We live in a very interesting world. One where our food choices matter greatly, and our society accommodates a plethora of varying diets. Plant based, Paleo, Clean, Whole, Compassionate, Vegan, Nut Free, Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Vegetarian… the list goes on. This is simply a handful of the types of diets that rotate within my small circle of friends and family. To be honest, one piece of evidence seems to conflict the rest… and so on and so forth. It leaves me as a mom often feeling confident about the meals I prepare for my family, and a little bit confused as to whether I am making the right choices the next. Here are the things I do know.
I was a vegetarian for 10 years. It was something I decided when I was about 13… because our nanny was a vegetarian. The time I “became a vegetarian” was right around Christmas, and I had some turkey. I remember my brother teasing me that he had made it longer than I… I didn’t eat Turkey again until I was 25. My teen years were filled with extreme exhaustion. I was SO TIRED, all the time. I remember being so exhausted in the 10th grade. I could not get enough sleep. We went to a dietician, and she diagnosed me with extreme anemia. I started taking iron supplements. Even still, I was known to be able to fall asleep anytime, anywhere. When I was going through puberty, my body developed a bit different than all of my sisters… something my mom attributed in part to my different diet (I don’t know whether or not that is true… just speculation) The thing is, I tried to eat nuts, beans, tofu, TVP, and eventually eggs (though I had never liked them) I did not know many vegetarians at the time… When I went to China we were advised to stay away from dairy. So, I didn’t eat it for 2 months. When I came home I had baked Mac’n Cheese. I got sick in the restaurant. And so it began… I could no longer stomach dairy. Milk, Cheese, Butter… nada. And so, I did not eat meat, or dairy… and when I did, I took a lactaid pill.
When Matt and I started dating our diets couldn’t be more different. I ate like a bunny, he ate like a wild Lion. Carnivore to the max. I continued to maintain my “diet” for about 2 years when we were a couple… I remember a close friend joking about whether Matt would become a vegetarian or I would start eating meat… neither of us could see ourselves making the switch. Matt wanted to experiment with me and I consented, to try and ease me back onto dairy because I had grown up being able to eat it and really missed cheese! Little by little, I got off my pills and was able to handle dairy in larger and larger amounts without issues, while taking digestive enzymes. And so, Dairy free came off the list.
When I was pregnant with our 2nd baby, I started craving meat. This was very odd for me because the texture, taste smell, thought of blood… it literally had made me heave for a good part of my life. It started with a slice of pepperoni on home made pizza in NZ, and then some chicken. When G was a year I tried my first steak… sirloin… and mmmm. I had never been able to stomach the idea of eating meat. But I truly believe that my body started to tell me that I needed something I wasn’t getting.
And so, what does all of this mean for our family, and what we eat together. I have tried to keep my kids consumption of sugar at a minimum. Yes we eat it. We are not on a strict Stevia policy, though we use that too. I feel like there is so much information out there- no gluten, no wheat flour, agave isn’t actually good, dairy has hormones, meat clogs your intestines, if its not organic it’s pretty much trash, organic is a hoax… it goes on an on. So, how am I as a parent supposed to determine what to feed my kids?! This has become my filter, keep it simple, everything in moderation, variation, try to eat as many “locally available” foods as possible… ie. we don’t live on a steady diet of quinoa, rice or almond flour.
Smoothies are my best friend. My boys love vegetables, eat beans, whole grains, fruit, nuts, and yes, meat. Pork, chicken, and beef to be specific. We eat potatoes- red, white and sweet. They love hard boiled eggs, and eat milk and cheese. Store bought pasta is always whole wheat (much to my husband’s shagrin) or we make it at home. I try to make my bread as much as possible, but if I am busy we eat whole wheat or squirelly. We eat home made cookies and muffins, and the only occasions we keep white flour for is play dough, shortbread at Christmas and occasionally pasta. We do eat quinoa, basmati and brown rice. Though none too frequently. We eat food. We eat most meals at home, though yes, some days when we are in town we get the boys a chicken wrap from Mc Donald’s. (all my healthy friends are probably having heart attacks)
The thing is, I feel pretty confident we are raising our boys to eat well rounded meals. The other day I took the boys to a little cafe… a rare treat for us. I asked if they wanted to share a cookie, and E said “Hmm… no mom. I don’t want a cookie, I think that’s too much sugar for me. Is there anything… like.. healthier?” I literally was like, really.. are you sure? You don’t want a cookie? You will enjoy it… They were more pumped about their lemon water than anything else… I wondered if I had deprived my children too much, or just have them on track to be conscious about what their bodies need. Don’t get me wrong, E loves mini candy canes, and G has a major sweet tooth and would drink juice by the gallon if I let him… it’s something we don’t have much- E never really had it, but when we do have it in our house, it’s all G wants… so I don’t buy it often. My kids ALWAYS ask for a treat after dinner, a habit that has been carried on from Matt’s house… they have dessert after supper. It might be fruit, or maybe a small scoop of ice cream.. cookies… something. In my house we often over ate, and then didn’t have room for the sweet stuff. So then it would be like.. a whole bowl of ice cream with oreos on infrequent ocassions… and you felt sick and probably guilty at the end of it.
So, this goes back to my rule about moderation. I like that my kids enjoy food, and they are really good about eating what we put in front of them. We have never given them “alternative” options… I knew I would never be a mom who made multiple meals. Elijah doesn’t like pizza that much, but he still eats it when we have it because he isn’t getting anything else. My kids love salad… and while there was a time when neither of them liked peppers, they now do. G doesn’t really like sweet potatoes, and certain veges that are hard to chew…. like celery or big bites of carrots. E’s favorite food is Indian… chicken with vegetables, probably butter chicken, or a vegetable masala with chickpeas.. rice and naan. G loves soft tacos. They both go insane when they have too much sugar. (literally)
I may have had different ideas about what I’d feed my kids before I was a mom. I once heard a mom talk about nutrition for kids… she said you were “robbing your children” if you let them eat with a spoon instead of grabbing chunks of food and exploring it with their hands and feeling the textures. They would know when to stop… don’t force them to have “one more bite” …. a faction of Baby Led weaning. She said her 2.5 year old had never had any processed food or sugar… no juice, only herbal tea, and she home made every single snack. Every single one. And you know what? I started to feel really guilty that I let my kids eat Kashi or Nature Valley granola bars. Or that once we bought cars shaped fruit snacks… or sometimes I carry juice boxes in my purse so we can make it through grocery shopping. And yes, I let me kids get the cookie from the kids corner at the grocery store. We have hot chocolate made with hot chocolate powder. And I put chocolate chips in our cookies, and sometimes I buy cheese strings because they are easy… and you know what. It’s just not worth it… it’s not worth it to feed your kids a steady diet of mac’n cheese, spaghetti-o’s and fries. It’s also not worth it to over obsess that you aren’t feeding them hemp hearts, chia seeds, almond flour and home made almond milk… and whatever food fad is saturating the world right now… because sometimes you can’t afford it all. Any of it- the crazy specialty foods or the packaged processed crap. There isn’t enough time or money.
And so I take it back to my motto. Is it simple, varied, locally available… Could I grow the grains I’m eating right here in my own back yard? Do I keep exotic foods to a minimum in our diet… I think about Matt’s Grandma who lived in relatively good health well into her 90’s. She ate butter. And wheat. And potatoes. She drank coffee… did she drink a pot of coffee? No… moderation.
I think back to a moment in one of Matt’s film reels when they were travelling India, and they have the slaughtering of a goat. There is a shot of the goat standing in the yard… then another shot later on when a man slits the throat of the goat and bleeds it out.. and then they ate it for supper. Matt said it was one of the best meals they had in India. Elijah saw this on a clip reel when he was a little younger than 2. And I was all stressed that it would scar him for life. But then Matt gave me a dose of reality… this is where our food comes from. Every bit of meat we eat was once an animal. And so, we have had talks with E since he was little about where our food comes from.. what is an egg. Can beef come from a cow like milk can come from a cow? (he asked me this when he was 2.5) He is currently very interested in the butchering of animals, and the process of bringing it from the field to the table {he doesn’t express it in those terms, but thats what it is} And so, this challenges me even more to be connected with where our meat is coming from… the people that prepare it {ANG K- we are coming for a tour of your boy’s op! I promise! I haven’t forgotten and as soon as we have a big enough freezer we are going to get our hunk of cow.} I want my kids to see an animal be slaughtered and prepared, I want to see it. Kids in many other countries know how to do this… and so do adults. It probably would seem crazy in some cultures that I have never plucked feathers from a chicken or fully prepared it. Sometimes it scares me how heavily I depend on my local grocery store, or that I have never canned vegetables!
Some people might find this really gross (the slaughtering part). I know. But you know what I have come to terms with in my post vegetarian life? Eating meat isn’t an ethical issue in the following sense… when we see people who are starving in different countries, would we suggest they continue to starve if there is a goat near by because it isn’t ethical? Should he be getting his faux-meat free- chicken fingers- and vegetable ground round… it is just a completely unreasonable solution. I think we have too much time and too much privilege in our North American world… and it’s time to simplify, by preparing food at home instead of “quick fixes.” It’s also time to stop picking fights over such petty issues, and stop heaping the guilt. I don’t want vegetarians to feel shame for not eating meat, just as much as I don’t want them to tell meat eaters they are animal abusers… I believe God says it’s ok to eat meat. That’s good enough for me.
How about you? Have you had any “diet” related changes recently in your life? What do you eat and why? How about your kids… do you struggle to get them to eat their recommended fruit and vege portions? Does it help to keep their foods bland, or season them with herbs and spices?
As a meat eater would you like to know more about where your food is coming from? Would you let your kids see the butchering of an animal if it was something they requested?
Do you live with allergies that greatly determine what you can and can not eat? I know I am so thankful every day to be over my dairy sensitivity, and that my kids are allergy free! I have great compassion for families who live with life threatening allergies!
Thanks for taking the time to write such an insightful post. I felt like I was reading a featured article in a glossy magazine or perhaps the Huffington Post. I wholeheartedly believe in the everything in moderation approach, only we’ve never included meat in our kids’ diets. I like the way you sum it up here: “This has become my filter, keep it simple, everything in moderation, variation, try to eat as many “locally available” foods as possible… ie. we don’t live on a steady diet of quinoa, rice or almond flour.”