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{ 21 comments }
I wanted to join in on this one, but I got my dates wrong, and my market wasn’t on until the weekend, so I missed out 🙁
I am trying, until we get our vegies and fruit trees planted and growing (the backyard has pretty much been cleared now, so we ARE closer!), to only buy my fruit and veg (and meat) at the farmer’s market. This means that what we are eating is fresh and seasonal, not something that has been in storage for goodness knows how long! Okay, we might get sick of the sight of a few things (everyone went off cauliflower after a month), but the great thing is, when something new comes into season it is exciting, and you can fill up on that until it’s gone too. Asparagus season is one of those highlights of the years.
This is what I learnt from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Have you read it? It is very America-crentric, but generally a good and informative read.
As for snacks .. dips and bread/biscuits/vegetable sticks? Princess loves finger type food, or as she calls it “things on a plate”. Cold meat, cheeses, olives, cherry tomatoes .. all bite size portions, lots of variety. That said, she eats it EVERY DAY, so whilst there is variety on her plate, the meal doesn’t change greatly from day to day. There ARE many ways to make little changes, adding some fresh or dried fruit, changing the vegetables/pickles, but the important thing for her is, she CAN pretty much make it herself, I just have to get everything out of the fridge for her.
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We love things on a plate 😀 I think I need to be more adventurous with our eating, it seems to be the same things over and over. Not recipes so much but ingredients. I think I got into the habit when there wasn’t much around and I haven’t looked for new things.
Those are GREAT rules to live by. Awesome. As for your daughter, she sounds like I used to get. I went to a naturopath who told me I was hypo-glycemic and that the best way to deal with this would be to have something protein heavy for breakfast. As a vegetarian this meant whole grain cereal like oatmeal with nuts seeds and dried fruit, peanut butter on toast or eggs. (I usually ate plain cereal or toast with jam or honey). When I started doing this I could make it much easier to my next meal and my irritability pretty much completely disappeared.
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She loves our homemade muesli bars which have lots of oats, nuts and seeds in them, that would be a great snack. I haven’t made them in a while, thanks for reminding me!
Breakfast is another struggle, I can see that 8am starts next year is going to require a lot of schedule changing for us to make it LOL
I agree w/balancing foods more throughout the day – we do tend to be carb/grain heavy at certain times, I’ve been trying to get away from that myself.
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It’s probably the thing that’s made the most difference for me. In summer it’s easy with salads but some days I’d find myself trying to fit a whole day’s worth of veges into dinner, and it doesn’t work. But once you accept that lunch isn’t just a sandwich with spread, it makes life easier and more interesting. The bento site is great.
At times, I’ve suffered from hypoglycemia. Like another commenter, I did better with more protein first thing in the morning.
I think I’d look into Japanese-style bento box lunches. While the traditional bento is a bit heavy on white rice for my liking, substitute brown rice, or more veggies, and she’d probably do fine. While “cute” bento is what gets shown around the net, they don’t all have to be cute to be pleasing to the eye. A mixture of colors and textures can be well balanced and nice looking.
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She loves brown rice with furikake, I’m going to have to get more into the little vege recipes and convince her to eat them.
I just wrote a long comment that was lost in our lousy Internet connection. Ugh. Anyway, this was a great post. Eating healthy is so simple, isn’t it? So why is it so hard? 🙂
I agree with Amanda about finger foods and dips for kids. My girls love a yogurt and PB dip served with fruit and carrot sticks. Just mix plain Green Yogurt with peanut butter. They also love hummus with veggies and whole wheat pita slices as well as a white bean dip I make. Puree white beans with garlic, olive oil, and of your other favorite spices.
As an aside, I chuckled at your Jekyll and Hyde reference because my kids the same way since our recent move! Ugh (again). It’s been one of those “ugh” kind of days.
OK, *rolls up sleeves* must learn to make hummus. I love the idea of bean dips, thanks for that recipe. She does love avocado dips, the advantage of beans is we can get them anytime.
Those are good rules to live by! My little guy has propelled me into the world of food intolerances/sensitivies and yes we have learned the hard way that they can cause disturbances in pretty much anything! I am also working daily to find good, healthy, easy recipes that we can all eat and enjoy. I have a few favs I’ve found and I promise I’ll be back to share them (incidentally, right now I need to go start working on supper!). 🙂
My husband was 33 before we discovered he was hypo-glycemic. I started packing snacks in my car and he felt so miserable that his girlfriend had resorted to taking care of his food needs he started to take care of them himself (and right he should!). It shed a different light on his entire childhood experience because no one knew (or cared) that he had blood-sugar issues; he was just punished for his bad behavior.
Your daughter is incredibly lucky to have such sensitive and aware parents as to even think (or over think) this issue. It’s major. And I’m sure you’ll figure it all out – can you speak with her teachers about her food issues? Maybe they have snack time? And kids are 1000x more likely to do something when someone else besides their mom is asking them to do it (like eat a snack). I wouldn’t worry too much about that 😉
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Thanks. I can see it would be so easy to think she was being naughty if we hadn’t seen so often the link between food and her behaviour. And I do feel sad for other kids and families because it makes such a huge difference. They do have a snack time, it’s getting her to eat that can be hard. But she loves cleaning up for her teacher, so this might be one of those things where Mum just loses out 🙂
Very cool blog! I am glad I discovered you through the Natural Parenting Blog Carnival.
I think we tend to focus a little too much on the “what” of eating, rather than than the “how” of eating. Eat this, not that. This is good for you, eat more of it. Too many rules, too much confusing information. No wonder eating has become such a difficult experience these days!
Love your perspective about 87000 meals over a lifetime. We should better start thinking about how to make each one of them both healthful and enjoyable. That is if we are lucky to get to 87000!
Keep up the good work. I am adding your blog to my Links page and plan to return soon to read more of your posts!
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We have similar problems here.
Both myself and my DD are sensitive to not getting food at the right times. I’ve know about myself for years, the breaking point was when in tears I told my mum I wasn’t hungry, she basically force-fed (well told me, I didn’t have a choice and to just try it) a smoothy. !0 mins later I felt 100X better and had to apologise to my mum :).
DH has just picked up, that if I forget to give DD her afternoon snack she becomes very emotional and unable to cope in the run up to dinner time.
On the school front, I’ve found that the routine of a school day helps most children eat, because they are told that this time is for sitting down and eating.
I love that ‘balance every meal’ philosophy.
We struggle with Heidi because she has intolerances, allergies and also is very sensitive to the texture of food and experiences flavours in different ways to what we do. Makes for interesting times.
For school lunches, can I plug a totally brilliant solution I found for my girls? The ‘Foogo’ pot by Thermos, sold in KMart, not too expensive, also available to purchase online.
Here is a link to the official thermos site – http://www.thermos.com/product_details.aspx?ProdID=740&CatCode=Foog&q=
In summer I put in yogurt with fruit (banana, berries etc). On occasion I’ve pureed some frozen berries and mixed them in with whole frozen berries. Delicious. It stays chilled nicely until recess in the girls insulated lunch bags.
In winter my girls have taken – soup, two minute noodles and vegetable stew to school in their foogo pots. It is exactly big enough for one packet of two minute noodles to fit in and lucky my girls prefer them *without* the flavouring.
It is also great for carrying baked beans and tinned spag. which my girls prefer at room temp.
Such a small thing but it has made a huge difference to the range of what I can make for lunches.
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Great idea. I’ve found the girls really like a cooked lunch like noodles or rice, and in summer keeping things cold is a real hassle here.
I like avocado, egg, humus, cheese, beans for low-GI … not sure how to make them kid-friendly if the kid isn’t eating it in front of you but those are all healthy balanced foods imho!
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I tend to be hypo-glycemic a bit myself and protein in the morning really does help. A soft-boiled egg with breakfast or lunch really helps keep my energy levels even through the day. I also eat nuts & dried fruit as a snack – I call it my “snicky-snack” and it’s a mix of pecans, almonds, raisins, dried cranberries, and pumpkin seeds or figs if I’m feeling adventurous (and have been shopping recently!).
I think the best approach is to offer solid foods she likes regularly, or leave them where she can access them herself. If it’s related to a power struggle she might resist just for the control and would be more likely to eat when she chooses when/where.
I just love this article. You’ve packed so many great ideas into it. The “Eat food” part of Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food — that’s the only book on the subject I’ve actually made it through and read, so I’m quite proud 😉 — was so inspirational for me. He had a rule that you eat only what your great-grandmother would recognize as food. That’s helped me a lot. The part about “not too much” is where I always get stuck, of course. Oh, heck, I get stuck on all of it. But this: “Be confident that there will always be more chocolate, or chips, or whatever it is, and just eat what you need right now.” Yes! Why can I not remember that? I think it must be innate, to want to feast while food is available. Like our far-past ancestors who survived must have done. Oh, well! I’ll keep reminding myself I live in a culture of abundance, and maybe someday the message will get through.
Does your daughter like/eat cheese? Or nuts? I find those nice, filling little snacks that are more protein than sugars. I second/third/whatever the dip ideas. Maybe in that line, a little tub of salsa with some cut-up whole-wheat tortillas? I think kids love food that’s a little bit complicated, because don’t we all love to play with our food? 🙂 String cheese is a good one for kids, because it keeps pretty well in lunchboxes AND is fun to play with. You can find organic if you prefer, and it’s just mozzarella. Whole-milk yogurt’s good, too, though you might want to find a lunchbox that fits a little gel ice pack then.
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Oh I love the idea of balancing every meal – you’re right, that’s much easier to manage than trying to plan it all over the whole day then panicking cos there’s too much to fit into dinner (or else just giving up and realising that no one is eating ANY vegies…)
I also like the concept of only eating food that our great-grandmothers would recognise as food. And as people have said, there are so many different opinions on what is ‘healthy’ food and its really so personal, based on our home situation, food sensitivities, likes etc. It can seem so overwhelming.
I find it easiest to try one new thing at a time, add that to our diet/routine, and once that becomes easy and normal, then try something else. Otherwise I feel like I have to change everything and it again its too overwhelming and I just want to give up.
I used to have trouble with my blood sugar as well and once it dropped, I was completely incapable of making decisions, including deciding what to eat. So those ‘what would you like to eat’ conversations are torture at that point, I needed someone to just hand me food, I’d eat it, and then I could think again. I got better at remembering to eat BEFORE that happened but it did take me a long time. It happens rarely now – not sure if that’s because I do eat more regularly, or I eat a better diet (much less processed food) or if I just kind of grew out of it.
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