Raising Low-Fat Kids in a High-Fat World

Make no mistake about it, Shaw is serious about her subject: this may be the only cookbook that begins with an epigraph by Winston Churchill. Spurred by her family's history of heart disease, Shaw began looking into low-fat cooking more than 20 years ago. Noting that many of the foods children enjoy--hot dogs, peanut butter, crackers and even cereal--are loaded with saturated and hydrogenated fats, she offers sound advice to parents flummoxed by the glut of information, much of it contradictory, concerning fat content in food. Become savvy shoppers, she urges parents. To that end, Shaw explains how to compute packaged foods' true fat content--the percentage of calories derived from fat--by dividing the fat calories by total calories. She counsels on easing the transition from high-fat to low-fat dining; producing low-fat birthday parties and holiday meals; how to handle eating out; and even how to cater to the vegetarian child. While Shaw's cooking advice covers much of the same ground as other low-fat cookbooks, her recipes are tailored to kids' tastes. Parents will find it possible to serve lower-fat burritos, pizza with spinach, pancakes and meat dishes such as baked chicken breasts. Desserts aren't ignored, either. Parents can produce biscotti, jam souffles and cocoa meringue cookies. (Mar.)