ORIGINALLY POSTED ON YODELINGMAMAS.COM
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Chocolate. Pizza. Wine. Cheese. If I had any say, those would be the four food groups (and I’d happily eat all of them at every meal). Which doesn’t bode well for my kids if I’m supposed to be leading by example. I know this. I really do. And lately I’ve been making a concerted effort to change my own eating habits. But it’s not easy. (Especially with one kid who’s underweight and is supposed to eat foods high in fat…butter, olive oil, etc.)
Luckily the Yahoo! Mother Board shared a lot of great ideas about how to teach healthy eating habits to kids this month. There’s no doubt I’ll be using some of these along the way.
My family has made a bit of an accidental improvement in our eating lately—we’ve been eating a lot of homegrown fruits and veggies. My brother has grown a beautiful vegetable garden at my parents’ house and my kids will pick the tomatoes and eat them like apples. We have neighbors who have shared their yummy foods as well and we’re trying to figure out where we can plant our own garden next year (we don’t get much sun thanks to our huge pine trees). Coast 2 Coast Mom had a great idea along these lines, “This past weekend for instance, we picked apples at Demarest Farms a few miles from us in North Jersey. I love exposing Li’l Boo to farm life as I fear my suburban/city boy will miss out on our human connection to the earth and the care and effort it takes to grow food.”
I only have one kid in school so far (and it’s just preschool), but I have to pack a healthy lunch for him three mornings a week. The Centsible Life has a great system for packing lunch that empowers her kids to make healthy choices. She says, “The kids have bins on top of the fridge with their names on them. Snacks get divided COMPLETELY EVENLY (anyone with more than one child will understand the importance of this). The fun thing about this is I can put something that’s fairly healthy like nuts or homemade popcorn and some ‘treatyish’ foods like bars, fruit leather, etc.” And Bonggamom makes a bunch of PB&J sandwiches ahead of time and pulls one from the freezer in the morning. Added bonus: it serves to keep everything in the lunch box cold. While my kid goes to a nut-free school (which I’m actually proud of and kind of crazy about since both my kids had/have nut allergies), there are other lunches that would work well that way too.
As a working mom, the main place I fall short is dinner. We do all sit down together, but often times I throw something together for the kids and my husband and I make our own dinners to eat after the kids go to bed. ChefDruck—whose culinary expertise is inspiring to a lay-mom like me—stresses “the importance of introducing the kids to different tastes and dishes, and the evils of kids’ meals.” I’m vowing to make her Fig and Sausage Stuffed Pork Loin next week when I’ll be home early enough one night. It sounds do-able and delicious, plus it’s a great way to use the figs I got from a neighbor’s tree. Nancy Loo had another great idea (and recipe to boot!). She’s replacing her family’s rice with quinoa—smart, right?
Goodness knows I have a lot of room for improvement. One step at a time I’m working to teach my family about healthy living and making smart choices. (But I’m not gonna lie, I’m not giving up my favorites just yet. I’ll just work a bit harder to earn them!)
*Read more great tips and thoughts about healthy eating from the Yahoo! Mother Board.
Use Your Words