Picky Eaters

Feeding our children is the most important and time-consuming aspect of parenting. Most of us aren't accustomed to thinking about food so much. We aren't all chefs. If you missed that book "French Children Eat Everything" it's a good book to pick up before your child starts eating solids. It tells you how to prepare a variety of colors for your baby when they're being introduced to solid foods to accustom them to the concept of variety. I missed that sensitive period, so I played catch up when my son was weaned. Here is what I have observed.

1. Children don't need to eat as much as we like to see them eat. Keep the excess in tupperware and save it for later. If you prepared a lot of it, freeze it to save time later.

2. Children enjoy taking little tastes of a wide variety of food throughout the day. This can be called snacking or grazing. Get creative. Don't stick to staple snack foods. Mix it up. Hummus, grapes, tomato wedges, red peppers, cauliflower. Offer a few different basic foods and let them pick from the variety.

3. Reflect on the quality of your own diet. Educating yourself in nutrition and cuisine is not an easy task, but it doesn't have to happen overnight. Its a journey that you'll take along with your child. Slowly get rid of the bad stuff and replace it with the good. Taste buds adjust. Eventually all that healthy food will cease to taste bland and will offer a huge variety of flavors never before perceived. If you took care of your body while you were pregnant, you still have the same incentive to continue doing so. You're still eating for two (or more)!

4. Resist breaking down and buying packaged food with high fructose corn syrup, food coloring, or... any packaged food in general. Its dead inside. Shop on the perimeter of the grocery store, only going into aisles for the staples you absolutely know ahead of time that you need, like corn tortillas and salsa! 

5. Avoid stress around food. Prepare food together with them. They're more likely to eat it then, anyway. There's tons of resources on cooking with kids through sites like Pinterest.

6. In order to not stress around food, you need to feel good about what they're eating (99.8% of the time). You can sneak in greens by making smoothies or mixing algae tablets in with some apples in a high-speed blender (or the pot if you boil apples to make apple sauce). I like putting kale or spinach with banana and a little bit of peanut butter. My son doesn't always want some, but occasionally he'll devour it. So again, their bodies want different things at different times. Take care of your own body, and let them share your food when they want it. If you eat well, they'll eat well. 

You don't have to drastically change everything you eat in order to be healthy. After tweaking a few aspects about what you eat, a rhythm emerges. In place of cereal from a box and milk you may pour oats, raisins, chia seeds, chop up some banana's, drizzle some honey on top, and pour in some almond milk. You'll live longer, you'll feel better, and the kids will eat better.