wonderment at my baby again

[mrsflibble]

don't you just love it when they find something they like to eat, and it's NOT full of fat or sugar?!
Soph is really heavily in to brocolli at the moment.

Also, she ate a whole dinner tonight, not just bitty bits. it was rolled leg of lamb stuffed with chilli, cardamom, corriander leaf, lemon zest and garlic served with a potato and root veg rosti and a pile of the fabby green stuff. she ate the lot! including (and I'm in awe of this) the most heavily chilli-fied bits of the lamb!

[Clara]

I´m not surprised she ate the lot - sounds delicious!

[Esther.R]

It does sound lovely How old is she? (just being nosey as I am new ). It is very satisfying when they decide to love decent food of their own accord.

[mrsflibble]

she's 2 next month. hates tomato "snot", loves brocolli, is indifferent to spinach and wont touch carrot with a barge pole unless it's roasted or grated into a rosti.

[Esther.R]

Almost the same as my Beth then - she was 2 in December. We have been very lucky with Beth, she is a little piggy and anything in front of her gets eaten and if we go to mother & toddler she goes round hoovering up everyone's leftovers at snack time but it is really nice when she decides that something healthy like that is a favourite. Her favourite is peas, especially homegrown and she keeps asking when we can pick peas again

[Annpan]

Well done, I think it is really important to give your child as many food experiences as possible (does that make sense?) You are lucky with the veg, can't get E into it at all

I am a total control freak over what E eats (16 months) She only gets sugar/salt free biscuits, or home-made treats (with sugar and salt - I am such a hypocrite) I have no idea what the crappy e numbers are, and I don't feel happy giving them to her - I read when I was pregnant something about the building blocks that a baby is built from, made me think I'd rather my baby was built of organic cous cous and sweet potatoes rather than chocolate buttons and fish fingers.

Because of this she has always eaten whatever we eat, she joins us for most meals, although the toned down curry I made once was too hot for her, she ate 2 tubs of yoghurt straight away

When we go to Mums and toddlers we sit in the corner with rice cakes and dried apricots, while everyone else has biscuits... there are other mums and kids that do that too though, so we are not that weird. I get fed up with people offering my child crap to eat all the time.

I have made myself a promise that not a chicken nugget or fish finger will pass her lips until she is 5... I feel that makes me try harder to give her more appatising, interesting and healthy meals... though I have to admit we both have a weakness for cheese toasties

[Esther.R]

Same vow here with Beth - she has had chocolate a couple of times, and a jellybaby the other day, she never had crisps at home although I do let that slip if at mother & toddler, she has never had a chicken nugget or a fish finger and eats what we eat.

[Clara]

OOOOOOH I´m such a strict mama! Sadie is 15months and has NEVER had anything with sugar or chocolate in it and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible! In fact she has only had sweet things like my homemade honey seed bars on a couple of occasions, I wanted to keep well away from the whole concept of "cake" and "biscuit", because ultimately they can´t distinguish between something made with whole organic ingredients and something full of sugar and e numbers.

Yesterday I had made a chocolate cake for my OH (who deserved cake having nearly died up a mountain a couple of days ago - another story!) and because she didn´t "know" what it was we didn´t get into a fight when she asked for some and I said no - I can´t imagine it would have been so easy if she had tasted chocolate before.

We are very proud of the way she eats - never refuses anything - she is probably the only person I know who eats the recommended 9 portions of fruit and veg a day. Though we have had to put a strong bolt on the pantry otherwise she breaks in and takes a bite out of everything in the fruit/veg trolley

I´m a bit of an amateur naturopath and I´d be interested to hear whether you mamas think that your kids are healthier than their peers whose diet is not so good. Sadie as never so much as had a sniffle in her life and only vomited on 2 occasions (when she was first born) - I put this down to her healthy diet and the improved immunity from (ongoing) breastfeeding.

[John Headstrong]

Keeping the amount of sweets and sugar the kids have is easy when they are small, but gets harder once they are at nursery school. My twins (4yo) are very good with sweets, they know that "one a day" is all they get, although xmas was quite hard.

I think it helps that the twins had fruit from when they could first eat solids, other kids at baby club had never seen grapes or kiwi fruit let alone eaten any. The twins both love "lazytown" a program on cbeebies (advert free kids TV) in the program the hero eats 'sports candy' (fruit and veg) this helps him catch the bad guy.

and as for people giving sweets to my kids, my better half helps run the local food coop network, they had a meeting over here one day, one of the workers gave the kids (without asking me or Cath) a packet of maltesers and a mars bar each, that is more that I would eat myself in a month. you think they would have known better.

My kids have a good healthy diet and eat loads, good ingredients (organic box, local coop veg and some home grown) and I cook and eat with them, it is shocking how many people cook for there kids totally different food from what they eat.

(I could rant for hours on this subject, and others)

[hamster]

So could I, John, and I don't even have children!

My bf's housemate last year had utterly batty ideas about food and nutrition. She and her bf used to subsist entirely on ready-meals and bagged salad, and every once in a while would have a major stress-fest preparing a meal from scratch (he usually did this). I was watching Jamie's Dinners once, and she rolled her eyes and moaned about the ageing population and the overstretched NHS and said (I kid you not!) "We should be breeding them for heart attacks at 50."

And she was the type who went all gooey over babies and wanted to have 8 children.... Made me soooo angry!

[Annpan]

...I´m a bit of an amateur naturopath and I´d be interested to hear whether you mamas think that your kids are healthier than their peers whose diet is not so good. Sadie as never so much as had a sniffle in her life and only vomited on 2 occasions (when she was first born) - I put this down to her healthy diet and the improved immunity from (ongoing) breastfeeding.

E is certainly healthier than most of the other kids at Mum and Toddlers. I am not just talking about the kids with snotty noses, you can tell just by a childs complection and attention span that they have a poor diet. She did have a virus a few weeks ago, (flu-ish with a bad rash) But a few days of lots of sleep and she was fine, other kids in M+T were sick for weeks. I don't think you can avoid every virus that is going around but it helps having a good diet. I didn't have the option to breastfeed (past 10 days)but E was also a healthy baby (except for reflux, but she had that when she was breastfed too)

E's grandparents give her chocolate (in a hilarious 'don't tell mummy' game ) It gives her nappy rash and makes her a grumpy wee lady for the next day... it took me a lot of lecturing before I convinced them not to give her any. They still draw attention to the 'no chocolate policy'. In books with pictures of sweets, they say 'oh, no, your not allowed any of these nice things'

Controling the food that your child eats is part of parenting, giving them the best fuel that you can is important to the way that they grow and develop. It is going to get more difficult as they grow up, but at least they will have the right fondations.

[contadina]

Some Italian friends that I used to know in London got loads of stick from their relatives about how strict they were with their daughter's diet. They just couldn't get across to their families about how many children just eat junk food in the UK so they had to be extra vigilant.

Sitting in a restaurant in the summer where there were several Italian families and couple of English ones; the eating habits of the children really hit home. All of the Italian children ages from about 2 - 10 ate everything put in front of them, clearly enjoying the food. The English children aged 4 -10, meanwhile refused everything offered them and even when provided with an off the menu request of sausage and chips just pushed their food around their plates like eating it was a chore.

[Clara]

Sitting in a restaurant in the summer where there were several Italian families and couple of English ones; the eating habits of the children really hit home. All of the Italian children ages from about 2 - 10 ate everything put in front of them, clearly enjoying the food. The English children aged 4 -10, meanwhile refused everything offered them and even when provided with an off the menu request of sausage and chips just pushed their food around their plates like eating it was a chore.

I think there is a lot to be said about this aspect of mediterrenean culture - though it is probably sadly in decline in the rush for "progress". But certainly I have never seen a "kids menu" in a traditional restaurant, so kids learn to eat real food rather than mushed up god-knows-what covered in orange "breadcrumbs" (BTW anyone ever seen orange bread ?).

Unfortunately I think they fact that children are so doted on coupled with increased access to junk food is going to become a BIG problem here.

[Millymollymandy]

Every single restaurant I have ever been into in France has a kiddies menu - usually burger and chips!

[John Headstrong]

my Dad runs pubs and has one in Cornwall at the moment.
He has a kiddies menu, and on it are some of the classic kids food, for example "chicken nuggets" and "fish fingers" but they are not the frozen nightmares you expect, the chicken is free range chopped and battered in the kitchen, likewise the fish is slices of cod/haddock battered, price wise it works out a little bit more expensive to produce but my Dad will only give food to customers kids that he would feed to he own grandchildren.

if my Dad can do it so can all the other eaterys.