My children aren't all raw, but I try to give them pretty healthy food. Since becoming raw myself I have realised that we should really eat more veg than fruit, avoiding too much fruit sugar. Recently I have realised that my children have mostly fruit for snacks, and this amounts to quite a lot of fruit in one day.

So any ideas for interesting non-fruit snacks that are raw or nearly raw. When they start getting hungry late in the afternoon an hour or less before dinner I just give them chunks of cucumber, pepper or carrot, but I'd like a few different ideas for earlier in the day.

Dawn

Why would you want to avoid fruit sugar?

Opinion:

-Prepare a variety of cut fruits, whole fruits, cut vegetables, whole vegetables, and packs of raw nuts.....and let your kids decide what they like. I assume they are not ALL raw.....so let them dictate the things they find most palatable - while you decide on the other foods that are that are the most healthy for them.

-Fruits, Nuts, and veggies are great as staples. Make raisins and other dried fruit / nut mixes as snacks....if your children like them.

-Just some suggestions.

-David Mason

I would read stuff by Victoria Boutenko because: she raised kids on raw, she's a nurse and her recipes have lots of veggies and sprouts in them.

I think David has a great point about letting your kids decide what to eat. Victoria Boutenko tells about times when her kids just wanted to eat a certain thing, I think it was that her daughter went through a period where she ate lots of oranges and her son went through a period where he ate lots of just another thing (I forget what it was).

Although it baffled her at the time, she let them do it. Later, she found out that the things that they had wanted to eat lots of, were foods which were healing for her daughters asthma and her sons diabetes!

I eat lots of fruit, it's NOT corn syrup! It's much more diluted and it has vitamins and minerals! It's great brain fuel, Leonardo Da Vinci was a fruitarian, I think Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein also tended to eat that way.

Why would eating veggies rather than fruit work to limit sugar? Lots of veggies also are high in sugar.

This was a list I found illustrating this point.

Fruits
apple 38
apricot, canned 64
apricot, dried 30
banana 62
banana, unripe 30
cantaloupe 65
cherries 22
dates, dried 103
fruit cocktail 55
grapefruit 25
grapes 43
kiwi 52
mango 55
orange 43
papaya 58
peach 42
pear 36
pineapple 66
plum 24
raisins 64
strawberries 32
watermelon 72

Vegetables
beets 64
carrots, cooked 39
carrot juice 45
French fries 75
parsnips 97
peas, dried 22
peas, green 48
potato, boiled 56
potato mashed 73
potato, microwaved 82
potato, instant 83
potato, baked 85
pumpkin 75
rutabaga 72
sweet corn 55
sweet potato 54
yam 51

[www.fi.edu]

I too am working on what to feed my little one...he's just 10 months old and still mostly breastfeeds but munches a lot of fresh fruit and some vegetables, some smoothies and raw soups...

A cousin of mine makes broccoli juice popsicles for her 3-year-old who doesn't want veggies otherwise and he loves them. I think she might use a little apple in them as well..

What came to mind in reading David's thing about letting them decide--great point!!!--is a study my uncle told me of, with two groups of toddlers, in separate rooms over the course of a week, both groups presented with a wide range of foods to help themselves to whenever they wanted, as much as they wanted, the only difference being one group had access to sugar, and one group didn't. The group of kids who had sugar ate a bunch of things but did not meet their nutritional needs over the course of the week. The kids who had NO sugar DID, on their own, meet their nutritional needs over the week.

Note: there IS a difference between sugar and fruit sugar, and cooked starches like potatoes actually are a lot more sugary than fruit! However, fruit JUICES I have heard are too much sugar for kids, it's best to eat whole fruit, for their sensitive systems!

blessed be~~~

Adrienne Michelle

The "fridge cookies" in the recipe section of this board are a big hit with my kids.

Why is fruit sugar bad? Just like there is good fat and bad fat, there is good sugar and bad sugar. Fruit sugar is like omega 3. It is fuel for the brain.

My kids lots of fruit. And, I am completely fine with it. Why wouldn't I?

Gosia


RawGosia channel
RawGosia streams