Help with nutrition

January 21, 2007

The way I ensure my child gets a healthy, nutritious, well balanced diet every

day is this (in a nutshell):

For breakfast she eats oatmeal with flax oil, hemp seeds, packet of children's

powdered multivitamin, some powdered probiotic and rice milk coupled with a

serving of fruit. Therefore she gets her whole grain serving, protein, omega's

(from flax and hemp) and vitamins and probiotics for a healthy flora plus the

serving of fresh fruit and some freeze dried fruit for a snack.

snack - whole grain muffin or olives or fruit or puffed rice or cookie with

molassis or something of the sort

For lunch, she gets a vegetable serving or two, a whole grain with flax oil

and sometimes hemp seeds added (such as with brown rice or quinoa or millet), a

legume (such as lentils, mung beans, black eyed peas, etc...), avacado. I

sometimes add a little baked white or sweet potato.

Similar snack...

For dinner, exactly the same as lunch plus another serving of fruit.

So to summarize, she gets 2-3 servings of fruit a day, minimum 3 servings of

veggies per day, 3 servings of whole grains and 2 servings of legumes, and 1-2

servings of avacado. Anything else she gets is " extra " ..... You can't go wrong

by offering a well balanced diet ensure your child gets the proteins, fibers,

vitamins, minerals, omega's, iron and good fats. This allows me to avoid

counting her intake of grams, mcg, mg, etc..

ps... I make the grains and legumes in advance and freeze them in ice cube

size servings for about 1-2 months stock... I buy organic everything including

organic frozen veggies. I try to buy fresh fruit and veggies whenever possible

too. 15 minutes before lunch, I take out the portions she needs and steam the

veggies, legumes and grains. Slice the avacado, fruit and anything else and

we're good to go.

hilbro <hilbro wrote:

Hello,

I am looking for some guidance here on vegetarian nutrition (lacto-

ovo)to help ease my anxiety with raising a vegetarian child and

becoming pregnant again while continuing my vegetarian practices. I

have been vegetarian for 17 years, so this isn't new to me, but I

really have entered a higher level of awareness of nutritional needs

a few years ago, before deciding to start a family. That being said,

my now 2 year old toddler is really a very bright child and very

healthy, so I know I must be doing just fine, but I can't help but

wonder if I'm missing something obvious and find it frustrating that

I am constantly going over and over in my head what he's eaten

already and what I need to make sure he gets before the day is done.

There has to be a book, a website, or some people out there that can

give me some good info or a system that work for them.

These are my basic concerns - any suggestions would be greatly

appreciated!

1 - Omega 3s and 6's - the 3's I've learned are in Eggs and Walnuts

and Avacados - what are other easy and good sources of this and how

much/often is a two year old supposed to get? Where am I to find the

6's and are they as important as the 3's? I was once told that I

couldn't meet the omega needs unless I ate fish.

2 - When I was pregnant, half way through I learned that there were

studies done that reported too much soy was not a good thing for the

child as it could lead to extremely early puberty or genital

disformities among other things. So I stopped drinking soy milk,

switched to cow (sadly, but at least drank free-range organic) and

tried to limit my soy intake to once a day (veggie burger, chick

patty, etc.). That made it very hard to meet the minimum 60 grams of

protein each day and I gained a lot of weight before the midwife

suggested that I ease up on the protein mission a bit. SO, has

anyone here eaten soy with no concern throughout their pregnancies

and have perfectly healthy children? I would like to hear that a lot

of you didn't worry about your soy intake! I am concerned with

giving my son too much soy for the same reasons, but know he needs

protein as a growing boy.

I guess this is long enough for a post so I'll end it here for now.

I certainly look forward to hearing what you have to say!

Thank you!

Hilary

" The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. "

Gandhi

" Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens " Blake

" Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every

preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads,

or you shall learn nothing. " T.H. Huxley

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January 21, 2007

Omega 6s and 9s are in all the same foods that the 3s are in. Some foods are

more one than the others. Most people get too much 9s and 6s and not enough 3s.

We use silk enhanced that has omega 3s in it. We also try to eat foods made

from hemp or ground flaxseed as much as possible. I wouldn't worry so much

about the omegas. I didn't while I was pregnant - I didn't start looking at the

omegas in my diet until a couple of years ago.

Do make sure you take a good B complex though and consume foods fortified with

B12 (Silk enhanced over a healthy cereal; also some cereals have flax in them if

you look for it).

I didn't worry about too much soy during my pregnancy at all. My daughter is

perfectly healthy. No signs of pre-pubescency from her. I think she'll be a

late bloomer like me (genetics) and lack of hormones from cow's milk. Not that

I really drank milk as a kid either though.

www.vrg.org www.vegfamily.com and www.vegetarianbaby.com are all really great

websites to check out about pregnancy concerns.

Renee

hilbro <hilbro

Saturday, January 20, 2007 4:03:24 PM