recommendations for my 5yo?

[Vaquitita]

I am wanting to plan an intensive nutrition plan for my daughter and would like some input from you lovely knowledgeable ladies! :D

I am concerned about my 5yo's teeth, her teeth are crowded. They don't seem to be spreading out as she grows. Both my boys teeth have nice spaces between them (7yo and 2yo). Since she was born just 2 years after my oldest, I think my nutritional stores just weren't built up enough yet. I suffered from adrenal fatigue after she was born for awhile. We have been eating a mostly TF diet since my oldest was a few months old. She has not had CLO/BO as early or as consistently as her older brother. Though probably about the same as her younger brother, but then there was an extra year (and some further dietary changes) before he was born. She's also the pickiest eater and the one needing the most sleep. On the other hand she is healthy, strong and sturdy, very heavy for her size, with no cavities. Anyway, at this point it seems obvious to me that she needs something EXTRA. So, I'm trying to come up with a plan for her.

Some other considerations: money is tight, and I'm homeschooling and just don't have a lot of extra time. I know nobody has extra time or money, right? :D  I've wondered whether alternating intense nutrition days with lighter days would help me deal with the time factor and keep from burning out or falling off the wagon. Every other week? Every other month? Every other day?

Here's what I've come up with so far:

* FCLO - How much? right now she takes 3/4 tsp, when she takes it all (cuz of me, not her. she likes it).

* homemade ghee - again how much? 1/2 tsp every time she takes CLO? 3/4 tsp?

* raw parmesan - read recently that this is a great source of vitamin K, maybe a tbsp a day?

* concentrace - i have some, do you think supplementing with this would help? she is the least likely of my kids to eat soup/broth

* bioplasma - again, i have some already. 2? years ago i bought all the individual cell salts for teeth health and gave them to her without really seeing any difference. though that may be because i wasn't consistent enough with it. but it was a lot of work. so i have some bioplasma, that would be much simpler to give her just one.

* liver - she is willing to swallow my frozen liver *pills* though not a lot at a sitting. what if i gave her a smallish amount at every meal?

* fermented foods - fallen off the wagon here lately. killed my kefir grains. my kombucha molded. got tired of watery goat milk yogurt (and don't tell me to strain it, it already costs me $14 per gallon, i can't afford to drain it. though i could trial 24hr yogurt with grassfed organic pastuerized cow milk, if the kids could handle it that would cut the cost in half). Anyway, I need to get us eating more of these again. We've been taking New Chapter probiotics periodically, but it would be much cheaper to eat fermented foods obviously.

[1love4ever]

Well, I like to add pureed liver to chili in the winter.  We eat a lot of chili in the winter so we get lots of liver :)  We sprout our beans, I add liver, kelp granules, fresh garlic, a little homemade stock, turmeric, and celtic salt as superfood additives to the chili. (anyone have any other suggestions?)  Sometimes I'll add a little chopped kale too. 

I think her dose of FCLO, 3/4 tsp, is sufficient, that's how much I take.  I probably should take more myself, I'm nursing, but can't afford more to take more than that!!  The ghee and parmesan cheese are good ideas too, I think 1/2- 3/4tsp would suffice for the ghee and a tbps or parmesan seems reasonable daily.  We use a ton of that too.   We use Mother Earth Minerals sold on livesuperfoods.com as a mineral supplement, they have the calzyme which is their multimineral/trace mineral supp, which we use.  I dont know much about Concentrace, I looked into it awhile back and decided against it, although I dont really remember why....

I also love sprouted quinoa, avocado's, coconut butter, smoothies with lots of hidden superfoods....  Oh and DD loves soft boiled eggs, she'll peel it herself (she's 2.5), and eat the whole thing, she LOVES them!  Can you find kefir grains locally?  Raw homemade kefir is our smoothie base, we add whatever organic fruits and veggies we have around or frozen, a raw egg, sometimes a little liver, superfood powders, in the spring we use fresh dandilion parts, lambsquarter, summer we use LOTS of purslane in everything, and fall/winter is kale which is so cold tolerant!!  Hurray for kale!  Lol

Oh, DD love's chlorella tablets, she chews them, and begs for them like they're candy.  IDK why... lol.  Maybe your DD would like them too?  And we do use bioplasma as well.  I dont know if we've seen a difference, but I figure why not!?  i would give her 3 of them several times a day if you are trying to see if they make a difference, but for just a general supplement I think 2 or 3 once or twice a day would be enough. (this is what we do to keep costs down..)

Here is mercola's nutrition guide to maybe give u some ideas or inspiration?  http://www.mercola.com/nutritionplan/index.htm   and his recipe book  http://mercola.fileburst.com/PDF/cookbook/Healthy-Recipes-web.pdf   

[Vaquitita]

thanks for the great suggestions. adding liver to chili is a good idea, though my 5yo doesn't like chili so it won't help her, but it will help the rest of us. I like the look of mother earth minerals, thank you. it is so hard to get my DD to eat broth, so i would like to give her a mineral supplement.

After thinking it over some more, I'm thinking I'm making it too complicated. I know what she needs: CLO/BO/minerals. I just need to be CONSISTENT with them. Instead of twice a year getting on a kick and we take it for a couple months, then slide back to being sporatic. Also, until recently (when I began giving her 3/4 tsp since we don't take it that often) I only gave her 1/2 tsp. Now I'm thinking, 1/2 tsp is what I would give her if she was perfectly healthy, so since I know she's deficient I will give her more for awhile. I'm thinking 1 tsp or maybe more? for awhile, then gradually cut back.

Has anyone given their child larger doses of CLO? If so, how much did you give? If I was giving her too much, what would be the symptoms?

[Vaquitita]

Does celtic sea salt have a lot more minerals than Redmond's? I've been buying Redmonds because I could get the best price on it, but I'm wondering if it's worth it to pay for the celtic?

[1love4ever]

Hey, Celtic salt is really cheap on azure standard and is on sale this month!  Its $3 something for 1lb of coarse grind, fine grind is expensive.  I've heard Redmonds has very few minerals that your body can use actually??  I wouldnt trust that tho.  I use 1/2lb+ per month of the celtic coarse grind, mostly for salting water, and added to things in which it will dissolve such as chili.  For the fine grind I have Redmonds and just ordered some Himalayan, although it does make me nervous bc I heard Himalayan has a lot of flouride in it, although its not the synthetic kind that is in toothpaste and such.  I think ANY unrefined salt is better than the refined stuff!!!

We are so bad with doing things sporadically!!  I will go months of giving everyone kefir daily, then go months of no kefir at all, my poor grains in the fridge in the same jar of milk for a month!!    Same with FCLO, minerals, bioplasma, etc, it's terrible!!  I slip with food too.  Sometimes for weeks straight I am inspired to cook healthy meals, totally TF, then for weeks I am at a loss and feel like I have nothing to cook and will end up making organic macaroni and cheese from a box for lunch, yuck!!  Lol

I've heard that lots of FCLO not balanced out by a high meat diet can cause bleeding probs.  Thats the only thing I've heard but I havent looked in to it

[Vaquitita]

Yes, I fall in to such food ruts sometimes. When I can't even think of anything healthy to cook and its quesadillas for lunch every day. I just finished reading French Kids Eat Everything and am inspired to add more variety to our meals.

Hmm... lots of FCLO needs a high meat diet? I will have to look into that. We eat meat or eggs or cheese at every meal, but DD doesn't eat a lot (atleast it seems that way to me, but then her 2 brothers are big eaters). Thanks.

I don't think I really looked into the coarse grind before, I just compared the fine grind to Redmonds fine grind and since Redmonds was cheaper went with that. I will have to order some Celtic coarse grind. If it's that cheap to get coarse, I may just buy a salt grinder.

[IsaFrench]

LOL .... i'm french .... we still have problems around the table

(DD1 would eat just starches with loads of fat on them, DS would eat just veggies, DD2 would eat just meat ...)

it's true about school lunches, very balanced etc + food policy in grade school + kindergarden is "a little bit of each food item MUST be placed on the plate for each child" (=> which does create problems for my friends from India who are vegetarians ...)

they used to sort of force kids to eat up but now they don't dare to do it anymore ... just strongly encourage to taste a little bit of every thing ...

[Vaquitita]

I used to not make 'kid food' and have my kids try everything. They didn't like it, fine, but they had to try it. Somewhere along the line, once there were more of them complaining about the food, and after they had realized the 'kid foods' everyone else eats, I began making TF versions of kid foods for breakfast and lunch. But blech is it boring. Reading this book encouraged me to go back to the kids eating what the adults are eating (and not the other way around!) Three years ago, I would tell people I was training my kids taste buds to like real food, so it was funny/encouraging to hear that same message in the book. And kind of helped me get my focus back, iykwim. I also liked the way they emphasized the nourishment/pleasure of the food rather than the nutrition/vitamin content. Eat this it's good vs. eat this it's healthy. Definitely seems like it would help them as they grow up and start making their own food choices. It's funny the things they like that I figured they wouldn't and didn't give them, then they'd ask to taste mine, and now they want to eat it. Like my raw liver pills, LOL. Whatever mama ain't sharing must be *yummy* right? :D

While I see some room for improvement, I must say my kids eat and like so many more foods than the kids around us. If people having us over ask us what the kids eat, we say: they eat everything.

[Vaquitita]

I am making my own ghee/butter oil to take with our FCLO, just can't afford the GP stuff. Just occured to me, I need to use SUMMER butter to get the K2. I'm guessing the butter I'm currently getting is not summer butter since it's November. I should have stocked up last June. Does Kerrygold have a good amount of K2 in it? or do I need to buy Organic Valley's Pasture Butter (which specifically is summer butter)???

[1love4ever]

There is another BO called Nurapro that's cheaper.  Also, parm cheese has k2.   To be honest, until u just said "kid food", it had never even occurred to me to make a special meal/food for my kids other than what the family was eating!  :/  lol!