CodeNameMama.com

Code Name: Mama

Archive for the ‘Healthy Eating’ Category

5 Tips to Help Kids Develop Healthy Eating Habits: July Carnival of Natural Parenting

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Welcome to the July Carnival of Natural Parenting: Let’s Talk About Food

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about their struggles and successes with healthy eating. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

***

2009-07-18 04

Kieran eating his first corn on the cob last year.

Tom and I did not grow up with the healthiest of eating habits. Whole, non-processed (much less organic) foods were just not on the radar as much as they are now. Now that we have Kieran, we are taking positive steps to eat healthier and help Kieran make good food choices. Here are a few tips (from one reformed junk food addict to another) on how to help your child get a better start than you had:

1) Babies Need Breastmilk, Then Supplement with Real Food: Almost every medical association in the world says that all infants should receive breastmilk exclusively for at least the first six months.1  That is the minimum standard, it is not the “ideal” or the “best.”

Once your baby is ready to supplement breastmilk with solids, skip the cereals. Cereals are nothing more than sugar and are full of empty calories. Babies don’t even have the enzymes necessary to digest cereal until they are eight or nine months old. It is a myth that adding cereal to your baby’s diet can help them sleep longer at night. They can even constipate your baby, doing more harm than good.2 Instead of cereal, give babies who are ready for solids food that is healthy for their bodies: mashed up bananas, avocados, sweet potatoes, etc. And there’s no need to feed your baby from a jar – just give her the real stuff!

2) Offer Healthy Snacks: Toddlers don’t often need big meals, their body chemistry works better when they can graze throughout the day, eating small portions to keep their blood sugar stable. Help them fuel their bodies with the right foods by offering an assortment of healthy snacks: fruit, veggies, healthy dips (hummus or yogurt based dips are popular), nuts and dried berries (when they are able to chew them), etc. Don’t get into a habit of making snack time synonymous with crackers and other carbs.

To encourage grazing, keep your toddler’s snacks within reaching distance. Many parents like to offer the snacks in a muffin tin or ice cube tray – the little ones like the novelty and it can turn into a fun sorting game.

3) Cook Balanced Meals: Forget the boxed stuff. It is just as easy to throw some chicken breasts in the oven, a veggie on the stove, and grab some rice from the freezer (that you made previously). Plus, you’re not putting the chemicals and preservatives into your little one’s body that are found in boxed stuff. If your little one eats all of his green beans and leaves the rice, don’t sweat it. Our little ones are generally more in tune with their bodies’ needs than we are. Trust them and relax. Research has shown that forcing children to finish food interferes with a child’s ability to tell when they are full and their development of self-control.

One of the most helpful things that I do is to cook extra portions and freeze them. Our deep freeze is full to overflowing with containers of soups, pre-made veggie burgers, and more that I can thaw if I don’t have time to cook.

4) Have Easy Pick-Me-Ups for Pre-Meal Snacking: One of the hardest times of the day is when I am fixing dinner, and Kieran wants to eat all of the meal prep items (or has a meltdown because something is in the oven and he has to wait). I recently read that one great way to offer more veggies is to serve them as a “first course,” or before the regular meal. This study showed that kids will eat more veggies that way, but it won’t necessarily interfere with their appetite for dinner.

5) If You Don’t Want Them to Eat It, Don’t Buy It: It always floors me when I hear a mother griping that her child eats too many sweets (or juice or whatever). Here’s the thing: your child doesn’t do the grocery shopping alone. She probably doesn’t spend any money on groceries either. Yes, I agree that it’s educational and helpful to let children help menu plan and shop, but it is up to parents to help them make healthy choices. Does your child have a sweet tooth? Steer him toward fruit. Does your preschooler like salty chips? Try a healthier option: pita chips and hummus or trail mix.

Use menu planning and shopping as a chance to talk about how our food choices fuel our bodies. Eat healthy foods and they will help you feel awake, active, and good. Eat junk foods and the opposite will happen.

Need more of a motivator? If you don’t introduce craptastic foods into your child’s food repertoire, you won’t have meltdowns about them when you pass them in the store. I can’t tell you how many little kids I have seen crying and whining over the candy bars in the checkout aisles.3 Kieran has asked me about them, but we’ve not had a meltdown yet because he’s never had a candy bar. He has no idea what is in those brightly colored wrappers. And I plan to keep it that way for awhile longer.

If you need more ideas to avoid mealtime battles, this article on “gentle parenting ideas for toddlers and meals” might help.

What easy tips do you have for giving your little one healthy eating habits?

http://www.mothering.com/breastfeeding/case-closed-breast-best

_______

***

Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

  • Why I Love The Real Food Community — Much like many people who follow AP/NP values, Melodie at Breastfeeding Moms Unite! takes the parts of the “real food” philosophy that work for her family and leaves the rest. (@bfmom)
  • Feeding a Family of Six — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children gives helpful tips for feeding a family of six.
  • Starting Solids at 6 Months — Did your doctor recommend that you give your baby cereal? Sheryl at Little Snowflakes discusses how whole foods are so much healthier (and more delicious) than traditional cereal. (@sheryljesin)
  • Am I What I Eat? — Andrea!!! at Ella-Bean & Co. has figured out a way to avoid grocery stores nearly altogether.
  • Are We Setting Our Kids Up To Fail? — Megan at Purple Dancing Dahlias found that cutting out the junk also transformed her sons’ behavior problems.
  • Changing your family’s way of eating — Lauren at Hobo Mama has techniques you can try to move your family gradually toward a healthier diet. (@Hobo_Mama)
  • Real Food — What kinds of fake foods do you eat? And why?! Lisa C. at My World Edenwild talks about why she chooses real food.
  • A Snackaholic’s Food Battle — Julie at Simple Life wants to stop snacking and get into the old ways of cooking from scratch and raising her own food. (@homemakerjulie)
  • Food, Not Fight — Summer at Finding Summer doesn’t want her kids to grow up like her husband: hating everything green. (@summerm)
  • How Do You Eat When You Are out of Town? — Cassie at There’s a Pickle In My Life wants some tips on how to eat healthy when you are out of town.
  • Carnival of Natural Parenting: Food! — Sybil at Musings of a Milk Maker hopes that by serving her children healthy, balanced meals, they will become accustomed to making good food choices. (@sybilryan)
  • There’s No Food Like Home’s — NavelgazingBajan at Navelgazing revels in the Bajan food of her upbringing. (@BlkWmnDoBF)
  • This Mom’s Food Journey — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment made a journey from not paying attention to food to growing her own.
  • Who Knew Eating Was So Hard? — The challenges involved in changing to healthier eating habits take on a whole new dimension when you have a child who has difficulties eating. kadiera at Our Little Acorn shares her own experiences. (@kadiera)
  • Loving Food — Starr at Earth Mama truly believes food is her family’s medicine and is willing to spend days preparing it the traditional way.
  • Food Mindfulness — Danielle at born.in.japan details how her family spends money on each category of food. (@borninjp)
  • Food for Little People — Zoey at Good Goog wants to bless her daughter with happy traditions built around good food. (@zoeyspeak)
  • Eat Like a Baby — Have you been told that you should not equate food with love? Kate Wicker at Momopoly shows us why that’s not necessarily true. (@Momopoly)
  • Food — Deb at Science@Home tries to teach her children three rules to help them eat a healthy diet. (@ScienceMum)
  • Healthy Eating Lactose-Free — MamanADroit gives us tips on how to eat healthy if you are lactose intolerant (or just don’t want cow milk). (@MamanADroit)

  1. Peggy O’Mara, Case Closed: Breast is Best ↩
  2. Dr. Paul M. Fleiss, Busting Breastfeeding Myths; Cynthia Lair, In the Kitchen with Baby; Dr. Jack Newman, Breastfeeding and Other Foods ↩
  3. I *hate* the way stores place junk food where kids have easy access to it! ↩

Posted in Carnival of Natural Parenting, Food & Nutrition, Healthy Eating | 38 Comments »

Homemade Fruit Smoothies and Popsicles

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010


Two of our favorite summertime treats are homemade smoothies and popsicles. They are super easy to make, and when you make one you can automatically have the other, because they come from the same recipe. These homemade treats are healthier than the ones you buy pre-made: they are all natural and are free of preservatives.

Blending a batch of smoothies is also a fun, educational experience for little ones. Involve them in the process of selecting and purchasing the fruit, measuring the ingredients, and adjusting proportions to try new flavors.

Here is our go-to recipe, but you can vary this according to your mood, preferences, and whatever you have on hand. Everything in this recipe is approximate – we never measure, we just dump.

Fruit Smoothie/Popsicle Ingredients

2 cups plain yogurt
2 cups frozen fruit (we usually use a berry mix)
2 bananas
1-2 cups fresh fruit (we usually use strawberries)
3/4 cup juice (we usually use apple)
Honey (to taste – I probably squirt a tablespoon in)

Directions

Toss it all in the blender, blend, and drink! You may want to adjust the amount of frozen fruit to make your smoothie thicker/icier.

To make popsicles, pour the smoothie into popsicle molds 1 or an ice cube tray (cover with foil and poke popsicle sticks through).

Other Yummy Flavor Combinations

Frozen strawberries + fresh kiwi

Frozen strawberries + fresh peaches

Frozen strawberries + fresh pineapple + orange juice

Frozen strawberries + grape juice

What is your favorite fruit smoothie flavor?

Photo credit: schleicher

  1. These are the ones we use. They serve their purpose, but if I’m not careful I have been known to pull the popsicle stick out without the actual popsicle attached to it. Affiliate link. ↩

Posted in Activities for Toddlers, Educational, Food & Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Recipes | 15 Comments »

Gentle Parenting Ideas: Toddlers and Meals

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

This post is the third in a series about gentle parenting through potential power struggles with your toddler. Each post will give you ideas and examples for using love and logic to work through some fairly common parent/toddler areas of concern: brushing teeth, getting into the car seat, meals/eating, grocery shopping, diaper changes, and picking up toys. I welcome your gentle/respectful parenting ideas and feedback; thank you to everyone who has already contributed ideas.
2010-03-05 01

Ideas to Make Mealtime a Positive Experience

Make Dinner Pleasant and Comfortable: remember to make meals a relaxing time for your family. Save arguing and stressful conversations for later. Concentrate on sharing stories about everyone’s day, talking about the food and flavors, making plans for the coming week, etc. Additionally, you might rethink how you have your toddler sitting. If she is in a hard chair with her feet dangling, it might not be the most comfortable way to enjoy a meal.
For an extra fun dinner, add party hats and candlelight – an instant dinner party!

Let Toddlers Help: toddlers often love to help out, so let them have a part in meal selection and preparation. Take them to the farmers’ market and let them help you select fruits and vegetables. Let them do age appropriate tasks in the kitchen, and/or ask them to help set the table (they can put out napkins, silverware, etc.). Let go of any expectations of perfection – if all of the napkins land in the same chair, so be it! You can sort it out later.

Be Grazing Friendly/Small Portions: Toddlers don’t often need big meals, their body chemistry works better when they can graze throughout the day, eating small portions to keep their blood sugar stable. Don’t get hung up on having everyone in the family sit through the whole meal. If it is a constant struggle to get your toddler to sit for longer than 3 minutes, what do you win by having her stay unwillingly in her chair – resentful and unhappy? Give grazing a try. And don’t worry, your toddler will learn to sit for longer periods of time eventually.

Make Room for Baby: set a place at the table for your toddler’s favorite baby doll or stuffed animal. Let her “feed” the baby from an empty bowl/spoon.

Dinner Music: let your toddler select some dinner music from a few options you give her. Talk about the music during dinner (how does it make you feel? What instruments can you hear? Can you hear the beat?).

Food is Fun: eating can be a fun experience1 all by itself. Let your little one try chopsticks! 2 Skewer your kids’ veggies and fruit (with toddler-appropriate tips, like a chopstick or popsicle stick). Use dips and wraps. Try cookie cutters out on a variety of foods (sandwiches, pancakes, omelettes). Try serving a meal made entirely of one color (“Look – we’re eating a yellow breakfast! An omelet with yellow squash, yellow bell peppers, and yellow tomatoes, served with a side of golden potatoes.”)

Don’t Force Feed Them: similar to the suggestion about grazing above, please do not force your toddler to clean her plate. Don’t withhold privileges until he has taken a bite or finished his plate. It’s not even necessary to tell them “good job!” for eating all of their veggies. You might thank them for trying everything, if that is important to you. Research has shown that forcing children to finish food interferes with a child’s ability to tell when they are full and their development of self-control.

Talk About the Food: Americans eat entirely too fast. We don’t take time to savor our food, much less think about it. Make it a practice to start talking about the food you are eating. Talk about the food groups, what each food does for our bodies, how it grows, where it comes from. Perhaps talking about your food will motivate you to improve your eating habits. It can also lead to a lifetime of healthy eating habits and attitudes toward food for your children.

Offer Healthy Options: remember YOU hold the keys to your own destiny when it comes to eating healthy. If you stock your cabinets with chips, cookies, soda, and crap, chances are your kids will opt for the crap more often than you would like. But kids will eat healthy food when they are presented with healthy options! Resist the urge to buy that bag of cookies and reach for a bag of apples instead. It is your responsibility to teach your children healthy habits. They cannot do it alone. 3

Don’t Stress: most importantly, don’t stress – yourself or your toddler. Continue to offer healthy choices throughout the day – your toddler will eat! If you  maintain a relaxed attitude around food, there will be no reason to get into a power struggle over it.

What ideas do you have to help make eating a good experience? Please share them in the comments.

  1. For another great post on this topic, see Grow With Graces: 8 Tips for Making Food Fun for Kids ↩
  2. And please don’t force utensils too early. There’s really nothing wrong with using fingers, and your child will eventually learn how to use a spoon. There’s no test to pass! ↩
  3. And let’s be honest – you can’t get angry with your child for wanting to eat unhealthy foods if you are buying them. ↩

Posted in Activities for Toddlers, Attachment Parenting, Creative/Dramatic Play, Discipline, Educational, Food & Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Parenting, Toddlerhood | 19 Comments »

6 Ideas for Eating Wholesome Foods Without Breaking the Bank

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Today I would like to welcome Megan, who has written a guest post on how to eat healthy foods on a budget. Megan is a Christian AP momma, living her dream of being a domestic goddess to a wonderful husband and four beautiful kids. She loves to share her knowledge and experiences on alternative healing, vaccine injury in children, homebirth, attachment and natural parenting issues, intactivism, whole foods nutrition, co-op shopping, organic gardening, cooking, making your own bath and body products, sewing and crafting, and homeschooling/ unschooling. She loves being a momma and wouldn’t want to do anything else, (even when life is not always a ton of fun). You can normally find Megan at Purple Dancing Dahlias, where she blogs about all of the above.

Megan feeds her family of six a healthy, wholesome, well-balanced diet, and she does it all on a strict budget. I recently shared with Megan that I want to start incorporating more organic/local foods into our family’s meals, but the cost intimidates me. She answered me with this guest post – I hope it helps someone else. If you have any tips on how to eat more organic/local foods on a tight budget, please leave them in the comments.

1. Consider vegetarian recipes: Check out some vegetarian cookbooks from the library and find a few recipes to try. The reason I suggest this is because vegetarian recipes are designed for the main ingredients to be veggies, grains, and beans – not meat. You can add meat to a vegetarian dish but often cannot simply take the meat out of a standard recipe without feeling like there is something missing from the dish. Some of my favorites are The One Dish Vegetarian, For the Love of Food, and Laurel’s Kitchen.

I often make a vegetarian dish and only have to add 1/3 to 1/2 of the meat that a traditional meat-filled dish would require. I bought a pound of free range ground beef at the co-op for $5.26 last week. I made two dishes with that one pound: wildrice patties and a veggie beef stroganoff. There was enough stroganoff for leftovers, but the wildrice burgers were gone in a flash(my hubby did get the extra one for his dinner at work). That means I spent $2.63 per meal for meat to feed six people. Both meals would have been just fine without meat. If I buy the meat directly from the farmer,  I would get a cheaper price and he would give 10% to the co-op.

2. Go local: I would think that in this day and age every major city would have a farmers market. These are wonderful places to get fresh veggies and fruits at great prices. Ask the farmers what if any chemicals they use on their food.

Buy in season. When the greens beans look great, buy enough to blanch and put in the freezer and do the same with any other in season produce.

Ask about meat specials for grass-fed beef and whole free range chickens, many times if you don’t want a whole or even half a cow you can be paired up with someone who would also like a smaller quantity of meat. If you don’t have access to a large farmers market, get online or ask around for farmers who sell wholesale. You might have to drive a couple of hours, but isn’t safe grass fed beef or free range chicken worth the investment of time and miles?

If you have a family that loves milk, the price of switching to organic milk can feel like having a major heart attack. Organic milk here is $5.99/gallon, but we buy raw milk right from the farmer for $2/gallon. Raw milk is much better for you and perfectly safe when it comes from small farms who are active in the milking process. Pasteurization kills not only the germs in milk (which are present in quantities much higher at large scale farms) but also all the other living, nutrient-rich vitamins, minerals and enzymes in the milk. Raw goat milk can be very beneficial for people who can not tolerate the large proteins of cows milk.

Farmers who have free range chickens for sale will most likely also have free range eggs. Be warned: it is really hard to go back to store bought eggs when you have had the real deal.

3. Grow some of your own: It is really simple to grow a lettuce bowl on your patio; you can even bring them in when the weather gets cold. Set them in a sunny window. You may have to turn on a light for them in the gray days of winter, but you will have fresh lettuce all year long.

Hydroponics is another great way to grow veggies indoors. Research which plants will grow well in containers or check out square foot gardening. Both methods can be done in smaller spaces and require less work than a traditional garden.

4. Co-ops and buying clubs: Co-ops can seem intimidating, but most co-ops have someone that will give you a tour and show you the ropes. People tend to get overwhelmed when they get to the bulk bins, but those will be your biggest money saver. Bringing your own containers cuts down on the cost of the product and reduces packaging waste. Be careful with buying clubs, sometimes the urge to help someone else buy a full case can dig a little deeper into your pocket than you expect. Stock up on bulk bin items slowly. Get small quantities at first to make sure you like the flavor and texture and then go back and get a larger amount to stock your pantry.

5. Skip the boxed food: Prepackaged food will always cost more and have less nutritional value because it is preserved so that it can sit on the shelf. This is were it can also get tricky, because preparing your own food can be time-consuming (but it doesn’t have to be). I can make a batch of macaroni and cheese in the same time it takes most people to make a box of mac and cheese. I have had lots of practice, but my main weapon against time is double and triple batches. If I am going to take the time and make the mess, I might as well make a double or triple batch and put some in the freezer for a future meal. When it comes to dried beans, a crock pot or pressure cooker is going to be your best friend. There is nothing better than homemade bread but is time consuming. Get an extra bread maker by asking friends/family if they have an unwanted one, looking at garage sales, or perusing craigslist or freecycle. A bread maker is a great no-fuss way to get bread full of nutrients and void of all kinds of junk.

6. Take baby steps: Don’t try to change your entire diet at once. 1 Some of the higher priced organic items we do without. If we can find sustainably harvested fruit we buy that instead of organic. Farmers must pay for organic certification, and there are quite a few farmers that produce organically but cannot afford to pay for the organic label. We are not always able to buy organic cheese, it’s expensive. We don’t buy organic nuts, they are really expensive. We do not buy juice, even 100% juice is a container of sugar. When you eat raw fruit, you are balancing out the sugar with fiber, live enzymes, and intact vitamins and minerals, not the synthetic vitamin C added back in after processing.

In our family, we do the best we can with what we have. We do not pay for TV or have expensive cell phones, we drive cars that are paid for, and we do not have credit card debt. It has not always been that way – it was a long hard road, but we did it.

We are choosing to live simpler. We are happier. And, we eat really, really good food.

Photo credit: Emily @ EZ Recipes
Emily often shares healthy recipes that use
organic/local foods; check her site out the
next time you want to try something new!

  1. Megan’s family had a crash course in healthy eating when they found out that her daughter has a corn allergy. Because corn is in pretty much everything, their shopping habits changed drastically. Thankfully, most of us have the luxury of taking baby steps. ↩

Posted in Food & Nutrition, Going Green, Guest Posts, Healthy Eating, frugal living | 10 Comments »

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

I love pancakes. I especially love that I can make great big batches of them to freeze for later. This recipe is perfect for freezing – a little reheat in the microwave and they are still as fluffy and delicious as the day they were made. It’s a perfect quick breakfast for little fingers, at home or on the go. 1

Ingredients

6 Eggs
3 cups Buttermilk
2 Tbsp Honey (approximately – I just squeeze some honey in)
6 Tbsp Oil (I use olive oil, but I’m wondering how coconut oil would work)
3 cups Flour (I use 1/2 wheat, 1/2 unbleached white)
1 1/2 tsp Baking soda
3 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Salt
Fruit (I usually use frozen blueberries, but any berry is good)

Directions

Separate egg whites into a bowl, set aside for later.
In another bowl, stir the dry ingredients together.
Mix egg yolks, buttermilk, oil, and honey with a mixer.
Slowly stir or sift dry ingredients into buttermilk mixture.
Turn skillet or griddle on to medium heat.
Beat egg whites until fluffy, then fold them into batter.
Pour small circles of batter onto griddle, add berries, cover with a little more batter. (I suppose you could mix your berries into your batter, but when I do that my pancakes always turn out blue. Plus, I like to evenly distribute the berries. I’m a little OCD.)
Flip pancakes over after about 3 minutes. (Usually I would say flip them when you start seeing air bubbles pop and remain open. They don’t always do that with these pancakes before bottoms get too brown, so just watch and take a little peek. You’ll get the hang of it.)

This recipe makes about 24 small round pancakes.

To freeze: I flash freeze mine first. To flash freeze, put pancakes on cookie sheets and pop them in the freezer for an hour or two (I put down wax paper first to keep them from sticking). Once they are frozen, transfer them to whatever you will store them in long-term.

To reheat: I put them in the microwave for about 20 seconds on low power, flip, repeat. Delicious.

Gift idea: if you make frozen meals for new mothers, this is an interesting alternative to the standard casserole – especially if there are kids in the family already.

  1. We eat ours plain, maybe a little bit of butter. They are sweet without adding any syrup, so try skipping that unneeded bit of HFCS in your toddler’s diet if you don’t buy the real maple syrup. ↩

Posted in Feed the Freezer, Food & Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Recipes | 4 Comments »