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Ihave been humbled by a six-year-old. The finest culinary education money can buy, 20 years of cooking all over the world, thousands of self-written recipes: all dumped down the drain by the toughest food critic I've ever met. My son, Gabe.

So I write recipes for a living, so what? Creative cooking doesn't impress him and new ideas are immediately suspect. "I don't like it," is often six-year-old code for "I've never seen it before."

Provenance doesn't matter either. So what if the broccoli was grown organically just up the road? It's still broccoli.

People used to charter planes to come eat my food; now I can't get my own son to come from the next room. I've learned that the spectacle of me running barefoot through the snow around the house is apparently a fair exchange for an empty soup bowl in front of my son. I've learned how to be a better cook for my family, and you can too.

First: Watch your media diet. Big Food Inc. bombards us with contradictory health advice. We are kept off-balance by a relentless stream of the latest nutrition news. It can be very confusing. We don't know where to turn, so we keep going straight down the pop and chips aisle. Instead, keep it simple. As Michael Pollan says: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Second: Shop smart. One thing I've learned with absolute certainty is that 99 per cent of the decisions I make that affect my son's health are made at the supermarket. If there's no junk in the house, then he can't eat junk.

Third: Trust Mother Nature. Simple fruits, vegetables and whole grains sustained humans for thousands of years. Meat was a treat and pure sugar simply didn't exist. Everything was organic because no one had invented poisons yet.

Fourth: Read those labels. All those -oses - fructose, sucrose, glucose, lactose, maltose - are sugars that can send your kid off the deep end. And if you can't pronounce it, don't buy it. Words that sound like a failing grade in high-school chemistry are not there for your benefit. They are for the food manufacturers. They include preservatives that allow food to be made 1,000 kilometres away and kept fresh on a shelf for seven years. Mmm, tasty!

Fifth: Lighten up! I don't mean to sound like a cranky old dad. Great parenting is all about persistence and consistency in the face of adversity. The very best cooking has always been about love for those who eat your food.

And sometimes hidden vegetables in the tomato sauce don't hurt.

*****

HIDDEN VEGETABLE

TOMATO SAUCE

Kids will always eat pasta with tomato sauce, but they won't always eat their vegetables - unless they're magically, mysteriously hidden in the sauce.

What you need

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions, peeled and chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, puréed

Salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon dried oregano

2 carrots, peeled and shredded

1 zucchini, shredded

A few handfuls baby spinach

What you do

Heat oil in a small saucepan with the onions. Sauté until they soften and start to turn golden.

Add the garlic and stir for a few minutes more. Add the puréed tomatoes, seasonings, carrots and zucchini.

Simmer for 20 minutes.

Stir in the spinach and continue to simmer until it wilts and heats through. Purée with an immersion blender.

Serve with your kids' favourite pasta.

Cross your fingers.

Serves 4.