organic foods

[Guest guest]

Kara

 

Human breast milk has only about 5% of its calories as protein. Your

young ones are growing fast but not as fast as a newborn - so just

keep exposing them to a variety of fruits, vegs, whole grains and

legumes. Just being in the same room, then at the same table, then on

their plate, then maybe a tiny taste, then maybe a real bite etc -

each of these is " trying it " and it often takes a large number of

these exposures to get to the point of actually liking a new " scary " food.

 

It sounds like your children get plenty of protein. As long as they're

eating a variety of healthful foods, eating whole grains, plus the

dairy (inspite of my misgivings of what negatives you get along with

the dairy protein) they should be fine in that category. Just to be

sure, keep a food diary for a few days and add up the grams of protein

from all sources- even the relatively small amounts in fruits and

veggies. I think you'll be surprised just how much protein they get.

 

Some health food stores and coops have RD's (Registered Dietitans) on

staff that you could check with. If you end up seeing a professional

just keep in mind, anybody can call themselves a nutritionist but an

RD has met certain education/training requirements.

 

Mark Rifkin, MS, RD has a msg board on vegsource.com which is for

people interested in nutrition careers - so it's not appropriate to

ask him personal dietary questions in that forum. However,

occasionally vegsource has a " call-in with questions " window of time

and I think you can make appointments with him. Check the vegsource

website for the next one.

 

For our family I find the easiest way to get leafy greens in a child's

diet (and his parents!) is to keep some fresh collard greens in the

fridge (they keep quite awhile) and some frozen blueberries and

strawberries in the freezer.

 

I make a smoothie with

 

orange juice

1 banana

frozen strawberries & blueberries or just blueberries

1 - 3 fresh collard leaves, with the main rib torn off

 

If you use enough blueberries the dark purple hides any green tint

from the collard leaves. The red from the strawberries alone will mix

with the green to give a brown color that is not as appealing to kids

so be sure to use some blueberries.

 

At first I didn't let my son see me make this collard smoothie- he

would still be asleep and we would have them for breakfast. Now he

doesn't care if he sees big strange green leaves going into the blender.

 

Peace and Good Health,

Danita