It’s 10:30 am on a saturday. The kids have been up for several hours. They have had breakfast and snacked on fruit. Yet they keep on asking for food. I don’t like refusing them food because I don’t want to pretend to know when they are hungry or not, but I also do not want to be serving them food all day and then have them not eat at meal times. My remedy? The beautiful, nutritious Snack Plate.
I tell them if they are hungry they can eat as much as they like on this plate. I make it a point of not putting any fruit because I know that that is all they would eat and although fruit has many benefits, it is still loaded with sugar and I do not want them eating that all day long either. I try and feed them a balanced diet, and providing this kind of snack plate makes it that they have no other option but eat vegetables if they are hungry. It works. This morning there were only 2 and a half celery sticks left on this plate by the time lunch came around. They weren’t super hungry for lunch, but since they had already eaten a good serving of fresh vegetables, I didn’t really care how much they ate. It takes away from my worrying if they are getting enough veggies in their diet, and it also takes away from the stress of constantly asking them to eat their vegetables during meal times. If all they wanted for lunch was eggs and potatoes, that’s fine by me.
Kids love to snack. Heck, I do to. Keeping healthy convenient food around makes snacking a nutritious stress free thing. Plus, as snacking can often be a mindless habit, it is even better to have this kind of food available for my kids. If they are watching a movie and want to snack during, putting a plate of fresh veggies guarantees they will eat them, because they barely pay attention to what they are putting in their mouth while watching a movie. This is Ninja Parenting right here folks 😉
The better we eat at home, the more relaxed I can be with our diet when we are out. And I love being relaxed about my diet when when we are out 🙂
Pamplemousse 