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I have a friend whose son, Zander, lives on Fruit and Green Smoothies. Thier story is in ‘Greens for Life’ by Victoria Bountenko. So I would recommend those everyday. Also there is a book called “Raw Kids”, I forgot the author at the moment.
We have five children, and quite simply put, it’s part of my job as a mom to educate their palates as well as their minds and manners. They “get” to try everything we eat. There’s always plenty of food for them to eat each day, and they’ve all learned to like a wide variety of foods. A child’s taste buds learn just like any other part of his or her body—new often translates into “yuk” . . . mostly because it’s unfamiliar, or they’re expecting it to taste like something else. (Ever had a sip of something you expected to be water, but was soda instead? Exactly.) Often, kids expect everything to be sweet (as most processed foods are sweetened one way or another), or to have the background flavors of dairy, added vegetable/soy protein, or glutamic seasonings such as MSG.
Children often need to taste something new or natural numerous times before they learn to like it. I’ve heard numbers ranging from 12 to 70 individual tastes or bites.
That is what has worked for us. There has often been quite the resistance, but we’ve followed the French convention of letting them choose whether or not they eat what is offered . . . but not making anything else. Often children don’t enjoy their food much because they’re never allowed to be hungry. I’ve especially seen this in children whose parents have made eating a big deal, fraught with emotion and stress for everyone.
Nobody at our house has ever missed more than one meal, and they’ve always enjoyed the next one a whole lot more. ;o) I recognize that this approach may seem as strange as going raw does to SAD eaters . . . but this is something I’ve not only see work, but is supported by some pediatricians, as well. If you have questions or concerns, please do air them.
I surely hope this helps, and best of luck to you! I wish I could have grown up on a live diet. How different my life would have been . . .
Thank you so much for your comments. annalea, thank you for your suggestions. I have tried in the past to stick to whatever we have in the menu and have my daughter eat only that. It didn’t really work very well, since she ate only the minimal amount to stay alive and started to loose weight (she is very skinny to begin with). She eats a fair amount of fruits, but she would not eat many vegetables. She loves meat. She loves cheese. She is allergic to all nuts. My son (also very skinny) does not eat a wide variety of veggies and almost no fruit. He would also use the minimal eating approach when I don’t offer alternatives that he likes. I juice a lot to compensate for this, bu often times I find myself cooking again so they eat! I brain wash them all the time about good food/bad food, but it doesn’t seem to work in the long term. I am tired of this, and I would like them to eat more healthy, but I am having a hard time figuring out a menu that they will eat.
I have six children and there is one thing that always gets them to eat raw – DESSERT! When my children from age 1 to age 17 realized that could have dessert as a meal for any meal at any time, they were hooked. It’s pretty easy to get greens and such into raw desserts so we had a hit.
We have apple pie or banana cream pie for breakfast. A Raweo smoothie for snack. Hmmm, what’s for lunch today guys? Oh, strawberry ice cream? Sure no problem. And so it goes…
Also an easy way to get nominated for mom of the year! LOL
Peace!
We all have to start from where we are.
If you have kids that are very small that you’re feeding raw, you are LUCKY. I started raw when my daughter was 12 so I sort of missed the window.
At 2, she was force-fed by her father until she vomited, so we are dealing with life-long issues around motivation to try new foods. (I was divorced from him when it happened). Now she goes to his house and eats CRAP at will so restricting her to what we’re having is not much of a motivator. Her next SAD meal is right around the corner and she always knows it.
Even without that issue, however, annalea is totally right that many kids (big people too) get accustomed to something and it freaks them out when anything is different. Plus, young taste buds are very sensitive. Whereas we might find a SAD substitute to be very acceptable, it just doesn’t taste the same to them.
With teens, there is the added issue of peer pressure. I’m apparently the laughing stock of her friends with my pond scum, grass juice and other assorted green-ness. Even if my daughter liked a particular green smoothie, she’d NEVER let any of her friends see her drinking one!!! Plus, pizza is very social for teens and so is fast food. The best I can hope for is to influence healthier choices for social eating occasions.
Anyway, I can get her to make herself fruit smoothies with Chia now, and I’m negotiating 1 leaf of romaine or 2 leaves of spinach as an add-in. She likes fruit and nuts. She still grouses that roasted, salted nuts are better, but she’ll eat them raw. I’m teaching her how to make sauces with raw nuts in the blender, which she thinks is fun and good. I’ve tried having her grow veges, etc. That was all fun, but didn’t motivate her to eat them. She will eat an occasional salad now and then when she’s feeling internally motivated to be healthy. I congratulate her on her choice.
I agree with EasyCheetah – I can get my kid and her friends to do just about any dessert I concoct. Avocado chocolate mousse w/ raspberries or pineapple are BIG hits. Chia puddings also rock. Breakfasts on the weekends aren’t too bad either, as long as we have some kind of nut porridge with fruit.
Other than that, I’d say that older kids – who pick their own food every time they leave the house – have to be rationally convinced by information and taste to choose raw. On that note, every thing I can get my teen to eat raw is a victory.
And hey, for me, getting her to eat lightly steamed veges is just about as good!!! You have to pick your battles. I don’t choose to make food a big battle because that will push her in the WRONG direction. I never miss a chance to point out how eating healthy leads to being healthy and happy. My position now is to provide information and a good example and an open-minded and supportive environment. Maybe my daughter will choose a high percentage of raw as part of an overall healthy lifestyle BEFORE she’s staring down the barrel of 40, and maybe she’ll always feed her kids that way.
EasyCheetah, that’s hilarious (and very ingenious too). I think that it is an excellent idea what you are saying about exploiting children’s sweet tooth. I will defenitely try that one.
jenoz, my kids are 6 and 8, so I think that I still have some time to brain wash them a little more, before they reach puberty and before the peer pressure season start. I anticipate that the pizza staple will be a hard battle to win (I am not even trying yet). I guess I just have to hope for the best.
Thank you all for your great comments. Anyone else? I would love to hear more about the challenges you (gone raw people) have faced when feeding your kids raw. I wonder if I should post another forum topic about that…
Nut allergies make it very difficult; I personally wouldn’t push the issue, especially for a child who will choose to be undernourished. I agree on the dessert! My son HATES vegetables, but I finally told him he needs to eat vegetables every day for the rest of his life, and I let him choose his vegetables. He now likes lettuce broken up & stirred into his baked potato (which I top with raw oil & sea salt). Weird to me, but he says it makes him not taste the lettuce, so I let him have it that way. I also haven’t forced a large amount of vegetables on him – just one lettuce leaf or a few pinches of alfalfa sprouts…he’s eating healthier than he ever did a few years ago. I just make sure I give him healthier alternatives whenever I can, and I am really focusing on positive experiences with food, rather than fighting or criticizing. Life is too short for kids to be made to feel they’re not good people just because they like things that may not be the healthiest for them. :)
I don’t have children, but I am like a child in the kitchen, constantly playing and creating. The advice I offered to a friend of mine whose son won’t even eat a slice of pizza if a speck of mushroom came near it is to hide vegetables in foods that they already like. Granted, they are SAD eaters, so my ideas for her were to puree vegetables and add them into tomato-meat sauces for pasta, work them into meatloaves and bake them into muffins. With raw eating, I’d suggest playing with colours and tempting titles. A child might sample a bright green soup (into which you’ve snuck pureed blue-green algae, kale, chard or spinach) if you float something like little radishes or grapes and call it a Witch’s Bubbling Cauldron of Floating Eyeballs or something equally wacky. Make oat groat and chocolate cookies in your dehydrator that contain all healthy stuff, plus some shredded beets and pureed broccoli that they can’t even detect by eye, because the cookie is already so dark and lumpy. Have a few long strings of beet and carrot protruding out of each cookie and call it Wormy Dirt Piles. Bring fun into food and mealtimes and kids might become much more open to trying something new, because it looks or sounds cool. Don’t emphasize the ingredients. Let them decide they like it first, then tell them much much later what they’ve been eating all along. ;-)
Here’s a chat we had going a while back. There are lots of ideas for picky eaters! http://www.goneraw.com/forums/being-raw/topics/...