Green Parenting and Nutritional Intelligence
My mom always liked to see a rainbow of colors on our plates and I feed Indie in the same way. The more colors, the more vitamins she’s getting. The more veggies and fruits she’s eating, the less packaged food she’s eating.
Rather than focus too narrowly on the food pyramid by day, some experts recommend thinking about what you and your chlid are eating throughout the week? Missed some veggies veggies Monday? Try again on Tuesday. Indie happens to really like orange things lately. Oranges, carrots, cheddar cheese and goldfish crackers. Ok that last one isn’t a healthfood but it’s not potato chips either, so I figure she might as well have fun with it. Some weeks she vetoes yogurt, what I consider nature’s wonder food, and this week she keeps asking for it.
There’s an interesting Q&A about “green” parenting in the NYT this week. I do find it hard to believe that people are hard-wired to love salty, over-the-top sugary foods but rather we’re more susceptible to the advertising that accompanies fast food. I still eat the occassional fast food meal on the road but my tastes and preferences for food were built on a foundation of eating at home most of the time. So are Indie’s. She eats her share of french fries but asks for pears, applesause, carrots, etc.
I also liked the point in the article that children don’t need to eat bland food all the time, to eat what the parents eat. So although I give Indie chicken nuggets and applesauce, she also gets a sampling of the bean dish or spicy noodles we might be having at the adult dinner hour. Also we’re trying the purees from the cookbook I mentioned in an earlier post. Success! They were very good and not noticable, except that my mac n cheese was more orange than usual. No worries, that’s Indie’s favorite color this month!