Eat your Colors

At dinner tonight I shared a secret with my children. I hated vegetables growing up. I would eat cherry tomatoes out of our family garden and pick the cucumbers out of salad, but that was it. I loathed the frozen spinach that was boiled with love, the bagged shelled peas that ended up microwaved on my plate. When my parents would try and placate my veggie hating self she would let me go to the shiny white freezer and pick out which veggie was for dinner that night. I picked what would be easiest to hide in my socks and then flush down the toilet at the end of dinner. (Sorry for the spoiler Mom ;)

As a family, we eat our colors and therefor our vegetables. My kids are very healthy in general, and we don't give them vitamins from a bottle, we give them vitamins by giving them colorful food. It turns out that fresh vegetables are awesome. So very awesome. And anything roasted in an oven at 400 degrees with olive oil, salt and pepper and occasionally tossed to brown evenly tastes like heaven. 

As soon as we realized that spooning fake food into our babies was not actually good for them we started them on good table food and veggies right away. Our youngest who is now 20 months old has been eating table food, modified in size, since he was 8 months old. He breastfed exclusively until he was 6 months and then for two months while we waited for teeth that never came (don't panic he now has 5 little teeth), he enjoyed things you may have never, ever heard of parents giving to their children. Like lightly cooked and still runny egg yolk with a pinch of sea salt. What about salmonella you say? Well, chances are that pastured eggs from well kept chickens do not carry it. I've been eating raw cookie dough and under cooked eggs for years, and am still well. For more information on traditional first foods for baby, check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. When my youngest was new my good friend and chiropractor Julie Vollertson recommended I read this cookbook and it amazed me how little I still knew about food and eating traditionally.

So, how do I get my kids to eat their vegetables? I make them a big part of our meals. Like I mentioned last post, meat does not hold a big spot on our dinner plates and so there is a lot of everything else, and I don't mean french fries and bread. Children will not starve themselves. If they don't eat what's on their plate, I don't make my kids sit there in a state of shame or a standoff. We have a saying. "Dinner is dinner, eat it or don't." 

First kid friendly tip of the night: We try to make sure one piece of each meal is fool proof and something they will enjoy for sure, but make sure not to let them fill up on it alone. If you eat everything and are hungry, seconds is more fruit or veggie. I often put a cutting board of fresh fruit or veg in the middle of the table and let my kids pick from that to round out their plates, offering them a sense of control over their meal.

Next kid friendly tip of the night: Offer a wide variety of veggies to your little ones at different times, snacks and meals and eventually they'll find some things they get excited over, and so will you.