'How paleo' do you feed your kids ?

[nanako]

I'm wondering if you feed your children paleo ? 

 

My husband and I have always been 'good' eaters and we both love cooking, so the junk food ratio has always been low here. No fizzy drinks, no fast food, no ready meals ... but we used to eat a lot of pasta and the kids loved it. 

 

Now we adults have both started paleo 'dieting' (we both want to lose a bit of weight). I don't want to scare off my kids but I'm feeling so much better that I feel kind of  bad giving them their same old sandwiches and sweets.

 

I've notice before that the more fruit I have in the house, the less sweets they eat. So I'm definitely throwing out the sweet box tomorrow (they'll never know, they'll think their dad has eaten everything :-)). 

 

But other than that, I'm not sure. DD eats at preschool four times a week, so I don't have to worry about that. They serve clean, healthy food with lots of veg but standard recipes with grains. DS takes lunch boxes to school - right now he still gets sandwiches every day. Am thinking of switching to 'real' bread aka bread from the 'artisan' bakery instead of packaged slices. 

 

I still want them to be able to eat cake at parties, or when they are at friends' houses. So i'm not thinking of banning any foods. Just some tweaking.

 

Any thoughts ? :-) Any experiences ?

 

[18ck]

Well, children burn off a lot of energy doing crazy child stuff so they're probably more in need of carbs than sedentary grown-ups anyway. We let our daughter eat sweeties but usually fairly high quality ones - like she prefers dark chocolate with a high cocoa content rather than that squishy chocolate-flavoured vegetable-oil slop you get in most sweetshops, and she eats a lot of fruit and so on, but if she wants to eat something luminous and disgusting we usually let her. It's not ideal but it doesn't happen often and there's no point making a big thing out of it. She's young and active and bright and she's growing strong and not getting fat. We encourage to drink more than she otherwise would and to eat more greens too. The meals we offer are a good mix of meat, fish, beans, cheese, veg, pasta, rice and so on - in other words, balance and moderation, but other than that leave well alone and let her enjoy working out what she likes on her own (as maddening as those choices often are... One day - nothing but peas. Next day - don't like peas!). I don't eat paleo anyway and am not a big fan of trends in named diets generally - I'm old and I've seen trends come and go, and it's not for me, but I can see the discipline works for some people and I respect those people's choices a lot.

 

I guess the other thing is we get her involved in cooking - mainly baking, pizza-making, smoothie-mixing, and she likes chopping vegies and grinding spices, and I think it's important to keep children involved in how food is made. I like to think I'd do the same if I had a son and that I'm not just doing this because I'm training her to be wifey but who knows - these sorts of gender biases seem to be buried deeply. *shrug*

 

So I'd say it sounds like you're right in wanting to redress a balance and boost the quality of the food, if you feel like the situation merits it, but also right not to overcompensate and ban them from eating delicious things, especially at parties where they're with their friends. What's childhood for if not for licking blue icing off one's fingers?

[wilfnelson]

I can't comment on children but I am the healthy and more mature one in my girlfriend and ours relationship. Maybe children are different but forcing over teaching always leads to resentment. I have had to apologise for being overly zealous and now my girlfriend is back to her old diet but if I had forced her she would just have left me or yelled until I stopped and still be eating the same stuff

I know with children they can't leave but that just means the emotions get bottled up. Educate them, let them make their own choice and appreciate that even if they only start exercising when they in their 20s at least that is something...my father and I had this conversation about myself not too long ago.

Hope this helps

[18ck]

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[DaniRiekwel]

I have a 6 year old kid that I look after and feed. She regularly complains that I don't have pasta and rice in my house. I regularly tell her she can buy the food if she wants to. haha! I let her have a sweet every now and then, and she's getting used to eating paleo dinners. She really loves my carrot slice pasta (I use a cheese slicer to make thick "pasta" from carrots) and she LOVES cauliflower rice. So it's a matter of finding something they like and introducing them to alternatives.

 

For my 6 month old, she eats paleo for now. I'm gluten intolerant so I don't want her exposed to it until she's a bit older. We have a saturday cheat day in our house and so she could therefore theoretically eat whatever she wants while we're out. But, she's 6 months so for the moment she noms on chicken bones and bananas. haha.

[supermumma]

We have been paleo for about 6 months now and. We are loving it feeling much better and the list of health problems in myself have all but gone!

We have a 2 nearly 3 yr old he is awesome. We do not feed him paleo as such as we have found he resists it the more we push it. He still has basic meat and veg for his dinner, has eggs every morning every now and then he will have some toast because he is tired of his eggs. But we are lucky as he has ALWAYS loved eggs.

Lunch and snacks are neither here nor there for us. He refuses all but all fruit. He will have watermelon here and there otherwise we do still feed him pasta and sandwiches but we do usr high quality with minimal preservatives if it's not home made.

I would love to get his lingua sorted more, but at the end of the day I want him to enjoy his childhood and feel like if he is at a party he can eat what he wants. As adults we still have treats too I think that if it's generally healthy food with treats treated as treats there's no need for them to be fully paleo

Sorry if this is a bit mixed up and hope it helps xo

[alienjenn]

I have three teenagers (well on saturday I will... the baby turns 13)

 

we are dropping processed foods from the whole family... they still eat grains and occasionally sweets (and poptarts and other bad foods) but we have cut frequency of bad things to when we are doing high intensity exercise... I only let them have poptarts when we are hiking overnight or biking and out overnight... (because it's easy food for them to carry)...

 

we have started only eating potato chips that are home made (at least I know what's in them)

 

eventually I will transition them more... but I think that they are ok with the carbs that they eat....

[TheOtherScott]

I'm pretty sure breastmilk is paleo, so we're 100% paleo at the moment.

[allirep]

i am a stepmom to a 4 and 9 yr old.  So i only have control over what they eat when they are under my roof - and they already have an established love for grains

i only started eating primal a year ago and my husband just recently started eating primal w/me. together we are slowly training the kids to eat less grains.  both are picky eaters - so i expect this journey will take a very long time. they likely will not be 100% primal unless they make that choice for themselves.  they are fed SAD at their mother's house. 

 

the goal: educate them about food now, so that they make more intelligent decisions as they mature.  

 

We are all learning to eat and enjoy veggies and fresh food.  we all worked together to plant an herb garden this spring. and i try to get them into cooking and grocery shopping.  they do enjoy eating all that bacon!

 

one rule i saw on The Eating Academy - is to stick to a strict diet at home - and allow the kids to pick their foods when we eat out.  if we go out and they choose pizza - it is ok.  if they want cake at a birthday party - its ok.  this seems to be working (mostly).