5 Ingredient gluten free cheese crackers and school snacks rant…

by Masha · September 23, 2015

First I will get my rant out, the email I sent to the school administration is self explanatory. I hope it will inspire some of you to stand up to schools or nannies or grandparents or whoever…

Here it goes:

To whom it may concern,

My daughter attends Kindergarten and it has come to my attention that every Wednesday after sports, all kids get a cereal bar “Farmer” as a snack. This was not openly communicated, as far as I know. I found out accidentally because my daughter finds the bars too sweet and sticky and leaves them half eaten in her pockets.

For a school that seems to care about kids nutrition and offers otherwise reasonably healthy snacks, this decision of feeding kids high sugar snacks is surprising and worrying.

The dangers of sugar consumption is featuring more often and prominently in the press lately. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reviewed its guidelines and recommends reducing sugar intake to 5% of total energy intake.

Approximate energy intake for a 5 year old girl is 1200 kcal a day. 5% of that is 60kcal. Farmer bar contains 13 g of sugar which is 50 kcal, which is almost the whole days sugar intake for my child! Moreover this is the worst possible way to take sugar – in its refined processed form.

WHO guidelines can be found here: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/

Please review the ingredients in the bar that will be offered today (source https://produkte.migros.ch/farmer-soft-choc-natural) :

Milk chocolate 31.2 % ( sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, emulsifier (soy lecithin), flavoring), cereals 21.0 % (oats, wheat, rice), soy beans, sugar, palm oil and sunflower oil, desiccated coconut, glucose syrup, dextrose, invert sugar, burned sugar, lactose, fructose, salt, flavor.

The are SEVEN different sugars in this bar, some worse than others.

In addition to shocking amount of sugar, this bar also contains soy in a form which is also causing international health concerns, please see below article for more information.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/soy-health_b_1822466.html

There was recently an article in the ‘Independent’ regarding the staggering amount of sugar in cereal bars, calling for clear labelling of sugar content.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/some-cereal-bars-for-children-contain-up-to-over-40-fat-watchdog-finds-10109011.html

Cereal bars are a highly processed, high sugar product that does absolutely no good for children, in fact, if not controlled, can have long lasting negative health effects.

Please let me know how and when you will address my concerns.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Maria Ellis

And now to the solution – I have discussed this with my daughter at length and she said she wanted something savoury and gluten free, so that she can share the snack with her GF friends.

Our favourite recipe so far are these very easy and very cheesy crackers. The original recipe is something like a savoury shortbread, but when you replace wheat flour with rice – they are lighter and thinner but loved by my kiddo even more!

They have withstood the playground test too – when I bring a box at pick up time, many of my little ones friends come back for seconds and thirds and so do the mums 🙂

Ingredients:

200 g rice flour

25 g tapioca or arrowroot

100 g butter

100 -125 g grated strong cheese – we like Parmesan

125 g soft goat cheese, such as Chavroux

1 egg (or 1 egg yolk if using soft cheese)

a splash of water (optional, not needed if using soft cheese)

1 T dried thyme (optional, but we love us some thyme 🙂 )

Notes: If you are cows milk intolerant – substituting cows cheese with goats or sheep cheese will make these tummy friendlier. If you have egg allergy – using only egg yolk maybe something to try as statistically more people are allergic and intolerant to the albumin (egg white).

We have tried adding lavender flowers, dried black olives, black pepper and black sprouted sesame – all work great! But we keep returning to thyme as our favourite.

Method:

Mill or measure 200 g of brown rice flour and mix with 25 g of tapioca or arrowroot, cut the butter into flower, rub together until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, add cheese (grated or crumbled), rub and mix to combine, until it resembles slightly wetter breadcrumbs. Add the egg (or just egg yolk), mix again. Now you need assess if the dough is pliable enough or if it needs a splash of water. Once you are happy with the consistency – it should be firm but not too crumbly – roll it into a ball or a cylinder and cool in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up.

Break the dough in half (I prefer doing half and then the second half, as only half of this recipe fits on one baking sheet), roll to about 4 mm thick, cut into rectangles or whatever shapes you like, transfer onto a baking sheet and bake at 180 C for 15 minutes.

Let cool and enjoy (and then do the second half while munchin on the first :))

P.S. Sometimes I can’t be bothered getting my rolling pin and mat out, so I roll the dough into a sausage shape, cut slices and shape them really quickly by hand, flattening into cookie shapes. It is faster than rolling and cutting shapes.

Let me know if you tried our cheese crackers!

Tags: crackers gluten-free goat cheese kids parmesan school snacks snacks

Masha

My name is Masha, I am a mathematician by education and a nutritionist with gourmet inclinations by vocation. I believe in traditional nourishment and strive to feed my family simple, delicious but optimally nourishing meals. I am documenting my journey through rediscovering traditional food backed up with scientific evidence.