho superberry drinking chocolate crumbles
¾ cup organic raisins
½ cup Manitoba Harvest hemp hearts
Spectrum cooking oil spray or coconut oil
8x8 baking pan

1. Lightly coat baking pan with oil.
2. Preheat oven to 375 F
3. Pour ½ cup of coconut milk into a cereal bowl. Add Qi'a and stir. Allow to sit for five minutes, stirring once or twice to create an even, thick pudding-like consistency.
4. In a large mixing bowl, place pancake mix. Stir in 2 cups of coconut milk, banana, and chocolate.
5. Blend in Qi'a + coconut mixture. As you are doing, the mixture should still be easy to blend, if not, add the remaining ½ cup of coconut milk
6. Fold in raisins and hemp heart
7. Pour total mixture into the baking pan, spread evenly.
8. Bake for 15-20 minutes based on your oven (recommend looking at it at 12 minutes to make sure the top is not burning; at 15 minutes check the center to see if it is cooked (with a cake tester); will be dark brown colored but should not be brown or burnt on top

Makes 16 older child / adult portions