Category Archives: Foodie Fridays

Energy-Smart Nutrition for New Moms

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The concept of “eating for two” has always been associated with pregnancy, but you shouldn’t stop eating for three (or more!) as soon as your children are born, especially if you’re nursing. What a new mom eats can have a direct effect on her babies’ health, so it’s important to be aware of what foods and drinks you’re putting into your body and to make sure you’re getting enough calories and calcium for everyone.

Additionally, new moms who follow healthy, balanced post-baby diets will likely be more energized and better-equipped to handle the stresses of newborns, no matter how many you have! To keep yourself and your new children healthy as you head into post-pregnancy life, use the following guidelines to get an idea of what nutritional choices are best for new moms—and their new multiples!

General Guidelines:

New nursing moms should still be eating more calories than they just need for themselves and should focus on getting a lot of low-fat calcium. Avoid spicy foods like chilies and peppers and stick to foods that are easy to digest. Eat nutrient-rich meals and snacks at regular intervals to keep your energy up; you’ll need a lot of it if you’re dealing with multiples!

Protein

One of the best ways to keep your energy up as a new mom is to make sure you’re getting lots and lots of good-for-you proteins. Lean chicken and salmon are two great ways to consume this protein; salmon is especially high in good fats and can assist with brain function, but be careful not to eat too much of it since it’s high in mercury. Aside from meat, eggs are also high in protein. Tempeh, tofu and beans are good vegetarian and vegan food options.

Whole grains

Whole grains provide folic acid, a nutrient crucial in newborn development. Aside from that, whole grains are wonderful sources of fiber and iron. Make a bowl of oatmeal, use whole grain bread for sandwiches and choose whole grain pasta options to make sure you’re getting a good dose.

Calcium

New moms need more calcium than most women, so make sure you’re filling your body with good-for-you calcium sources. Low-fat yogurts, skim milk and low-fat cheeses are easy to work into quick and easy meals and snacks; add some fruit to your yogurts for an extra serving of nutrients.

Fruits and Veggies

Getting plenty of vitamins and antioxidants as a new mom is crucial for a healthy diet and will assist with your babies’ healthy development, too. Blueberries are an excellent source of antioxidants and oranges are a great source of vitamin C for nursing women who need extra quantities. Leafy greens like spinach and kale are also good antioxidants and provide a host of other vitamins new moms need.

Drinks

Although you may feel like you need a constant stream of espresso with newborns, going overboard on the caffeine isn’t a good idea. A cup of coffee is fine, but drinking one every five minutes will backfire when you when you crash later on. Keep the caffeine to a minimum and instead energize with some of the foods mentioned above.

Author Bio: This is a guest post by Meredith K. on behalf of Lightlife®. For high-protein products and vegetarian recipes for new moms on a vegetarian diet, visit www.lightlife.com.

Teach a Child to Grocery Shop…

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My husband has a very physical job, and our daughters, M and J, are incredibly active kids. It takes a little more effort on my part to fit exercise into my day, since I have a desk job, but I do my best. I will admit that I haven’t been good about working out since we moved to El Paso, so I’m thankful for Goddess in Progress‘s weight loss contest giving me the push I need to get back in shape. I like aerobics and Pilates, with the guidance of exercise videos in the privacy of my home. The twins and our cat join in with differing levels of effort.

Alongside intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, social responsibility, and self esteem, my husband and I believe that it is our responsibility to teach our children about physical well-being.

Unfortunately, our daughters’ school isn’t helping. Although they have daily physical education, they’re teaching the kids all about junk food. Cookies and slushies are available to purchase at lunch time. No carrots. No sliced apples or bananas. After school, there are cupcakes and cookies on sale, tempting the kids right before they exit the school and are handed over to their parents. On Halloween, each child was asked to bring a bag of candy for the school trick-or-treat event. Every classmate’s birthday heralds cupcakes with neon icing.

The other day, J volunteered to accompany me to the grocery store while M stayed home with Daddy. As I reached for the box of Cheerios M had requested, J asked whether she could choose her own cereal.

“Sure,” I told her, “But you have to choose one that has 6 grams or fewer of sugar per serving. Any more than that makes it a treat cereal instead of a breakfast cereal.”

I showed J the nutrition facts on the side of cereal box I was holding, pointing out where the sugar grams were. She picked one brightly coloured sugary cereal after another, rejecting each one for having too much sugar. I suggested that she’d have better luck if she looked at some granola boxes. She finally settled on Kashi Honey Sunshine.

6 grams of sugar“Mommy,” J asked me, “can I teach M how to look at sugar next time when she comes shopping with us?”

She had her chance tonight at dinner, when M asked for a third serving of Welch’s sparkling grape juice. My husband told her that he thought she’d had enough sugar for the day, and offered her water instead. J showed M how to read the label and exclaimed, “38 sugars! That’s a whole bunch.”

“That’s true,” I told her. “This juice is a treat. We drink it for the flavour, not because it’s feeding our bodies. It’s fine to have a treat every so often, but it’s very important to make sure that we get all the different things our bodies need. We need protein to be strong, and fiber not to have hurty poops. Our body needs some fat to stay healthy, but not too much.”

For the rest of meal, the girls pored over the nutrition label on the juice bottle, asking about the different nutrients. My favourite was J’s reading of calcium as “Colosseum.” There was something quite lovely about the image of ancient architecture bolstering our bones.

I taught myself about healthy eating in my early 20s. Both my parents developed high blood pressure in their 30s, and I didn’t want to go down that path. Rich, fatty Bengali curries with massive quantities of rice must have contributed to their cardiovascular issues and my father’s subsequent Type II diabetes.

It certainly helps that both my husband and I love to cook. It’s hard to put too much junk in our bodies when we’re aware of every ingredient we eat. We don’t tend to count calories, and we’re not averse to eating out, but we try to be responsible, while allowing ourselves our treats. I’m fond of chocolate, and my husband of red wine.

I hadn’t planned to teach our girls to read nutrition labels at 5. I imagined that the model we set at home would show them how to make good food decisions. Peer pressure, though, is a strong force, and M told us today that she had bought 6 cookies at lunch to share with her friends. We don’t want the girls to feel like they need to diet or deny themselves the occasional sweet treat. However, we do want them to understand that while eating is a social and pleasurable activity, nutrition is the primary role of food. Food for taste alone is an extra, and to be taken in moderation.

Are you surprised to hear that junk food is being sold in elementary schools? What would you do if you discovered this in the school your children were to attend?

Kids in the Kitchen

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Every time that I start to stress about J and M’s eating habits, I remind myself of our parenting goal: Healthy, happy, whole adults.

Of course I want our children to have a healthy diet in the here and now, but it’s far more important to me that they be equipped to make good food choices even when I’m not around. I’ve taken three basic approaches that have worked for us:

  1. Educating our daughters on what makes up a balanced diet, and how different foods contribute to their healthy growth.
  2. Including them in food purchase and preparation decisions and activities.
  3. Demonstrating that listening to their bodies is valuable and taking a non-combative approach to food.

I keep meaning to copy a friend’s brilliant idea of displaying the USDA food guidelines—the old pyramid, or the new plate—on the refrigerator.

ChooseMyPlate.gov image of a healthy food breakdown.

Even though we don’t have the picture up, we have always talked about meals in terms of needing a protein, a fruit or veggie, and a starch. We’ve also talked about the need for dairy, but since the girls drink milk morning and night, I haven’t required that they include dairy in every meal. I try to keep my explanations of why food choices are important accurate, but simple. We need protein for strong muscles. Fruits and vegetables help our bodies fight germs, and help us with healthy skin, hair, eyes and nails. We need carbohydrates from energy. Milk products help our bones be strong. Our body needs some fat so that it can get all the goodness out of other foods, but too much can be unhealthy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with sweet or fatty foods, but they are just for flavour, rather than nutrition. I’ve rarely turned down the girls’ requests for sweets, because they ask for very reasonable portions: a cookie or a single piece of chocolate.

Our whole family enjoys food: eating it, preparing and cooking it, even playing with it. If only mine wasn’t the Great Black Thumb, we might enjoy growing it. The kitchen is the heart of our home; I’m old-school like that. It should come as no surprise that our daughters have always been welcome in the kitchen.

My husband may have shortened my life by a year or two by placing our infants in their bouncy seats on the kitchen counter while he cooked. In retrospect, though, I’m glad we’ve always had them with us. Once they could sit, I’d pull the girls’ highchairs into the kitchen, and give them each a plastic bowl and spoon to bang while I made our meals. When I had cleanup time on my hands, they would help me stir. If I needed to get my hands dirty, J and M could splash their hands in the bubble-filled kitchen sink.

As they approached age 2.5, M and J could be trusted not to put everything in their mouths, so their kitchen repertoire broadened significantly. They could help me measure out ingredients, even plan meals. I’d let them choose between fish and chicken, for example, or rice and couscous. Another great option was chef’s salad. I’d chop up lunchmeat and cheese, boil some eggs, grill some croutons, and present a selection of vegetables. As long as they included some of each food group, they were good. It’s easy to do the same with sandwiches, too. We baked cookies and muffins, too, but that was more of a game.

Now, at 5, J and M often help me plan our weekly grocery list. M recently observed that lasagne is a balanced meal in itself. J refused dessert at lunch yesterday because she was full. She knew there would be another ice cream opportunity soon enough. The girls came home from daycare recently telling me that they had been given soda at school. (Let me tell you that we’re not going back to that center.) They were as horrified as I was, but confessed that the cola was “sweet and yummy.” I told them that soda was a sweet treat, and they could have some when I did, a couple of times a month. There was no argument.

When the girls are full, we let them leave the table. If they’re not hungry, they don’t have to eat. They know that they won’t get anything until the next snack or meal. My husband and I both fight the urge to nag at them to eat more or clear their plates. I think it’s a natural parental impulse. We just have to keep reminding ourself that we want our daughters to stay as healthy, happy and whole as they are now.

How do you include your children in the kitchen?

Ask the Readers: Handling Picky Eaters

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It’s been a while since we’ve Asked the Readers. Please, help us out in the comments!

What is your favourite trick for tempting a picky child at mealtime?

I was quietly ecstatic when my kids first took to solid food. Fish, spinach, fennel—they loved them all. I thought they were set for a lifetime of adventurous eating. I hadn’t read far enough into child development books, though.

At around age 2, kids tend to get pickier in their eating habits. It makes sense. The hunter-gatherer argument is a compelling one. 2-year-olds stop putting anything and everything in their mouths, including many foods, because that is the age they would start straying farther from their mothers in hunter-gatherer societies. This pickiness is a survival instinct that lasts until they are old enough to make mature choices regarding what is safe to eat.

Whether their pickiness is explainable or not, picky eaters present an enormous challenge to parents. When M was at her pickiest, she could go two days on nothing but milk if nothing struck her fancy. I worried that she would starve. She’s only recently begun enjoying food again.

Please share how you deal (or would deal) with picky eaters.

Foodie Friday: Maybe Early Intervention does know what they're talking about…

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My kids are now almost two—and part of me has no idea how that happened. It seems like just a month or two ago, we were starting solid foods. And working on sleeping through the night. And outgrowing the bucket carseats.  However, since they’re not infants anymore, they do lots of fun toddler activities. One activity they go to is an Early Intervention playgroup. They have a blast there—there’s a gross motor room (think slides and swings), free play in the classroom, circle time, snack time and art. Oh, don’t even get me started on the time they did fingerpaints. Oh. My. Lord. My kids were about 18-19 months. Imagine. There was fingerpaint in hair, mouth and decorating a cute little shirt which used to sport the name of the college both Daddy and I attended—without green paint.

So,  perhaps you’re thinking—this doesn’t have a lot to do with food? Then, let me get to the point. During each group, there is a snack time. Snack time takes place at the table (without sippy cups–eep!) and the kids are offered two types of snacks. The teachers show the kids both snacks and ask, “Do you want applesauce, cracker or both”. My kids? They always want “both”. Of course they do, as they love eating out. When we started group, they also enjoyed eating most foods at home too. However, since then, they have developed into typical toddlers. A bit finicky. A bit tantrum-y. Very indecisive. So challenging.

In the last month, mealtimes have become a headache. They are requesting certain foods, then refusing to eat them. Foods they used to love get a (screamed), “No!!! No!!! No!!!” along with a violent head shake, in case Mommy is a bit slow and didn’t realize that they didn’t want that food choice. I get frustrated. They get frustrated. It’s not pretty. And I really am not an idiot. I don’t prepare six types of food for them. I don’t let them have cookies for dinner. But, it’s still frustrating. And when they’re hungry and grouchy, I get pretty grouchy myself, fairly quickly.

So, one day this week I decided to take the EI approach. I offered two choices (pasta & pear). The kiddos? They wanted, “Both”. And got really excited about it. Hmm. Since then, this has been what happens at every meal. They have eaten foods I haven’t seen them eat for months—turkey meatloaf (somehow feeling a bit wrong since we were JUST watching the wild turkeys out the window), pasta with tomato sauce, kidney beans, black beans, red pepper, cornbread….it’s all excited when they get to pick both. They’re eating much healthier and more balanced meals. And there’s almost no yelling. Maybe those Early Intervention teachers know what they’re doing. Hmm….perhaps I am a bit slow after all, since it’s taken me months to think to try this approach at home.

Anyway, I thought I’d offer up this technique in case others with toddlers were experiencing the same joy around mealtimes that I was. Oh, and a bonus? My two slow-to-speak kids? They can now say “both” very clearly.

Foodie Friday: Eating healthy foods

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Abigail's all ready to help Daddy cook!
Abigail’s all ready to help Daddy cook!

When my babies were young, it was easy to have them eat only healthy foods. We made our own babyfood, and mostly they ate veggies, fruits, rice, oatmeal and some proteins—-chicken, turkey, cheese etc….In fact, I remember once looking at their meals and commenting to my husband that we should all have that healthy a diet. However, I find that as the kids get older—they are now almost two—-healthy eating becomes more of a challenge. Other HDYDI moms have some suggestions for how to do this, I have some and I’d love to hear yours as well.

Cook with your kids
The general consensus is that kids are more likely to eat foods if they’ve helped prepare them. Now while this isn’t necessarily helpful when you’re making chocolate chip cookies, it’s certainly useful for the healthy foods. We–ok, fine, let’s be honest here—my husband does a lot of cooking with the kids, from breakfast foods on the weekends to chili or muffins or pumpkin bread. We started early, probably around a year or so, and let them sit and watch us cook at the counter. Now they are very into dumping cups of flour, sugar or eggs into the bowl and stirring is really a highlight of any cooking project. That and sampling the project as we go….

Sneak healthy foods
LauraC wrote a great post about this recently. I have nothing to add to this!

Education yourself
Do some reading on nutrition and foods for toddlers. It seems to me that recommendations change regularly—fats are good? Bad? What about carbs? I try to read the latest information on this and generally avoid the more processed foods, if possible. I ususally figure that if we made it ourselves, we know what’s in there. We tend to try to use whole wheat pasta and bread, instead of white and offer lots of fruits and veggies. I think each parent draws the line somewhere differently here.

Join a CSA
Here’s a fun way to get a bunch of local produce—and push yourselves to use  A LOT of veggies. There was just a list of local ones in our paper here.  Maybe this is just something we contemplate, but it seems like it could be a fun challenge.

 

 

Danny tries cereal and milk for the first time

Danny tries cereal and milk for the first time

Have only healthy snacks available
One HDYDI mom said that her toddlers are happy to have a healthy snack—if you give them a choice of snacks! Just make both choices something you’re happy for them to have. Ahh, toddlers.

 

 

What are your eating healthy tips? How do you keep your kids away from the junkfood and teach a love of healthy eating?

Foodie Friday: Snacks for toddlers

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Feedings toddlers—mine are 21 months—seems to be an evolving challenge. Obviously, there are all the challenges that come with toddlers’ newfound picky eating habits, as I wrote about here a few weeks ago. And that is a whole ‘nother challenge.

But sometimes, we just get stuck in a food rut. It’s that post afternoon nap time and the kids could use a snack. But what to serve them? I try to stay away from most of the processed snack foods when possible, no matter how much I enjoy goldfish crackers or teddy grahams myself. (And if you haven’t tried these pleasures as an adult yet, you should. They are delicious). However, as delicious as they are, my kids often go several meals without eating much as all. If they’re going to eat, I’d like them to eat something of substance, with some nutritional value. However, lately, we have run out of ideas. Here’s a list of our go-to options:

Applesauce
Toddler “trail mix”–cheerios mixed with some sort of dried fruits (craisins/raisins/dried papaya/prunes/apricots)
Cheddar cheese rice cakes
Fruit-pears/apples/bananas/orange
Banana bread/pumpkin bread
Mini-bagel with cream cheese
Yogurt (the mess factor here can be an issue)
Whole wheat pretzels dipped in hummus
Canned black olives

Any other go to (reasonably) healthy snacks people offer their toddlers? I’m fresh out of ideas! Help me out here….

Foodie Friday: Breastfeeding takes forever?

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I’ve been thinking about breastfeeding this week. First, LauraC reposted her thoughts about her decision to stop breastfeeding. And then, a mom posted a question in the comments about how to get regular naps when her babies fall asleep when nursing and take an hour to eat. This got me thinking some more about the whole breastfeeding experience—what helped, what didn’t, what worked and what was awful. I’ve written about this before, here and here,  as have others here and here, but I think it’s such an important topic for new moms it’s worth revisiting. I exclusively breastfed my twins for the first year, and I can look back and see the choices we made which made it work, and potential roadblocks that would have derailed breastfeeding for good. I’m glad we did it, but it certainly was challenging at times.

One comment I hear from new moms of twins a lot (and probably from new moms of singletons too, if all the babies in my life didn’t come in pairs) is that their babies take forever to eat. As in an hour. Or more. And I’m not talking about babies who are a week or two old. I’m talking about babies who are two, three or four months old and still latching on and chowing down for a significant amount of time. With a newborn, you already feel like you spend all of your time nursing—how in the world are you ever going to do anything else? And I’m not talking big projects, like dissertations (shudder–mine is still not complete) or other ambitious projects—I’m talking shower and empty the dishwasher and maybe eat lunch.  By 2 months or so, my kids were eating for maybe 15 minutes a meal. By 4-5 months, it was down to 5 minutes.

So, when people ask me how to get their babies to eat faster, I tend to just pass on the advice I got from the fantastic lactation consultant who ran the breastfeeding group I attended. Obviously, this isn’t a problem for everyone. If you’re content with your kids eating for 45 minutes to an hour, then read no more. It’s not an issue! However, if it’s driving you crazy or making you contemplate stopping breastfeeding, then read on. And, readers, if you have good suggestions that worked for you, please put them in the comments section!

1. The breast is not a place to hang out and get comfy. As soon as you stop hearing swallowing or the baby starts falling asleep, you can pull them off. Babies will tell you (loudly) if they are still hungry.

2. Be comfortable having baby go back for round two. If you cut baby off after 15 minutes and now she won’t go to sleep, it may be that she’s still hungry. Feed again. No problem.

3. You may find your babies need to eat every 2 hours for a long time. Mine certainly did, at least during the day. However, this is much less of an issue if the feedings are pretty quick.

4. Offer a pacifier after feeding if they are still fussy, but not eating much. It may be that they are looking for the comfort of sucking, not the food. However, the benefit of the paci is that Daddy or Grandma can do that, it doesn’t have to be you. Thus, time for you to eat lunch!

These are just my thoughts on this and what worked for me. Obviously, all babies are different and I am certainly not an expert in breastfeeding. However, I found this lactation consultant so instrumental in giving me the tools and information to be able to keep breastfeeding my kids. I’d recommend a lactation consultant to anyone. Other ideas? Please chime in.

Foodie Friday: The mysteries of toddlers

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As always, if you have a food related topic you’d like to see, write your suggestion in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

My 21 month old kiddos are heading quickly towards their twos. And no where can you see it more than in the changes we’ve seen lately around food. They have recently decided they are too old for highchairs, even though we had more boostery ones than many are. This change is fine with me, especially because they’d rather sit on the bar stools at the counter. Super easy for me, and they can sit and watch what I’m doing. And them wanting to eat with adult forks and spoons, also fine with me. I can toss the baby spoons and make more room in my drawer. However, the eating has gotten downright unpredictable. Mysterious, and even a bit annoying at times.

This probably isn’t fair to lump poor Abigail in with Danny in this complaint, since she is overall pretty easy with food and happy to eat whenever, wherever. However, even Abigail has gotten a bit finicky around her food choices. For example:

Foods we do NOT eat:
Meat
Pasta with tomato sauce (unless really hungry)
Any food I have spent a significant (more than 5 minutes) preparing
Many veggies, unless still frozen (see below)

Foods we LOVE:
Carbs. Any kind. The more processed, the better
Fruit: Any kind. Canned. Frozen. Fresh. Dried. Whatever.
Frozen peas. Really. They do NOT enjoy them thawed, only frozen
Lima beans (Ick. I mean, really?!)
Milk
Shredded cheese—not cubed for Danny, only shredded, preferably orange cheddar
Canned olives
Oatmeal
Mac and cheese from a box (the awful bright orange stuff their dad really likes)
Any food being offered as a free sample at Whole Foods

Arg. Seriously. And we are not a big cater to kiddos family. They get a couple of options, they can eat it or not. And, more likely than not, if it’s dinner, Danny will say no thank you. (Or, in reality, yell, yell, yell—we’re still working on single words here, much less polite, well-formed sentences).  They will love something one day, and turn up their noses at it the next. And meat of any kind, forget it! I guess I have budding little vegetarians. Their no-animal eating grandmother will be so proud. Me, I’ll just pull my hair out.

Those of you with toddlers out there—are yours doing this too? I miss my happy go lucky eaters of the baby days.

Foodie Friday: Holiday meals and two toddlers

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 As always, if you have a topic in mind that you’d like to see discussed on Foodie Fridays, or have a tip or some advice you’d like to pass on, just write it in the comments? We’d love to hear from you.

To those families out there that celebrate Christmas, I hope that you had a wonderful day yesterday. For us, the difference between celebrating Christmas with two 8 month olds and celebrating with two 20 month olds was night and day. In some ways, it was a lot harder—-they are more easily distrupted by new people and different places, as well as exciting things like, well, all those presents—-and yet in some ways this is so, so much better than last year. They actually enjoy the holiday, the people, the attention and the gifts and we could see the first glimmer of what Christmas with two little kids is like. Excitment and loss of routine and fatigue—-and fun. Lots of fun.

Anyway, unlike last year, when we ate our big holiday dinner during their afternoon nap (ahh, days of 2 naps, I miss you so!), this year they were awake and ready to participate. And yet, holiday meals aren’t really geared towards two toddlers. We wrote last week about traditions changing with babies and toddlers, and I think this is true for traditions like holidays meals as well. The days of a long, drawn-out meal with a glass of wine, or two, everyone lingering at the table to chat until later when dessert is served—those days are long gone, for us at least. My childless brother and his girlfriend—-they are free to do that until, of course, one of my kiddos goes hunting Uncle Josh for a story or to beg him to turn on the tv. (Uncle Josh has been known to really enjoy college sports on tv and MY kids, they really enjoy tv, of any kind).

And the holiday meal, in all its deliciousness? Well, not really aimed at toddler appetites either, unless you count dessert. Their favorite foods? Yogurt, blueberries, cheese, frozen peas (only frozen, not thawed—weird little kiddos), oatmeal with blueberries, pears, apples, goldfish—-none of these scrumptious foods are on a holiday dinner menu. Meat? My kids laugh at the idea of eating meat. Mashed potatoes? They’ve never liked the texture of potatoes, white or sweet. Their favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner was the spanakopita that someone brought for the handful of vegetarians there. There was none at Christmas dinner. Well, the spanakopita and the desserts. Desserts they were all over, especially the pumpkin cheesecake. So, for Christmas dinner, I got to watch my kids pick at a pile of food, and then have to feed them dinner several hours later before bed. And no, dinner is not pumpkin pie and whipped cream, as fantastic as that might be. Do I want to raise adventuresome eaters who will try anything? Sure. But, holidays are not the time when I work at expanding my kids’ culinary bounds and pushing them to try new things. Holidays are hard enough—we can have yogurt, AGAIN, for dinner. Merry Christmas, kiddos.