Reply to If you don't eat many processed foods, what do you feed your kids?

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Reply to "If you don't eat many processed foods, what do you feed your kids?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"kid's food" = processed food that is leading to the obesity epidemic.  Feed your child real foods just like you eat, and the child will like them just like you do.  If you want them to look more fun, make them look more fun naturally (put fruit on sticks, shape eggs into bunnies, place carrot sticks into teepees with peas hiding inside....).  There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeding your children real food, and it is a shame that our society makes new parents think that there is.[/quote]

For me, and I'm a PP who does use mostly fresh and/or minimally processed foods, I think sometimes it feels wasteful.  I don't let it stop me, but I do sigh and understand why some parents just cave to the convenience of processed crap.  Yes, I know it can take 10 to 20 tries for my child to try a new food and that sounds fine.  Except that then becomes 10 or 20 pieces of fish, or lentil soup or whatever that is thrown away untouched or with one little bite out of it.  With my two year old I use plates with multiple sections so that every meal I know she's getting at least one or two things that she likes in addition to anything new or unfamiliar.

Last night she ate almost 3 pieces of chicken, skin removed.  She loves hummus, but it went untouched since I'd spread it on fresh cucumber rather than with fresh carrots.  She did eat half of a banana and some grapes.  The freshly picked zucchini that I'd diced and tossed with mint and a vinaigrette also was avoided completely.  My sense is that for many parents it just becomes easier to serve the mac and cheese or chicken fingers since you know the kids will eat them.  [/quote]

I think the PP is spot on. I have a real problem wasting food, and that is the number one reason why I have never stuck to a program of feeding my kids the same meal that my husband and I eat for very long. We do not serve chicken nuggets (my oldest is an extremely picky eater and wouldn't touch them anyway), but we do make them homemade from scratch mac and cheese because they will reliably eat it (and ask for seconds). Add some roasted chicken, fruit, and maybe a vegetable for my less picky eater, and it's not a terrible meal. Intellectually I agree with the whole "kids should eat the same things adults do" philosophy, and before I had kids if anyone had told me we would be in the place we are in now I would have said no way, that would NEVER happen. But I discovered, much to my chagrin, that you can't make kids eat things they don't want to eat. (I mean, unless you're willing to use heavy coercion, bribery, or outright force -- and even coercion and bribery wouldn't work on my oldest). When I try to make things that are "kid friendly", no one is happy -- DH and I don't get to eat the kinds of things we like (spicy, heavy on veggies, "exotic" veggies like brussels sprouts, soups and stews, tomato-based dishes), and the kids won't eat it anyway. There are plenty of kids out there with adventurous palates, and that's great -- but not all kids are like that. My oldest will go without rather than eat something he decides he doesn't want to try. I am not about to have a battle over food three times a day, every day, for the next ten years or however long it takes him to pull his head out of his ass about food (I don't say that to him of course!). Food is awesome, and he's the one who is missing out. So I have scaled back my expectations -- as long as he eats something reasonably healthy, I've done my job. I am also teaching him about the social aspect of food and he is seeming more receptive to that message now that he is 5. (though whether he can put it into action remains to be seen).

To bring this back around to the OP's inquiry, we still do not eat a lot of heavily processed foods. There are many things, like cookies, crackers, juice, "fruit" snacks, processed chicken nuggets, snack cakes, packaged bars of all kinds, and chips, that come into our house rarely or never. We do buy things like whole wheat bread and bread products (bagel thins, english muffins, tortillas), whole wheat pasta, various types of cheese, and peanut butter, all of which are processed, and sometimes frozen or prepackaged ravioli, tortellini, and so forth. I am more concerned about too many simple carbs and especially too much sugar than about processing per se. We have fresh fruit with every meal -- even most picky kids like some types of fruit -- and I try to include a protein at each meal as well. Even if your child is picky, that does not necessarily mean that you will end up serving [insert name of most reviled processed food here]. But it may not be easy to make one meal that everyone will eat, either. [/quote]

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