Parent Extremis

We’ve all heard stories of a friend who was in Wal-Mart and witnessed a seven-year old using a pacifier and a one-year old with a bottle full of Coke. Some of us prefer to feed our kids as much organic food as possible and some of us just try to get something, anything edible into our kids mouths a few times a day and then hope for the best. Coke in a baby’s bottle is largely WRONG but aside from that little sugary snafu, where do you draw your line and how do you determine what kind of nutrition your kids get?

With advertising being what it is today it can be tricky for busy, unknowing and first-time parents to decide what to feed their children. Food labeling is at an all time marketing-led high of misinformation and misleading claims. Whole grain - Heart Healthy - Low Fat - No Trans Fat - DHA/ARA! - Omega 3 - It’s enough to make even the rare calm level-headed unstressed-out parent-shopper a little frazzled.

A quick Google search for _kids nutrition_ and _nutrition for kids_ doesn’t yield many definitive or direct answers. There are quite a few pages, indeed but no simple charts or lists saying that kids need X amount of vegetables and Y amount of calcium each day. Rather, most websites I found referenced the USDA Food Guide Pyramid. Also, the USDA Food Pyramid for Kids.

I also came across several mentions of a campaign to combat a severe lack of calcium in kids diets these days. Calcium is a nutrient found in dairy products (yogurt, cheese, milk, cottage cheese) and green leafy vegetables that is responsible for helping to build strong bones.

When I started this article I had hoped to find more definitive information about children and nutrition. I wanted to pass on facts and guidelines but there wasn’t anything very easy to locate. How do you feel about this? Are you confident about what you feed your kids? Could you use an update on nutrition? Where do you look for this sort of information?

I started feeding Noah a mixture of baby rice cereal and purees of fruits and vegetables right around his six month birthday. True to family form: He ate everything we gave him and never spit out one bite. We take our food seriously around here.

So here we are, almost eight months old and I’m getting a little bored with his food. I actually make about 75% of his food, and not because I am a SAHM WAHM SUPERMOM but rather, it is CHEAPER. Like, seriously cheaper. A jar of Earth’s Best Spinach and Potato (Stage 2) is $.76 at a local grocery store. A bag of frozen organic chopped spinach is $3.99. If I steam and puree the spinach it will make more than one ice cube tray of frozen spinach blocks, a minimum of twenty meals.

When I first started I would make a huge mess of puree all over the kitchen. I used all the spoons in the drawer and I had leaky watery stains of spinach green and cherry red all over myself and my counter. I am happy to report that I have gotten much better at containing the food and getting it cooked, pureed and frozen in the time it takes Noah to individually toss ten cheerios onto the floor after first licking them and showing them to the dog.

I just found this book this week and I’m really excited to make some new foods for Noah. This book tells you how to make something as basic as a puree of carrots to something more complex like fish and meat and pastas. I also really like the section at the beginning discussing baby health and nutrition. It is short and concise; well suited for a mother to read while her baby crawls into the kitchen to play in the dog’s water bowl.

Four new flavors of Stage Two/Second Foods dinner are now available from Earth’s Best Organic. New flavors include the following: Beef, Carrots and Corn Country Dinner, Chicken and Brown Rice Country Dinner, Chicken Tomato Pastina Country Dinner and Harvest Squash Turkey Dinner. All the dinners are 100% organic.

They also make organic formula and a soy-option is available too. You can purchase these items anywhere that baby food is sold. Also, visit the Earth’s Best website for direct purchase information.

So far I have fed Noah almost exclusively organic foods from Earth’s Best. I like their variety of flavors and foods. The website is very useful and full of nutritional information as well as general baby-health and baby-eating advice too. Each foods nutritional and allergy facts are also located easily on the website.

We had some friends over for dinner last night and I was busy running around grilling steak and pork chops and pouring my pasta salads into serving platters and setting the table that I asked my friend to feed the baby. Who doesn’t jump at the chance to feed a little cute cherub like mine?

I made a little bowl of rice cereal and put a spoonful of pureed edamame in it, opened a jar of babyfood peaches and finished off a jar of Spinach & Potato. Noah ate it all. Go figure. He does love his vegetables.

So far he has eaten with success (well, he hasn’t NOT liked anything, so it’s all been successful, I suppose) the following:
Baby Food Peas, Green Beans, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squash, Pears, Apples, Bananas and Prunes.

I have made him pureed organic chicken that I poached in broth, pureed white potatoes, a mixture of pureed bananas and blueberries and spinach. I also steamed and pureed Edamame.

Mah baby loves to eatz zee SPINACH.

AM SUCCESS AS PARENT!!

ALL WILL BE EASY FROM HERE ON.

…

Well … I figure at least until the pureed spinach comes out the other end.

For the most part I have fed him almost 100% organic food thus far. It really isn’t feasible to live 100% organically, at least not when you live in the suburbs of Washington, DC and don’t have a garden or year-round Farmer’s Market or a cat that sheds dollar bills instead of hair. But, I am trying to be open-minded and give him the best start I think possible. Giving him organic baby foods help to eliminate a small amount of the toxins that we get from our environment. So, if I can give him a little head start on the poison collecting, I think that’s a good thing. Now, if only I’d stop eating my mom’s Velveeta Cheese Dip, ’cause it’s not like my breast milk is organic with that shit in my body.