Tips and Tricks

Basic Nutrition

Each child’s nutritional needs vary, but everyone needs protein, calcium, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and fiber. The best way to ensure your child is getting these things is to offer a balanced diet containing whole grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, and meat or other sources of protein. When your child is diagnosed with a food sensitivity or allergy, some of these foods become unhealthy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t feed your child what they need.

Do your best to balance out the foods your child can’t have with healthy alternatives.

Learn how to prepare safe allergen free substitutes in your own home, and make a conscious choice to feed your child the best you can.

Having said all that, I am a firm believer in letting a kid be a kid, and that includes picky eating. If your child has food allergies or sensitivities, you can’t blame them for being cautious in trying new foods. I found the best way to improve my son’s appetite was to give him things he liked that were safe. When his body began to heal from the allergens, he was more interested in new things, and his appetite exploded. I had to quit obsessing about how balanced his diet was and start seeking ways to enrich his diet with things he could enjoy eating.

Some things I learned from my trial and error:

Substitution and Recipe Adaptation. A lot of my recipes are old family recipes I adapted to my son’s needs. Trial and error became my best teacher. I wasted a LOT of food, but if I found one new thing I could offer my son, I felt like I had succeeded. Some of my recipes would qualify as ‘errors,’ not because they don’t taste good, but because my son wasn’t impressed. So, get in the kitchen and experiment with your own family recipes. You might waste some food, but then again, you might find a gem to pass on to other families.

Fat = flavor. When you start substituting ingredients especially to remove milk and soy products from your recipes, you are essentially taking out the flavor. As adults, we generally think fat is bad, but in my quest to find a safe diet for my child, I determined calories and fat were the least of my problems. Younger children actually need more fat than adults for proper growth and development, and if you have ever tried to feed a hungry two year old ‘health’ food, you know that your chances of filling his tummy are slim to none.

On top of my son’s allergies, he was very picky, and he always seemed hungry. I used to call him my little birdie because he would hold onto my legs and cry until I fed him something he liked. He wanted the good stuff, and I wanted him to be full and content. So, I started searching for substitutes that would add some of that fat back to the recipes. This satisfied his taste-buds and my 'need-to-feed.'

When you look for fat substitutes, look for non-hydrogenated alternate oils and fats like butter, coconut oil, ghee or even hand-rendered lard*. Yes, lard. Google or Bing it and learn a little before you scoff. It used to be THE standard for baking and frying before vegetable shortening was invented. It is actually a little healthier than butter, and if you've got a milk allergy, it could be the 'flavor' you're dying for in pie crusts, biscuits and cakes.

*Note: When I say lard, I mean hand-rendered back or leaf lard from a pig farm or farmers’ market. Avoid the Armour® blocks in the super-market; they are partially hydrogenated giving you the worst of both worlds, saturated and trans-fat. Not to mention they don’t taste very good.

Adding soups or broths enhances the flavor without adding allergens. One of the things my son loved the most, especially when his tummy was upset, was rice. However, he would grow tired of plain rice pretty fast, and most flavored rice boxes contained corn. I started cooking the rice in chicken or beef broth (Swanson’s Organic®), and then decided to try other organic soups made without corn products. I started applying this to other dishes, and pretty soon, I had a whole menu of things I could fix quickly that I knew my son would love.

Veggies: When things like corn and eggs became toxic substances in my child’s diet, my attention turned away from sugar and other substances normally considered bad for children and toward these new enemies. I made eating a balanced diet my priority, and gave up the fight against less preferred ingredients. My grandmother told me that the secret to her mouth-watering veggies was adding a little bit of sugar during the cooking process. She seasoned her veggies depending on the dish she was trying to match, but she always added sugar before anything. I tried this, and it made all the difference in the world. My picky food allergic child was now eating broccoli, green beans, carrots and peas. I was ecstatic to find something he liked that was easy to prepare, healthy and allergen free. That’s what I call a win/win situation. (Using agave nectar works, too, and doesn't change the flavor.)