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Many would describe my boys as adventurous eaters - lovers of blue cheese, caviar, sardines, horse tails growing along the side of the road, and just about anything else they can get their hands on. In full transparency, it is something I feel proud of - something I’ve worked hard for. That isn’t meant to shame anyone whose children don’t eat that way. We all have different strengths when it comes to raising our kids and I definitely struggle in some areas more than others, BUT creating an exploratory palette is not one of them! I’ve had a lot of moms ask me about the types of foods I feed my kids and how I get them to eat the way they do. We all want the best for our kids (that goes without saying) and most of us are aware that eating a processed diet doesn’t always align with that vision of health for our children, so how do we support their health through food? Here are a few tips.
The earlier the better! I’m talking way back - like in utero. Our kids are first exposed to flavors before they are even born. Flavors from the mother’s diet are transmitted to amniotic fluid and swallowed by the fetus..1 By as early as 8 weeks of pregnancy, taste buds have begun to form, which means we can influence flavor preferences from around 8 weeks gestation!2 Once baby is born, flavors pass from mother to baby through breastmilk - another opportunity for us to expose our babies to new flavors. Around 6 months of age, or whenever your child is ready to start solids based on their readiness cues, start with protein, high quality fats, and vegetables (before introducing fruit) to prevent a preference for sweets. Great first foods are egg yolks, fermented cod liver oil, pureed meats, avocado, and steamed sweet potato or carrots.3
However, many moms I encounter have toddlers and older children at home and are curious about how they can expand the diversity of food at that age. My advice here is to start small. Add one new food to an already familiar plate. Don’t push it. Act indifferent. Many children require 15 - 20 exposures before they will even TASTE a new food.4 Repeated exposure is the key to acceptance. My oldest, Santi, was convinced he didn’t like Brussels sprouts. I kept making them for my youngest and myself, just leaving one or two on his plate “in case he changed his mind”. The other day he decided to taste one and to his surprise, he liked it! It probably took around 20 rounds of discarded Brussels sprouts before he decided he actually liked them. Don’t give up, just keep offering.
Other times it’s not that the child is refusing the foods offered, but more that the parents don’t know WHAT to offer. What foods are most nutrient dense and make the biggest impact when it comes to our kids' health? How do we create a balanced plate? My tips for creating toddler/child plates is similar to what I recommend to most of my adult clients.
Start a meal with a raw veggie appetizer (this is when kids are hungriest and most likely to eat whatever is offered. It’s also great for blood sugar balance to prevent toddler meltdowns at the park later. Let them snack on this while you work on the meal).
When forming a meal, begin with an organic (or wild caught when it comes to fish) animal protein such as: chicken, salmon, cod, sardines, ground beef, steak, bacon, ribs, grass-fed meat stick, etc.
Add two vegetables to the plate (cooked or raw). Some of our favorites include: cucumber, celery, carrots, sweet bell peppers, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, spinach, sugar snap peas, cabbage, and zucchini.
Bring in a starchy vegetable, gluten-free grain, or legume (this shouldn’t make up the majority of the meal). Our go-to’s include: sweet potato, white potato, white rice, brown-rice noodles, lentils, or black/pinto beans.
Make sure there’s plenty of satiating and brain-boosting healthy fat. This could include: butter, ghee, avocado, olive oil, nut butters, and full-fat dairy. Avoid inflammatory seed + vegetable oils.
If you’re having a hard time envisioning this, here are a few examples of what a toddler plate might look like:
Meal 1: Salmon Tacos
Start with an appetizer of celery + carrot
Salmon tacos (salmon tossed in taco seasoning + sauteed in lots of butter, served in an almond flour tortilla)
Home-made slaw (cabbage + carrot, mayo, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, sea salt, pepper)
Sauteed sweet potato + Brussels sprouts (in lots of butter + sea salt + herbs)
Lime slice
Meal 2: Ground Beef Pasta
Start with an appetizer of cucumber + sweet bell pepper
Ground beef pasta (ground beef, zucchini, finely chopped mushroom + onion, and kalamata olives - all sauteed in butter. Simmered in red tomato sauce. Served over brown rice noodles).
Meal 3: Burgers
Start with an appetizer of celery + cucumber
Grass-fed burger patty topped with cheese and served with avocado, pickles, and potato fries (gluten free bun optional)
My approach is: feed your child a modification of whatever you are eating - model good eating habits. This has benefits for both you and your family! Don’t be a short order cook and make various meals for each member of the family. Presentation might be different, but the ingredients should be about the same - occasionally I’ll switch out something that might be harder for my youngest one to chew and swallow, like lettuce leaves for cucumber. While on the topic of chewing - chewing is SO important for jaw development and we do much less of it than our ancestors. In order to promote a healthy jaw, which contributes to straight teeth, proper nose breathing, prevention of cavities, etc., offer harder to chew foods often and avoid things like pouches when possible. If you trust your little one not to swallow gum, Falim (a harder Turkish gum) is a good way to get extra chewing exercise in.
Now here’s the fun part (for me). There are some foods which are extra nutrient dense. I think of these as “supplements” which are more bioavailable than synthetic vitamins, which means we can absorb and utilize them to a greater extent in the body. The foods I consider to give this extra boost are: caviar, sardines, bone broth, fermented cod liver oil, raw beef liver, raw milk, and seaweed. Here’s how we incorporate them:
Caviar: my boys eat this by the spoonful (and yours will too if you introduce it early enough!), but an easy way to hide it is in smoothies or pasta.
Sardines: straight out of the can - they’re delicious! Best is skin on, bones in.
Bone broth: replace the cooking water in rice with bone broth to make it extra nourishing (add in butter + garlic + turmeric + sea salt if you’re looking for something your kids can’t get enough of!)
Fermented cod liver oil: capsules are an easy option if your kids are able to swallow them, but my kids prefer to chew up the capsules.
Raw beef liver: I freeze raw liver in small pieces then cut them up even smaller for the boys to swallow (my youngest chews it up) with milk or water a couple of times a week.
Raw milk: multiple times a day in place of conventional milk.
Seaweed: in the form of nori - a tasty, salty snack!
When it comes to fruit, I try to offer it with a protein/fat or after a meal, rather than on an empty stomach. Fruit is full of nutrients, but it can still cause a blood sugar spike when there’s nothing else in the belly to slow down absorption. Same goes for other sweet treats!
We’ve talked about which foods to focus on - to put it simply: WHOLE foods. I think it’s important to address this before talking about which things to avoid. Overall, I believe it’s crucial to get nutrients from each food group (unless there is a food sensitivity or allergy to something like dairy). Really the only two areas I recommend avoiding are processed foods (as much as possible) and gluten-containing foods. These are often inflammatory and aren’t doing the body any favors in terms of fueling nutrient stores and growth. If it comes in a package and has a long list of ingredients, put it back on the shelf. As a mom to two young boys, I can appreciate the convenience of easy to grab foods - when I do opt for something pre-packaged, I make sure it: doesn’t contain seed/vegetable oils, is organic, isn’t too high in sugar, doesn’t contain gluten, and that I know the source of each ingredient listed (for example, almond flour comes from almonds - a “whole” food). However, it’s not much harder to cut up an apple, throw in a string cheese and some pre-cut carrots, and call it good! If you have the bandwidth to skip processed foods completely, all the better.
I know a challenge for many is what to buy at the grocery store. A week of groceries in our house looks something like this:
Costco
Block of cheese
Organic cucumber
Avocado
Organic deli turkey
Organic chicken sausage
Grass-fed beef burger patties
Organic chicken breast
Organic lentil soup
Siete almond flour tortillas
Organic apples
Organic berries
Organic walnuts
Wagyu beef jerky
Brown rice ramen
Organic celery
Organic Brussels sprouts
Seaweed snacks
Kimchi
Sardines
Bone broth
Almond butter
Kalamata olives
Trader Joe’s
Frozen organic wild blueberries
Variety of seasonal fruit: nectarine, mango, banana, watermelon, etc.
Organic string cheese
Raw blue cheese
Organic cashew yogurt
Plain whole fat organic yogurt
Organic spinach
Organic sweet bell peppers
Organic slaw mix (cabbage + carrots)
Organic carrots
Organic butter
Organic whipping cream
Organic broccolini
Organic cilantro
Organic microgreens
Gluten free burger buns
Organic sweet potato
Organic white potato
Salmon or cod
White rice
Black or pinto beans
Rice cakes
Olive oil potato chips
Chomps meat sticks
Specialty items
Wild whitefish caviar (local grocery store - lasts more than 1 week)
Grass-fed beef liver (local grocery store - lasts more than 1 week)
2 gallons of raw milk (pre-ordered via Dungeness Valley drop site - contact them to find a drop site near you!)
Remember - not every meal needs to be a well thought out and beautifully constructed ordeal. “Fast food” can be healthy too - follow the steps above to put together a healthy and satisfying “snack plate” for your little one. It takes no cooking and very little prep. Don’t get discouraged if you start to incorporate these foods and your kids don’t take to them right away. Keep offering, just one new food at a time. Suggest they play with their food - touch it, bring it to their lips, touch it with their tongue. Over time, these new foods won’t be so scary… and maybe they’ll even find a new favorite! Happy eating!
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