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Getting Kids to Eat Healthy Food


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You really can make yourself crazy trying to control every aspect of your kids lives.  Everyone needs to take a large step back and decide why it is so important to make all the decisions all the time.  Let the kid chose now and then. 

 

I like what your mother did, quiet1.  You got input from a trusted authority figure in a non-threatening way.  Kids need to learn to make choices and we need to be okay with the fact that Cheetos taste better than pita chips.

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I am not sure we know as much as we like to think we do about what things are actually properly good for you and what things are not.

 

That's for darn sure!!!

Fruits are just one example, sugar is sugar metabolically (although different types of sugar affect us in different ways) and few take into account the fact that many fruits have been bred over the years to be sweeter, so just because it's 'natural' doesn't necessarily mean it's good for you.

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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Well everything is bad for you, it will be proven and there for we shouldn't eat.  I just followed the Swedish word of lagom, everything in moderation 

 

And I dont see me as young parent, yes I have a young kid now but the other two are 20 and 23 years....  

 

What fruit haters forget is  that fruits are not pure sugar, they contain fibers, mineral and vitamins and this is good for you.  It is better to eat 1 orange then juice made out 7.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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.....they contain fibers, mineral and vitamins and this is good for you.

 

And so do a lot of sugary starchy breakfast cereals.

~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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Digging,   Not by nature,  it is added and that has been proven not to be as good as  the real deal.

 

If we just see to sugar contain and not  the bigger pictures most foods are bad for us.

 

I just stay as natural as I can, I dont do  ready made nor  breakfast cereals ,  I dont think a daily dose of  bacteria slime and   synthetic  vitamins is what  the body needs.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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Ah, okay, I've got it....cereal isn't nutritious or fibrous by nature..EVERYTHING is an additive!? That's good to know! 

I knew those grains were damn worthless....I knew it all along!!!!!!!!!!  :biggrin:

~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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CeeCee that how my parents did and  I still eat cheap candy from time to time.

 

Sounds fine to me, I splurge on cheap candy every now and then too.

Second Annabelle, as I think we should learn kids from a certain age how to make these decisions for themselves as these treats will be around them more than the parents will be I guess

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Digging, I am not going to go a slugging match with you.  Fruits are bad in mass amount  but so is everything.

*sigh* 

Yes, cereal  do contain healthy stuff,  BUT many  sugared cereal is fortified and it was those you use to compare to fruit.  My kid eat oatmeal or rolled rye, gets all the  goodies of the grain but none of the sugar.

 

And to you rest, easiest  way to get a kid to eat, let it run around and play before dinner time.

Edited by CatPoet (log)

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, young parents.  My children ate healthy, homecooked meals and fruit snacks with homemade treats on birthdays and holidays.

 

Along came school.  With school came birthday parties at other children's homes.  School, although private, required the kids to bring a packed lunch and trade off bringing snacks.  Other kids had tempting store-bought treats and mozzarella sticks to trade at lunch.  Snacks weren't always apples and oranges but sometimes Oreos and Chips Ahoys.

 

It's wrong to demonize these foods because, as others have said, it makes them forbidden fruit.  An occasional trip to McDonald's never killed anyone.  DQ's Blizzard's are tasty on a hot summer day.  Grandma loves to make pies with a heavy hand on the sugar.

 

They'll live.

I couldn't agree more. To be zealous about healthy food only for ones children will most like be a negative experience for them. Everything in moderation is probably the best lesson they can learn :)

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, young parents.  My children ate healthy, homecooked meals and fruit snacks with homemade treats on birthdays and holidays.

 

Along came school.  With school came birthday parties at other children's homes.  School, although private, required the kids to bring a packed lunch and trade off bringing snacks.  Other kids had tempting store-bought treats and mozzarella sticks to trade at lunch.  Snacks weren't always apples and oranges but sometimes Oreos and Chips Ahoys.

 

It's wrong to demonize these foods because, as others have said, it makes them forbidden fruit.  An occasional trip to McDonald's never killed anyone.  DQ's Blizzard's are tasty on a hot summer day.  Grandma loves to make pies with a heavy hand on the sugar.

 

They'll live.

 

I dont think anyone demonizing anything, I think most of us have said everything in moderation

Wawa Sizzli FTW!

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I dont think anyone demonizing anything, I think most of us have said everything in moderation

 

I agree that most of us have urged moderation as well as eating healthy meals together. However, I believe a statement like "Sugar should in fact be classified as a drug..." is demonizing sugar. Just my view of things ...

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Porthos Potwatcher
The Once and Future Cook

;

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I just pack my kids backpack right for the future, give her the tools to make sane choices when it comes to everything including food.  She did one today, an apple over a piece of chocolate.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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  • 1 month later...

As a mum my self with a 2 year old and a 23 year old, I would just say.   Sweet stuff shouldn't be used as snacks, they are treats .

 

My daughter  midday snack, the snack she has a few ours before dinner  exists  right now of  ice cold fruits smoothing  with juice or yogurt and it no sugar added, easy to make , just ice, fruit , juice or yogurt in a blender.  

Or she get a sandwich with  cheese and a few  tomatoes on the side   or just  cherry tomatoes and peas, she can eat her weight in that if I let her.   Or fruit and water/ milk.  

 

And in our household this isnt healthy, this is the normal thing to do and we NEVER EVER tell her  that something is unhealthy or healthy, it just normal.   

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Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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 Sweet stuff shouldn't be used as snacks, they are treats .

 

My daughter  midday snack, the snack she has a few ours before dinner  exists  right now of  ice cold fruits smoothing  with juice or yogurt and it no sugar added, easy to make , just ice, fruit , juice or yogurt in a blender.  

 

But fruit is fairly sweet and fruit juice has pretty much the same amount of sugar as a Coke or other highly sweetened beverage. 

 

In some cases, adding a bit of sugar might add less overall sugar to a smoothie than adding a bit of fruit juice.  :smile:

 

See, for example, this Harvard nutritional guide to sugar in beverages:

 

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/30/2012/10/how-sweet-is-it-color.pdf

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CatPoet, pls clarify what you mean by "sweet stuff." Cookies? Candy? Sugar sprinkled on cinnamon toast?

 

Fauxpas, it's true that fruit juices contain fructose, which is a sugar. However, some people consider that fruit juice is more healthy than a soda since it contains some vitamins, and may substitute for eating a whole fruit (without the fiber, though, which is desirable). The chart doesn't make those distinctions, but the website does elsewhere
  http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/ . Yes, guzzling fruit juice means lots of calories and sugar intake. As with all things, moderation is key.

 

It also helps to consider the context in which sugar is being consumed. I have no problem with kids eating a certain amt of sweets or fruits. Normal kids are very active with higher metabolism than adults, and that's why they need the snacks that are the subject of this thread. Their bodies need that sugar and should be burning it up.

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Well, I forgot I am Swedish. *smile*  

Sweet stuff is candy, cookies, added sugar on toast or anything with added sugar.    I grew up with natural sugar was ok,  fruits and  berries and we eat in seasons  , so in a 1 month there is no more berries, only pears and apples  and the odd orange or satsumas at Christmas.  

Juice in Sweden cant have  added sugar and  of course everything in moderation.   She get one smoothie,  not 4, it also contains fibers, minerals, vitamins  and I do think that is better in the long run then one coke, which a 2 year old shouldn't have.  They have also proven that kids eat more  "healthy" stuff if they dont get to know it is healthy  and thinks it is normal.

 
Yes my daughter does  get sugars, she gets 1 spoon of home made  cloudberry jam  or  lingon berry jam for her oatmeal in the morning  and  candy on Saturdays and a cookie  with special fika  ( our  coffee ceremony and  national lube).

 

FauxPas, you assume that Swedish coke has  corn syrup, we dont, it is made with beet sugar.   We dont grown enough corn to make it to the high fructose corn syrup,  we use beets.

 

 

 

Some else my kid loves in  rice porridge ( unsweetened , because that is the recipe)  with  fruit  when it gets colder.  

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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I was trying to be a little bit lighthearted about this topic, but I guess I didn't express myself very well. I don't want to argue about fructose in one thing being different than fructose in another or whether sucrose is superior to fructose. Chemistry has given some pretty good answers on these topics, while nutrition sometimes seems to be less of a developed science. djyee100, I really don't disagree with you! 

 

My personal philosophy, if it matters, is that it's better to restrict overall sugar intake but moderation is a nice approach and eating balanced meals in general is a good idea. A bit of sweet now and then can be an OK thing.  :smile:

Edited by FauxPas (log)
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Great  snack for  children  3 years and up. This is from an American  foodforum voted best  10 snacks in 2000...

 

????

I felt I was going back in time when I read these recipes. They sound like snacks from the 1950s or maybe 1960s, before the health food and natural food movements gained traction in the U.S. in the 1970s. I don't know any American parents who would feed snacks with this amt of fat and sugar to their kids now. Conventional instant mixes (sugar, preservatives, synthetic flavors) and high-sugar snacks like twinkies are more likely off the table rather than on it. At a minimum, many if not most parents are asking questions about these foods.

 

Even if these snacks are "popular" choices, I wouldn't call them informed choices.

 

Admittedly, I don't know every parent in the U.S. But I don't see recipes like this in cooking magazines either, except in ads by the food manufacturers themselves. Even then many food manufacturers seem aware that parents are concerned about excessive sugar and fat for their children, and the need to encourage kids to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.

 

I can only say, don't believe everything you read on the web.

 

This post and the next were moved from the discussion of ideas and suggestions for snacks for little kids, to this one, which debates healthful food choice for kids.

Edited by Mjx
Host note added. (log)
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djyee 100: that was the people of the forum voted as most popular snacks.  

 

I wouldnt feed it to my child but my healthy recipe was moved to healthy eating for kids, so I guessed that type of recipe was ok.

Cheese is you friend, Cheese will take care of you, Cheese will never betray you, But blue mold will kill me.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I've read eGullet occasionally for quite a while, joined but haven't posted too much. (Enjoying everything, folks!)

 

I'll stick my figurative toe in the water for this topic because it brought up a memory from the past when my daughter was a toddler and a bit older.

 

Although I was brought up on excellent meat and potatoes cooking in the Midwest of the U.S. (pepper was the most 'exotic' spice we had! :rolleyes: )------ as soon as I moved to California at age 19 I learned about all the different foods that I'd never had------ and immediately loved 99.99% of them.

 

My then husband was a person who never got past meat and potatoes and I was determined that my daughter would have ecletic food tastes. So when I wanted to introduce a new food to her I would just put it on our plates but not hers. (He bravely went along.) 

 

Daughter: Mommy, what's that? (Pointing to the new food).

Me: That's grown up food.

Daughter: I want some.

Me: When you grow up, honey, you can have all you want.

Daughter: I want some now.

Me: (Reluctantly) OK, but just a little bite.

 

Well, color me manipulative but it worked for almost everything as long as the food wasn't too 'strange' or spicy and I didn't overuse that tactic so it stayed fresh. 
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