Stick to fresh, natural foods for your family's meal, snacks

As a parent, you may find yourself ping-ponging between the drive-through and the microwave, shoving food into your children's mouths as thoughtlessly as you shove a load of laundry into the dryer.

If so, you may want to check out a new cookbook that addresses the extremely high cost - in stress and wellness, as well as in dollars - of the Standard American Diet (SAD).

"Simple Food for Busy Families" by Jeannette Bessinger and Tracee Yablon-Brenner (Celestial Arts, 2009) may sound like a sweet how-to volume, but it packs a revolutionary message.

Essentially, these holistic health counselors attack the SAD menu (of processed foods high in sugar, fat and salt) as being responsible for a variety of ills, including tension headaches, poor attention spans, obesity, lethargy and sleep disorders.

They promote, instead, "whole life nutrition," a plan that addresses the quantity and quality of foods we eat. Not surprisingly, they recommend fresh, natural, minimally processed, seasonal and organic foods.

The authors also preach the value of a daily routine, avowing that mealtimes, snack times and bedtimes should be observed on a consistent schedule. They advise parents to wake school-age children a whole hour before they have to get out the door, and to enforce bedtimes that allow for eight to nine hours of sleep a night.

For some of us, this is way more challenging than getting a 5-year-old to eat whole wheat bread.

Most of the recipes are simple, presented in a mix-and-match grid so that you can choose ingredients your family likes. The crustless ("naked") quiche, below, is a good example.

Mercifully, readers are advised not to try to make all of these changes at once. Nevertheless, this is not a book for the faint of heart. If you are truly committed to a nutritional upgrade and reduction of stress, get this book. Your first challenge will be finding the time to read it.

• Marialisa Calta is the author of "Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the American Family" (Perigee, 2005). Learn more at marialisacalta.com.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>Recipes</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> </div> <div class="recipeLink"> <ul class="moreLinks"> <li><a href="/story/?id=318033" class="mediaItem">Slow-cooker Beef Burgundy Stew</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=318034" class="mediaItem">Naked Quiche: Four Variations</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>