Since there was an overwhelming vote on Instagram to do a recurring “what we eat in a day post”, here is the first! This is just what my littles eat. I haven’t decided if I am going to do a separate post on what my husband and I eat or combine it all. Logging everything they ate and taking quick pictures actually took more time than I expected. I think I will aim to do this biweekly. My intention with these posts is to give a good snapshot of what our family eats from day to day, to show that eating whole foods doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming, and to give you ideas for your own family. I won’t be planning ahead for these posts because I want it to be our real day to day – good days and hectic days and on the go days.
I figured I should also give a little introduction to our “food philosophy” as a family. Since my children are very young, I believe it is my responsibility to provide a well balanced, nutrient dense diet for them. They do not know what is best for them yet, so my job as a parent is to help them build a healthy relationship with food and a firm foundation. I feel very fortunate to have learned about how many adulthood diseases are a result of childhood diet and the importance of building a strong immune system in the first few years of life *before* I had my first baby. I don’t ask my children what they want because it usually just doesn’t turn out well. Instead, I give them good options and let them eat what they want from those options. My three and a half year old is at the age where I am just beginning to let him choose what I make occasionally or I’ll give him a couple options to choose from. I also let both my older two pick out produce at the grocery store which is fun for them and allows them to feel involved and excited about what they’re eating. Having a garden has been a huge part of their interest in food as well. We do not have a “label” per se but the littles and I are almost 100% “whole foods plant based” with a focus on nutrient dense plants like greens and beans. My husband eats some meat, fish and eggs (I also eat fish occasionally) and my children will sometimes have some if they want it (usually they do not). I encourage my husband to keep animal products less than 10% of calories since that’s what studies show in order to avoid chronic disease.
My children drink water the majority of the time. Very occasionally they will ask to drink soy milk and we give them kombucha too. Since I had my third baby, I’ve been pumping and giving my daughter a couple ounces of breastmilk per day, usually with or after dinner.
I should also mention that my 3 year old has an anaphylactic allergy to cashews and is pretty sensitive to cross contact so we avoid all tree nuts and have bought seeds and dried fruit from an allergy free facility in the past; although he’s been a little better with seeds processed in the same facility as nuts since we’ve given him a supplement called Restore. For this reason, you will not see tree nuts on our plates but I am absolutely a proponent of nuts for children if there are no allergies. We do still expose my daughter to nuts regularly but we don’t like to have them on the highchairs or near my son to avoid flare ups.
This is a very typical breakfast lately although I’m sure you will see more smoothies as the weather becomes warmer. My daughter (21 months) usually wakes up before her big brother (3.5 years) and immediately starts saying “food, food”. She typically eats about half of a breakfast cookie before he wakes up. He almost always asks for bread when he wakes up, one piece “frozen” and one piece “toasty”. If I don’t have any homemade einkorn sourdough bread, he likes Berlin Bakery sprouted spelt bread (which I buy in the frozen section at Whole Foods). They always have fruit as well, whatever we have on hand. If we don’t have fresh fruit, I will thaw out frozen mango and cut in tiny pieces. Today he ate 2.5 pieces of bread and his sister had 1.5. He asked for plain bananas which I gave him but also ate a couple spoonfuls of hemp seeds. He likes everything to be separate. He didn’t eat the strawberries although he normally loves them. My daughter ate all her strawberries and banana. They were also snacking on plain cacao nibs after breakfast when we opened our Thrive Market box.
Lunch is always pretty simple, I mean all their meals are really. My 3 year old asked for sweet potato a couple days ago and I just bought some last night and he requested that today for lunch. I roasted some sweet potatoes (he only likes white or purple) with a tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper which took maybe 20 minutes to cook. We happened to have quite a bit of vegetables in the fridge so I gave them a variety to choose from. The beans are lupini beans which I also get from Thrive Market, they are so good!
My daughter started with the snap peas and took some bites out of the sweet potato fries. I was also eating cucumbers with hummus with them and she saw the hummus and asked for it. She loves to dip veggies in the hummus and just eat the hummus plain off the veggie. She ate all her snap peas and I gave her more. I don’t think she touched the lupini beans but she ate a lot of hummus.
My son ate all his sweet potatoes and I gave him more. He wasn’t willingly eating the lupini beans so I will often play a little game to get him to eat something if I know it’s something he likes. He calls it “fingers” but basically I hold up as many fingers as he has items to eat and take away a finger every time he puts something in his mouth. He loves this. We did this for the lupini beans, carrots, and cucumbers. He didn’t want the snap peas which is fine! He ate really well. He even tried a little hummus on his finger when I bribed him with chocolate. Honestly I do not encourage bribing, it’s not a good habit, but I guess I do it sometimes to get my kids to just try food. I would never force him to eat it if he didn’t like it. He used to love hummus when he was younger but lately he doesn’t want it. I try to reintroduce foods he “doesn’t like” in case he decides one day he likes it. He didn’t like it but I praised and rewarded him for trying. They both shared a square of 85% dark chocolate form Alter Eco.
Before their nap I had made a chocolate cauliflower smoothie for myself and they both asked to have some. It has banana, cauliflower, mushroom powder, cacao, maca, ground flax and coconut milk.
Dinners look a lot like lunches which look a lot like snacks. The one thing I intentionally try to do is keep a steady variety which is important for a diverse microbiome / strong immune system and also to keep them familiar with many different types of food. Studies show it takes an average of 8 – 15 tries for a child to recognize a food as familiar. Tonight I served steamed (frozen) broccoli topped with some garlic I sliced thin with a ceramic slicer (don’t slice the tip of your finger) and sautéed quick in a little extra virgin olive oil, quinoa, and avocado. My daughter ate some broccoli and some of the crispy garlic but then said she didn’t like the garlic. She ate as much quinoa as she could get into her mouth and not in her bib or on the floor. She didn’t eat the avocado, she’s been boycotting it lately. I knew my son wouldn’t eat the avocado but I put items on his plate anyway and he can choose not to eat them. Occasionally things I *KNOW* he won’t eat, he ends up eating. I agreed to swap out some pumpkin and sunflower seeds for the avocado. He ate the crispy garlic first (something he specifically asks for) and he ate almost all his broccoli and the seeds. He didn’t want the quinoa even though he has gone through seasons where he cannot get enough of it.
My 3 year old went in the fridge after dinner and got some more baby carrots for himself. We also had some whole wheat einkorn sourdough cracker dough that we never got to make during the day and baked them. Both my kids had crackers before bed.
