Nutrition for Littles

Alternate title: Coffee to die for 🤩

It truly makes my mornings brighter and happier when I use this syrup and knowing I made it myself makes me feel like I have superpowers even though it’s super easy.

So take that Starbucks —- I don’t need you! (but also don’t hold this against me, I’ll be back)

Alright my syrup ran out yesterday so that means I HAD to make it today so I figured I’d document it and bring you along with me so you can make some at home too!

Bonus little hands can totally help with this recipe!

Let’s do this…

Ingredients:

1 vanilla bean sliced down the middle to expose the seeds

2 cups water

1.5 cups sugar

.5 cups brown sugar

1 Tbsp vanilla extract (optional)

Directions:

Mix water, sugars, and vanilla bean in a small pot. Bring to a boil then simmer for 5-7 minutes until thickened and sugar has dissolved. Remove the vanilla bean pod and pour into a mason jar. Enjoy with coffee or mix into other beverages to make your life more enjoyable.

This syrup should last about one month in the fridge.

I love to use my leftover vanilla beans when my homemade vanilla runs out. Blog on that coming soon!

How Your Child’s Eating Habits Are Affecting Their Sleep

Your child’s nutrition and sleep habits are two huge contributing factors to their healthy development and growth. The two are inextricably linked–what they eat affects how well they sleep and their sleep quality affects their nutritional habits and preferences.

I am a dietician, not a sleep expert, but there are things nutritionally that we can do as parents to guide our children to healthy sleeping patterns.

Gut Health

Gut health is the phrase used when talking about the gut microbiome. A healthy gut microbiome consists of billions of different bacteria, a delicate balance of the good and the bad, that keeps us healthy, digests food, controls gut leakage, and is the number one protector of our immune system. There is not a single mechanism in our body unaffecting by the gut.

A healthy gut is particularly important for kids because a majority of the immune system lives there! The biggest issue that picky eating can lead to is poor gut health because of a lack of variety. If their gut health is suffering, you may notice difficulty in falling asleep, waking frequently, or waking up not feeling rested. 

The number one thing you can do nutritionally to improve your child’s gut health–and by association, their sleep–is to make sure they’re getting enough variety. That variety introduces different bacteria to the gut, allowing it to reach perfect homeostasis.

Vitamins

Vitamins come from the food we eat and are an important component in the production of sleepy-time hormones like melatonin and serotonin. They also support the deployment of neurotransmitters that promote sleep.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D helps regulate sleep/wake cycles by regulating stress hormones, supporting the immune system, and aiding in the production of melatonin. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to get enough of this essential vitamin from food alone. Even with the recommended 15 minutes a day in the sun, you and your child likely need to supplement.

Iron

Iron is a crucial mineral that most children are deficient in, especially if they are picky. Low iron can cause extreme fatigue. Unfortunately, that fatigue will not lead to better sleep. It will actually put the body in a stressed state which will impede the production of sleep hormones. Red meat is the best source of iron, though supplementation may be needed.

Magnesium/Calcium/Potassium

These three vitamins are extremely important for heart health and getting a solid, restful sleep. Magnesium is the top deficiency in the world, especially in America. Consult with your physician, but you and your child likely need supplementation for these three essential vitamins.

Timing of Meals

Blood sugar regulation is crucial for restful sleep. When we eat food, our body turns it into glucose which is the energy source of our cells–especially our brain! It also directly affects our gut health and cortisol levels. 

But it’s a fine line. We don’t want too much or too little blood sugar. That spike and crash cycle activates our sympathetic nervous system and prevents our body from creating the hormones vital to healthy sleep.

Aim for meals every 2-3 hours, focusing on well-balanced plates to keep blood sugar levels regulated. 

Fats

Our culture has demonized fats in recent years, but it’s an essential nutrient for children. They need fat for their development because it’s very energy dense. It’s also a precursor for hormone production, especially melatonin.

Coconut oil, olive oil, and full-fat dairy are great sources of healthy fats that should be a part of every child’s diet! Plus, the omega-3 fatty acids decrease inflammation and help establish a circadian rhythm. 

Hormones

Sleepy hormones are crucial and we need to make sure we are supporting them. However, be careful with supplementation, as over time your body will think it no longer needs to produce it on its own.

You can help your child support melatonin production with B6, Tryptophan, regulating cortisol levels, and offering melatonin-rich foods like walnuts, oats, eggs, fish, cherries, grapes, tomatoes, and breastmilk.

How Sleep Affects Nutrition

While our nutrition can certainly affect our sleep, the quality of our sleep also impacts our nutrition. It can dictate what we eat, how we eat, and when we eat. When we are operating off less sleep, it makes us crave quick fast energy \in the form of carbs. But when we, and our children, succumb to those cravings, we fall into the spike-crash blood sugar cycle. 

Getting good sleep to support our child’s nutrition is just as important as optimizing their nutrition to support quality sleep. Working on one will likely impact the other, leading to an overall well-rounded, healthy child. 
It might feel overwhelming thinking about all the ways you should optimize your child’s nutrition, especially if they’re a picky eater! Focus on taking one small step at a time and adjusting course when needed. If you still don’t know where to start, I invite you to join my Table Talk Course. There, you can join a team of other parents in the same boat as you and together we will guide you to take back mealtimes and become your child’s at-home nutritional expert.

And Easy Ways To Meet Their Needs, Even Without Meat!

A common question among parents is whether or not their children are getting enough protein. They’re worried about how much they need and all the sources they may be getting it from. Or maybe they’re nervous their child is getting too much protein!

Either way, not to worry! A simple equation and a few extra minutes will give you peace of mind in knowing your child is getting everything they need.

Finding Your Child’s Protein Needs

Protein is an essential nutrient for every human body. It’s important for many biological functions and particularly during the younger years when our children are experiencing rapid growth and development.

The general equation for establishing protein needs is to divide your child’s body weight (in pounds) by two to determine the amount of protein needed in grams. For example, if your child weighs 30 pounds, they need to eat around 15 grams of protein per day.

Now before you bust out your calculator or start tracking macros, remember this is a general rule and you don’t have to police your kid’s eating habits. Their requirements aren’t super high so you don’t need to worry, but you should be intentional. Just keep the general idea, check their labels, and offer protein at every meal and snack time.

Worried About Giving Them Too Much?

Since 15g seems like so little, maybe you’re worried you’re giving your child too much protein. It truly is extremely difficult to eat so much protein that it causes harm. Typically, your child’s body will absorb what it needs and excrete the rest!

The concern only comes in when they’re getting too much too often. Having a large amount of protein in a meal here or there is not a concern, but continuously overloading the body with protein could lead to an undue burden on the child’s organs or cause dehydration.

There are products out there that can make it easier to over-serve protein, however. I really am not a fan of protein powders and caution parents to be cognizant of adding them to meals. 

Reasons They May Need More Protein

If you have a picky eater, they likely need more protein. Picky eaters tend to be more wary of meat and prefer carbohydrate-heavy foods like bread or pasta. But it is possible to find carbs with protein, like some kinds of pasta and whole grains.

Vegetarian children, whether by your choice or theirs, likely need to increase their protein intake. Because they are not getting large amounts of easily absorbable protein from meat sources, they usually require a larger volume of food to meet the same protein levels. Vegetarian sources of protein may also be more difficult to absorb.

Non-Meat Protein Sources

Meeting your child’s protein needs really is so simple, even if they don’t like meat! My top favorite source of non-meat protein is dairy. A single cup of whole milk has 8g of protein, so two cups and you’ve met your goal (for a 30-lb child). Yogurt is also another great source of protein, but be careful to check labels, as protein and sugar content can vary drastically between brands and types!

Whole grains are another great option, though they don’t offer the same amount of protein as meat because they are a carb first and foremost. You can also supplement with legumes, lentils, and beans, all of which are a great source of fiber. Try adding nuts and seeds as well for their added fiber and healthy fats.

If you have a picky eater and you’re worried about protein intake because they simply just won’t eat, I invite you to join my Table Talk Course. There, I will help become your child’s own nutrition expert and bring joy back to mealtimes. 

Understanding your child’s individual protein needs is the first step in finding peace and easing your fears around protein. When you establish a baseline, you can identify if they need more or less. Be careful not to take a snapshot in time, rather zoom out and look at the big picture–on average, have they gotten enough protein this week or month instead of just today.

Feeding Picky kids is so hard and sometimes we can get hyper-focused, stressed out, anxious, and worried. It can start to feel really serious and scary really fast when we don’t think they’re getting enough of the right things–protein, calories, etc.

Sometimes that seriousness makes its way to the table with us like a dark cloud. To lighten the mood, here are three unique ways to get your picky eater to try something new! It will help you keep things fresh, change your perspective, and help relax your kids at the table by making it fun again.

Let Them Feed You

This will likely feel super unnatural to you, but this is often the experience our kids have when we feed them. The role reversal will make it fun and exciting for them, especially if you try foods they’re uncomfortable around–and maybe even some you’re uncomfortable with, too!

Even though we may not be picky, even adults have preferences. For example, I hate olives and mushrooms and my son loves to order them on his pizza and he thinks it’s hilarious to ask me to try them.

Sometimes I will reflect the behavior he shows me at the table, in a loving way, and using similar language. Then I overcome it by saying something like “But I can be brave and just try it” or “It’s been a while so I will try it again”. I’m verbalizing what’s going on in my head that’s leading me to choose to take a bite.

He loves the look on my face because, surprise surprise, I still hate olives.

It’s important to model the behavior we want them to show when they don’t like a certain food, so I may say something like “It’s not for me. Maybe I’ll try again another day”.

It’s also a great opportunity to show them how to try something new and overcome a food they previously didn’t like. I don’t hate mushrooms the way I used to and have found ways to incorporate them into meals. 

If you’re worried you won’t say or do the right thing, don’t let fear keep you from trying. Let them feed it to you, swallow it, then move on. It’s that simple! Typically that’s enough for them to get their gears turning.

Don’t expect it to be perfect and work the very first time, it will take time!

Make Up Stories/Characters/Identities For The Food

This can really push parents out of their comfort zone by forcing us into the pretend play area of our brain–something not often utilized in adulthood–but our children love it! Make up characters, laugh about them, make up stories, and make it fun and interactive. 

Try using things they’re interested in, too. For example, when we were expecting his little sister, we would play a game with the brussel sprouts on his plate. We would name them Mom, Dad, Big Brother, and Little Sister according to size and he had a great time calling them by name as he ate them!

It was helpful that it represented our family and he was so excited to be a big brother. We played around with it, talking back and forth, keeping it fun and exciting for him. Now he has no problems with brussel sprouts!

Come Up With A Secret Ingredient

This trick will come in handy when you serve mixed dishes like oatmeal, chili, or curry. If it’s an ingredient we can say, we might start with a game of I-Spy, letting them find and identify the green, red, or yellow food.

Then have your kids taste it and try to guess the foods they’re tasting. They will start to form that connection in their brain between taste and identifying food to help decipher what they’re eating. It will help them be more confident, especially when eating mixed foods.

It helps them refine their palates, gets them interested in what they’re eating, and helps them recognize different foods and ingredients. For example, I added honey to our curry last week and after a while, my kids were able to identify it. We made it extra fun by pulling out the honey and drizzling it on top!

Get creative with your recipes! Try starting with foods you know they like and find ways to incorporate them in a new and unique way. Don’t be afraid to get a little silly and weird, but of course, make sure it’s tasty. Start with foods they like and go from there.
Of course, it’s not always as simple as trying three weird tricks. Maybe you’re feeling completely overwhelmed and beyond repair. If you want to take back control of your mealtimes and enjoy being at the table again, you can join my TableTalk Course today. I will guide you to becoming your child’s feeding expert to help bring joy back to your table.