Help me feed my children better...

[eastkygal]

My children eat a great breakfast and usually a decent supper for TF standards. Where I am falling apart right now is lunch and snacks. They still get the microwavable chicken nuggets, fish sticks, canned spaghetti and meatballs, animal crackers, cereal bars, and goldfish crackers. I usually need something quick for lunch, and we never have dinner leftovers, so I resort to this. They eat it and love it. Usually they won't eat homemade versions of these things.
I want their diet to be as TF as mine. Any suggestions?? How do I get them excited about it?

[TheRobinsons]

My kids (aged 4, 2 and 1) all love the coconut crackers from EFLF. They need soaking (so make them over 2 days) but you get heaps of them and they keep really well in the cupboard.

Lunch in my house is usually a platter of foods they love:
* ham
* cheese
* tomato, carrots, lettuce
* fresh fruit
* olives
* salami
* cold roast chicken
* cold boiled eggs

They also really like "corn thins", these are thin biscuits made from puffed corn. This is the only "puffed" item they eat and it is organic with only some salt added.

Other snacks they eat regularly are:
* yoghurt
* fresh fruit
* dried fruit
* popcorn (cooked in coconut oil and butter)
* homemade soaked flour cookies
* cheese
* milk, milk and more milk - they like it with milo (a type of malt flavouring) and I add a teaspoon of flavourless coconut oil

[Magelet]

one of the TF bloggers posted some cheese crisps or crackers that supposedly taste like cheese its.

Can you purposefully make dinner leftovers? or breakfast leftovers (turns out, oatmeal reheats great. who knew!)

What do they like at dinner? What is it about dinner that they like yet they object to homemade versions of their lunch things? (It may be sugar. A lot of those foods have lots of sugar in them).

Depending on how old they are, having them help cook food is a great way to make them excited about it. (I know it takes a lot longer though.) Can you set aside one day or one evening as "lunch cooking day" and together cook a bunch of things they want to eat? With something like a stir fry (which can actually be really good the next day), you could have a couple of your kids chopping veggies and stuff (if they're old enough) and you could man the stove (or an older child). Baking can be done even with really young kids, if they help bake healthy crackers, that might get them excited, because then they are "their" crackers.

[eastkygal]

I should make more roasted chicken.

Breakfast they love because all the foods I cook are pretty simple. Eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, oatmeal, pancakes, muffins, and fruit in some combination. They eat big for breakfast.
Dinner is a little harder. We have a meat, which they will usually eat if they can chew it easily and it isn't seasoned too much. Veggies it depends. They like fried potatoes (coconut oil), corn, DD1 likes broccoli, baby carrots, and peas, DD2 likes green beans and that's about it. Legumes, I can't get DD1 to eat eventhough there are meals where that is the main dish, she just eats a side dish and stays a bit hungry requiring a snack later. Neither likes salad. So, dinner is meat and whatever side I fix that they will like. I usually do a meat and two sides.

Both girls like things simple (no tacos, soups, casseroles, stir frys, etc for them). They are picky about texture and like a uniform color to their food. Like dark spots on meat where it is unevenly browned is something DD1 has to be convinced to eat.

I think for example, (it might be the sugar) where my pasta dish (if I fix one) is brown rice pasta with a "chunky" tomato sauce flavored with garlic, onion, and basil whereas the canned junk is a soupy HFCS laden powdered concoction that is bland. This makes the real deal taste too strong for them.

My diet is as close as I can get to TF with our budget and place of residence in mind. I feel like I have a really healthy diet. Wonderful! How do I help them transition to a diet more uniformly like mine? The girls are 4 and 18 months. Also, grandparents are not understanding of our TF standards and get frustrated when I try to restrict the girls at their home... so they will get other foods while we are on visits.

[lil_earthmomma]

If they like uniformly colored food, what about soups? Butternut squash, tomato, potato, etc.

Pasta with butter and parm cheese? (Or other cheese)

Pasta with smooth sauce? Creams sauce, your your tomato sauce pureed with a splash of honey or maple syrup. Processed foods are SO sweet, so I have had great success with children who are used to those foods with just a dash of maple syrup or honey added!

I really like doing snack platters as well with a variety of fruits, veggies, meat, cheese, pita wedges, nuts etc.

What if you made extra dinner so there would be lunch left overs?

[TheRobinsons]

I totally understand. My 2 year old won't eat anything mixed together! And has a limited repertoire of vegies - so I just serve the ones she likes and one other one for her to throw around! Mine also really like plain cooked pasta - this is one thing I haven't been able to give up yet.

I find if I make meatballs and bake them in the oven, they come out more even in appearance and texture. You can add some organ meats to the ground meat and some breadcrumbs, ketchup and egg and roll into balls. I bake mine at moderate heat for about 20 mins. I serve these on a plate beside some vegies and plain pasta etc.

[Magelet]

I'd try making bland homemade pureed pasta sauce, with some honey or maple syrup, as a pp suggusted. If that doesn't fly, try comercial spagetti sauce with just sugar, no hfcs (hey, its an improvement right)

Many of those breakfast foods can be repeated for lunch (scrambled eggs are fast, pancakes in the toaster, room temp muffins, fruit, the veggies they do like leftover (extra) from dinner).

If the grandparents aren't understanding, thats ok. You know the 80/20 rule? that if you eat healthy 80 percent of the time, the other 20 will be ok? I'd focus on improving their diets at home and let them eat junk at the grandparents house. As long as they are eating the majority of their meals at home, it shouldn't make a difference. (and as they wean off sugar, they may find themselves less interested in it at the g-parents)

btw, have you seen this blog post? I love it. (Its not my blog, I think I can post it in the new UA?) Its so true. When you stop eating sugar, things like sweet potatos and carrots and fruit and cream taste super sweet, and things with corn syrup taste disgustingly sweet. but when you start eating sugar regularly, the sweet potatoes taste less sweet, and the corn syrup tastes good. (that's my expeirience).

Maybe don't think or talk about it in terms of restricting. Who likes to be restricted. Instead, think about it as boundless fat and other good TF things. Sugar may taste good, but fatty meat and butter taste even better once your addiction is cured.


This may not work for you or your family, but honestly, if I were in your situation, I would ban sugar and processed corn from the house for a while. (Banning corn unless it looks like corn (corn meal or fresh corn) essentially means cutting out all processed foods. it is in everything, though it may not always say corn). I would throw out (if I could afford it) all products with sugar and corn syrup or else use them up and not buy more. I'd make extras of the things they like for breakfast and dinner to eat at lunch and deal with the whining til they got used to the lack of processed food (and all the benefits of good food).

[eastkygal]

I absolutely know what you are saying here! I cured my sweet tooth and I get plenty of sweetness from my regular or naturally sweetened foods. I'm right on with my diet and I want to give that to my girls. For the most part they are, just not at lunch and snacks.

So, these are ideas to start with definitely. I'm going to try to involve them a little more in the food making. Maybe make some yogurt crackers and some cookies to have on hand with fruits and veggies for snacks. Then, work on the lunch bit as I run out of the other food, which will be soon.

I have a book from the 70's called Baby Gourmet. It is a cookbook and goes through feeding your children properly. While, it isn't totally TF, most of it is or able to be transformed into TF. I think I might try some more of those recipes for lunch type stuff, refrigerate and have on hand.

I wish we could do more eggs in this house. We go through 1 dozen in 2 days. We are waiting on our little chickens to start laying after our last flock was completely massacred. Good eggs here are $3.69 for a dozen.