It's ok to go slow when it comes to your kids
It’s been a slow transition in our household but we are well on our way to eating more real food and making healthier choices. I hate to admit it, but my children were eating way too much processed foods with added sugar. I have 3 children and 2 are quite fussy eaters so in order to not cause a rebellion I have slowly made some changes over time to reduce the processed foods and replace them with delicious real foods.
Take, for example, breakfast. The first step I took was to buy smaller sized boxes of cereals and not to rush to replace them once empty. All the while introducing a more cooked breakfast option say, poached eggs with some haloumi and cooked tomato. After a while, I noticed that I could stop buying the cereals and they weren’t missed at all.
Lunchboxes were quite bread heavy with some packaged food of some sort always thrown in as a filler. Swapping to thin wraps instead of a sandwich was easy. Cooking extra at dinner time is a great tip and leftovers which are more protein based, are more satisfying and I’m noticing the kids are coming home from school less hungry.
Adding more vegetables instead of the packaged foods has slowly become accepted. We are loving baby cucumbers at the moment- perfect split down the middle to dip into pesto!
The main message is to not make a big deal out of transitioning to real food. The last thing we want is for food to be classed as either good or bad. Teach your children that by eating real food they are making healthy choices. Processed foods can often masquerade as healthy choices for example fruit juices, so helping our children recognise this will make a big difference for their health over time.
Check out this excellent link by Ditch the Carbs- 10 Tricks to Help Your Child Eat Real Food.
Beth and Fran
