Raising a healthy eater who is open to a variety of foods starts with us moms during pregnancy. Depending on what we eat during pregnancy we start to shape our childs palate.
Knowing this now, it makes sense that my son has never liked boring purees or flavourless cereals. Those foods certainly weren’t something my pregnancy diet primed him for. Instead, he’s interested in much of the same things I ate in abundance when pregnant. Fresh berries, intensely flavoured curries, plenty of fatty meats and fermented foods. Of course he hasn’t yet tasted those double fudge quinoa brownies that I love so much, but I’m sure once he does he’ll love those too.
My son is just starting to decide for himself which foods he likes and which he doesn’t. He shows me this by chucking chunks of raw apple across the room vs. devouring apple cooked in cinnamon butter in mere seconds. I adore watching him enjoy food, I can appreciate that all mothers experience this. It makes sense now why we try and accommodate our children however we can, even if all they’ll eat is french fries. We want to see them happy, full and content, so we do whatever it takes. Culturally it makes sense that our children love sweet and carbohydrate dense foods. Typical North American parenting practices involve an early diet of just that, grains, sweet cereals, sweet beverages and basically all things that babies don’t actually have the enzymes to digest.
What we feed our children from the womb throughout infancy establishes their taste buds for life. Why are pickles a comfort food for some and others completely nasty? Why is it that some people adore cilantro and others think it tastes like soap?
Taking a different approach to feeding babies looks more like what we would see in less affluent countries. No doubt, mothers all over the world want to see their babes enjoying food. The marked difference is the necessity inherent in a poorer (I hate this term but it gets the point across) nation’s food choices for their infants. So often children, even babies, just eat what their parents eat, and it makes sense. When did we start creating baby or toddler specific meals, separate from our own and how does that benefit us or our children?
This question really boggles my mind, I’ve always wondered about the practicality behind some of the things people do without question. Shitting in water for example, when we know that using a contained and sanitary composting toilet would then allow the cycle of life to complete itself. A little off topic but important nonetheless. Is it nutritionally necessary to feed babies baby specific boring ass foods? The answer is no. Cultivating a childs palate to be open to a variety of different flavours must start at a young age or we may never get the chance. Once that little mind decides what it likes and doesn’t, old habits die hard.
I started out practicing baby led weaning, which involves letting an infant age 6 months and up basically feed themselves. Standard wisdom suggests mashing and pureeing everything to spoon feed your baby. Up to a certain point this makes sense but babies, even as young as 4 or 5 months have a strong gag reflex, they have the mechanics to ensure they don’t choke because it’s in their very nature to put anything and everything in their curious little mouths. This method resonated with me, even though I’m a paranoid first time mom. I could see that my child was capable of feeding himself and frankly enjoyed exploring the foods I gave him more than even eating them. At this point his primary source of nourishment was still breast milk, food was merely an exploratory experience of tastes and textures. With baby led weaning, an infant first learns how to chew and then swallow, instead of the inverse.
“Babies who are weaned using solid finger food are more likely to develop healthier food preferences and are less likely to become overweight as children than those who are spoon-fed pureed food.”
One of the main reasons I chose to practice this style of nourishment is because it allows for the freedom to explore and learn in a more natural progression. It gives autonomy to the infant, whose capabilities often exceed our presumptions. And last but not least, it might be the key to raising a child whose open to different types of food.
Sally Fallon, leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of various books on traditional diets recommends against baby led weaning in her book Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care. Her points against this practice are valid, that by 6 months babies do have real nutritional needs beyond breast milk that need to be met, and we simply can’t just leave it up to them. It was for this reason that I did a combination practice of mostly baby led weaning with the occasional spoon fed meal of grated free range beef liver for iron and lightly cooked free range egg yolk for its abundance of b-vitamins. Other important nutrients for growing babies like omega-3 fatty acids were met through supplementation and it didn’t take long for Mav to decide he likes eating fish.
Let me be clear in saying I didn’t and continue to not cater specifically to what I think my child would like. I give him what I eat, even if there’s spices, bitter flavours, sour ferments and strange textures. Of course I’m not going to give him anything too insane that would burn his mouth, or load him up with diarrhea inducing amounts of fermented vegetables, there is balance. I disagree that we should be feeding our infants boring purees and cereals. It makes sense that this is setting them up to crave those types of food as they grow older. I’ve had to teach myself how to like healthy foods, literally, it wasn’t a natural thing to reach for that jar of sauerkraut or a big salad over a bowl of chips. I can’t help but think it would come more naturally if I’d been fed these foods as an infant.
I’ll be honest, when I first started baby-led weaning I wasn’t really convinced that my child would be interested in eating what I was eating and not just throwing it across the room. But I just continued to place an assortment of foods in front of him, he would pick and choose, play and explore. It took time for my brain to deprogram from the age old spoon fed puree style of feeding babies.
Fast forward 10 months since we started baby led weaning and my little man eats a wide variety of foods that I put in front of him. He enjoys an assortment of ferments like sauerkraut and kefir, curries and intense flavours like ginger and cinnamon, meats, including organ meats and especially fatty cuts and duck. I’m a lot less strict about sugar now that he’s a bit older but I still try and avoid it. On the rare occasion that baby gets something sweet at this point he’s really not that into it.
In the quest of establishing healthy eating habits, it’s possible to try too hard to be too anal. In a perfect world sugar wouldn’t engage the same brain centres as cocaine and we’d all live happily ever after. But we’ll never be able to keep our kids away from all unhealthy foods and its not worth stressing over. The point where we have control is where we need to utilize it. Right now, at a year and a half I get to choose for my baby what he eats and establish his taste buds to not turn up his nose at chicken livers when he’s older. I know it’s not always going to be that way. My house was the house kids would come to and gorge on pop, chips and pizza before returning home to kale and carrot sticks. And if your the PCP house, all hope is not lost either. Eventually I realized that eating junk made me feel like junk and started to train myself to actually enjoy healthy foods. It worked!
As a side note, what is more fun than watching your child experience a food for the very first time! It’s hilarious, the confused face which sometimes turns to a smile or a sour faced grimace. The bottom line is food should be enjoyable, and creating healthy food habits starts with us as parents.
So I kind of missed my blogs first anniversary. It came and went so quickly, and so much has been happening in my life lately. My baby boy was 1 month old when I started this website, and now he is on the run, stealing dog treats,giving kisses and throwing limp noodle temper tantrums. The last year has been filled with learning experiences, and they continue on stronger than ever. Am I actually supposed to be an adult by now? The longer I’m on this planet, the less I think I know about anything. I sure hope this trend doesn’t last forever, though I have a feeling it does. As we get older, those strong resilient egos start to lighten up and if we’re lucky we become humbled by this precious human experience.
Though I forgot my blogiversary, it certainly doesn’t mean that this space, the opportunity to create and share what I love isn’t monumentally appreciated. Looking back, it wasn’t until a year ago that I even knew anyone could start a website (or even profit of it for that matter). If you know me at all, you know that I don’t have a cell phone and I don’t own a television. I’m probably the most real deal cave-woman millennial out there. But seriously, I somehow managed to pull the resources together and start this site which for me is a big thing. I poured so much time into learning the ins and outs of having a successful blog. Its so surreal when a big site features my photos. It’s the same feeling that lingered behind me like a shadow on mothers day. I’m a mother? Say what?! Every happy mothers day made me feel like some fraud. A fraud with a beautiful robust baby sucking at her breast, but a fraud none the less. Things like motherhood and websites were reserved for other people in my mind. People who have it all together, who’ve gone to school and have stable homes and relationships. Funny right? I’m grateful that barrier is crossed and I can live my life regardless of societal expectations.
I’ve been very absent lately, a major life shift has occurred, one that I didn’t see coming. It’s so difficult to do the things you love when life is beating you down, when your heart is aching. Fact is, that’s when its most important, but you can never force inspiration. It comes when it comes. As always, my head and heart are constantly competing for the spotlight. Does anyone else have that problem? The logical voice says to get a real job or go to school but my heart screams that I should keep doing what makes me happy. Which is writing and creating nourishing recipes, inspiring others to be better and in turn inspiring myself.
I’d like to turn this space into a more all encompassing health arena. Somewhere we can talk about all things to do with wellness, even the stuff that’s taboo. But I’m wondering how to go about doing that, a name change, a redesign? I just don’t know at this point. I think I’ll let the head and heart have it out on this one for awhile, until we can all come to a consensus.
In late honour of the birth of my little corner of the web, cookies are in order. These Maple Pecan Paleo Protein Cookies are decadent,chewy and loaded with protein. I love me some maple pecan, but I had to give them a little extra sustenance. Truth be told, I can’t stop eating lately, I am a hungry wolf mama constantly scrounging for more. Little man is fast approaching the 15 month mark and still can’t get enough of the liquid gold. He’s so sweet, I can’t cut him off just yet, it’s no biggie considering how much I love food. Things like cookies though, lord help me to eat just one nowadays, if these didn’t have the extra protein I could easily eat 6 in a sitting. With some almond milk…mmmmm….
Blessings friends, here’s to another year filled with learning and fun.
Okay I’ll just let the cat right out of the bag…these pancakes were supposed to be waffles. Never buy a waffle iron at a second hand store, there is a reason its there. After one very sticky pile of nothing I thought it would be best to turn them into pancakes which luckily was a massive success.
I’ve never been a huge fan of sweet breakfasts, so savoury pancakes are right up my alley. If you’re into cheese, you can throw some aged raw cheddar in these for an extra special treat. I like to smother them in butter with a bit of maple syrup.
As the fresh prince of bel air would say, my life got flip turned upside down.
Sometimes self love is the hardest thing. Especially if you’re like me and continually put others first. Even when doing so does them a disservice. Life’s a real B sometimes, forcing you to make those tough decisions and question your self worth.
My gusto for culinary delights has decreased over the stress of these past weeks, along with my waistline. Again with the self love thing, food often tops the list of things I have tortured myself with in the past. Emotional eating, or its opposite is a reality for so many of us under duress (and who isn’t). Inspiration is creeping back in to my life, mostly thanks to Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks and food gawker. I’m not worried about macros or calories or paleo right now, my focus is on enjoyment and quality, something that will cheer me up without creating digestive havoc. Enter: gluten free rice ramen noodles. As many of you can surely relate I was obsessed with ramen noodles as a child and ate them raw or cooked day and night. It’s slightly terrifying just how many MSG packages I must have consumed along with my favourite comfort food.
After reading Dr. Mercola’s article on what happens inside your stomach when you eat instant noodles the next time I eat them would have to be under torture. But I’ve happily discover lotus foods gluten free organic rice ramen alternative made from rice and millet and they are surprisingly SO freakin’ good.
I don’t often eat peanuts or peanut butter because they are actually a legume and can be difficult to digest. Conventional peanuts and peanut butter also have very low standards when it comes to moulds like aflatoxin and by the time we get them are often rancid. But there are a few good companies out there and really what other flavour compares to peanut? It’s directly correlated with fond memories of childhood lunches and has long been a staple food in this part of the world. Once in awhile I need to get my peanut fix so I opt for this brand of peanut butter which is made with coconut oil. Coconut oil has natural anti-fungal compounds in it so I like to think that it helps preserve the integrity of the peanuts. No real studies on this but I don’t get that rancid taste from this peanut butter like I would others.
One of my favourite Vietnamese restaurants makes this luscious peanut noodle soup with loads of fresh cucumber noodles. There’s something about peanut and cucumber, I think it rivals PB&J any day. Paired with the sweetness of mango and thick luscious ramen noodles these Cucumber Mango Gluten Free Ramen Bowls brought my appetite back pretty quickly. I’m back in action folks…and ps. I missed you.
1 cucumber, cut lengthwise into thin strips and then cut again to make long vertical noodles
1/2 ripe mango, cut into thin strips and cut again lengthwise for thin strands
2 green onions or scallions, thinly sliced
crushed peanut or cashews for topping
Instructions
In a blender combine peanut butter, tamari, garlic, chili, lime juice, coconut sugar and chicken broth until smooth. Transfer to a sauce pan and heat until simmering.
Add ramen noodle cakes to brother and cover for 3-5 minutes until soft and tender.
Separate noodles and broth into two large bowls and add a generous amount of the cucumber and mango strips on top with a sprinkle of green onion and crushed nuts.
What could be easier and more satisfying than making your own sweet indulgences? To me, these truffles are like HIIT for the dessert world. Super healthy and effective, yet short and sweet, and while Tabata isn’t nearly as easy as these babies, it takes the same amount of time for the same amazing rewards.
It’s actually shocking how effective a short Tabata workout done three times a week can be. Why spend hours in the gym when you can get er’ done and feel that great endorphin high in your own home! I’m sold. In the same regard, why slave away for hours making delicate patisseries when you can throw together a few ingredients and have scrumptious 4 ingredient superfood truffles in mere minutes.
They were gobbled up just as fast. I brought them to my lovely friends blessing way, which is like a baby shower but better. She’s bursting with life and baby could arrive any day now. Mommas need raw cacao to fuel those last days, it’s a fact. You can coat these truffles with whatever superfoods or seeds you may have lying around- I used hemp seeds, raw cacao and bee pollen but other options would include sesame seeds, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, cacao nibs, goji berries, matcha, or other crushed nuts.
And speaking of mommas, my mom and grandma left yesterday, waaaaah. I wish they lived closer, I miss them already. It was so nice to reconnect in person. It’s hard not having family close by, a big sacrifice for living in such a beautiful place. Maybe some day the mountains will call them over for good.
3/4 C date paste (soaked in warm water for a few minutes)
1 C brazil nuts (raw, unsalted)
3 Tbs cacao powder + extra for rolling
your favourite superfoods for rolling
Instructions
In a blender or food processor combine dates, brazil nuts, and cacao powder until smooth. Set mixture in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes until workable.
Roll into balls and coat in your favourite superfoods.
Hey I'm Chantelle, my alter ego would be a mermaid if I wasn't such a terrible swimmer. I love writing authentically and cooking in my pyjamas. My favourite pastimes include eating avocados, travelling the world and hanging out with a toddler.