Paleo Recipes my kids will eat

candacefausset

There is nothing wrong with going paleo for kids. They can get all of the carbs and sugars they need from healthy fruits and vegetables without filling them with empty calorie foods like pastas and sugary foods that have little to no nutrients. Paleo is a great clean eating start for anyone and it is better to teach your children to eat healthier choice foods now than to have to fight them later about it. Over the past couple weeks we have been revamping our pantries and fridge. We have switched to a much more clean eating style. It isn't paleo but we do a lot less grains and practically no processed stuff. Last night for dinner we hat spinach and feta stuffed chicken with roasted sweet potatoes and side salads. Our 11 month old ate it up no problems because he hasn't hit the picky stage yet and is still experimenting with all foods. Our 3 year old has been subjected to a lot of eating out and junk food over the past year since her brother was born because I have been so tired that I didn't want to cook. Well we decided food prep was our best bet so that makes it easier to eat healthy. But now we are on the struggling journey of fixing our screw up with our toddlers eating habits. It is hard but at this point, she is not allowed to get up from the table until she eats her vegetables. And if she eats her whole plate of food without much fuss and struggle, she gets a treat after dinner such as a small piece of dark chocolate, or fruit salad and a couple cinnamon crisps. I'm not sure what age your kids are but being strict about it is the only way to go if you want to change their eating habits. Chances are it was your own doings that made them become biased to so many healthy foods (no judgement because I did the same) so it is a battle that is no fun, but worth it to make sure our children learn to enjoy healthy foods.

As to everyone who says switching one carb for another is useless- remember not all carbs, or fats, or sugars, etc are created equally. Switching from pasta to sweet potatoes is overall a much better choice. You are getting a lot better things and more nutrients from one than you are the other. There's nothing wrong if you want to eat pasta but if you want to do a lifestyle change, there is nothing wrong if you don't want to either. Don't let the judgmental people get you down. You do what you know is best for yourself and your family.

squirrelzzrule22

buhbyefatso wrote: »

The majority of comments I have read are totally hating, mostly only because they can't stand that I used the word PALEO because it describes what we do and do not consume easily.., People know what I meant..I did not imply that it's perfectly Paleolithic. Grow up.

Could not agree more. Hope you find my posts and some paleo mom blogs with good suggestions. Good luck!

miriamtob

My child loves to eat raw cashews, nori, fresh fruit... I make these truffles with coconut oil, nut butters, cocoa, coconut butter, maple syrup. You roll them into bite sized balls and store them in the fridge. They are amazeballs! If anyone wishes to comment on my parenting now, you can rest assured that you are the lowest of trolls.

jasonmh630

miriamtob wrote: »

My child loves to eat raw cashews, nori, fresh fruit... I make these truffles with coconut oil, nut butters, cocoa, coconut butter, maple syrup. You roll them into bite sized balls and store them in the fridge. They are amazeballs! If anyone wishes to comment on my parenting now, you can rest assured that you are the lowest of trolls.

Those are called fat bombs, correct? Reason I ask is my brother has been on a ketogenic path for about 2 years now and he makes something similar.

ndj1979

squirrelzzrule22 wrote: »

mrmagee3 wrote: »

ndj1979 wrote: »

Dragonwolf wrote: »

jmauerhan wrote: »

hollydubs85 wrote: »

jmauerhan wrote: »

I'm surprised at some of the responses. The OP didn't say she is trying to put her kids on a "diet", just that she is trying to get them to eat the meals she provides. So she's asking for meals that are kid friendly that fit her diet - diet as in foods one eats, not just attempt to lose weight.

First of all, if you don't have kids, don't even comment here. Cause you don't know what you're talking about.

If you DO, what do you feed them? Cause in our house, we feed our kids what we eat, 90% of the time. Every now and then we let the 3 year old pick his own dinner, and he picks crap. He would eat breakfast cereal and chicken nuggets for every meal if we let him. That is not a good diet for a child.

He doesn't have to eat what he's been given, but that's all there is. If he doesn't want to eat the healthy meal we have prepared, we're not going to get him something that's not healthy just so he will be happy about dinner. Sometimes, he also doesn't want to eat the NOT healthy foods - my kid will whine just as much about a cheese laden pizza as he will about a roasted broccoli. Actually I think it's easier to get him to eat the broccoli. Which makes me so happy because I don't want my kids to have the relationship with food I did. I don't want my kids growing up only liking 4 foods and eating massive amounts of calorie dense foods because they don't know what a vegetable tastes like or when they're full. We also don't want our kids thinking they can whine and cry about what they've been given and get away with it. Dinner has been served, and you will eat a reasonable amount and if you tried it and still hate it, then you can have something else that I chose. (which for our son is usually yogurt or a fruit)

I'm vegetarian, and most vegetarians I know let their kids decide if they want meat (which is the approach we have taken) - but there are parents who feel that it's their choice whether or not their kid is going to eat meat, and that's just as valid a parenting decision as deciding to prohibit them eat junk food or fast food or soda or sugar or dairy.

This is why I asked OP what she feeds her kids if they don't like the paleo dishes she makes. Paleo diet is largely marketed as a weight loss diet, and it is of course, unnecessary just like any other fad diet. It's not exactly comparable to becoming a vegetarian for ethical reasons. So people are commenting on it because quite simply, why would you choose a diet that is obviously making life more difficult for you by forcing your kids to eat it with you? Just eat less food of whatever everybody would normally eat otherwise. It seems like the simplest solution here.

The majority of people I know who do a "Paleo" diet are not doing so to lose weight, but because they think it is the "BEST" way to eat. I have always heard it touted as healthy, with weight loss as a side effect if you're overweight. The people I know who do it swear they just feel better when they don't eat dairy, and I'm sure they do. I think it's a load of crap that it's the "right" way to eat or that it's what our ancestors ate, but if someone has found a subset of food that they feel good eating, that's good for them.

I do agree that the silly rules on things like yogurt vs cheese or sweet potatoes vs potatoes is, well, a load of crap.

The simplest thing is to just stay the same.

In my experience, there is no "yogurt vs cheese." Either you're opposed to both or your opposed to neither (assuming here that we're talking about versions of both without a bunch of additives beyond what's required to make them), as both go through a fermenting process. Usually, that argument either leans toward "no dairy at all," or at least "no casein/whey/lactose" (allowing for ghee or butter), or toward "no dairy unless it's raw/fermented," or toward "some, in moderation, if it doesn't cause you adverse effects."

As for the potatoes vs sweet potatoes, there are two reasons for this:

1. White potatoes are nightshades, so any subset of paleo that avoids nightshades will avoid potatoes for this reason. Sweet potatoes are not nightshades, so they're okay in that regard (though my be restricted for other reasons).
2. White potatoes, particularly skins and the forms largely considered "healthy," contain a high amount of saponins that are toxic to humans in high concentrations. There's some disagreement on the validity of this as more research is done or found and more information is presented (such as the fact that most domesticated varieties don't contain that much, because the levels are monitored), but Cordain's views and recommendations are still the foundation of modern Paleo proper and therefore guide a lot of people's decisions.

Most of the people who suggest limiting potatoes on the basis of the carbohydrate content also suggest limiting sweet potatoes, and acknowledge that the glycemic load and nutrient density of sweet potatoes is on par with that of white potatoes and the differences on that front are marginal.

In these edge cases, the final verdict basically comes down to you and your family's needs and best judgement based on the information available to you at any given time.

And for people to act like this type of thing is unique to Paleo and that either "you're Paleo or you're not" boggles my mind. Veg*ns have similar decisions. Milk? Eggs? Honey? Fish? The biggest difference in that regard is that the Veg*n crowd has had the time to name the different subsets and make those names well known. If you eat any of those (even if only rarely), you lose your vegan card according to some, but you're still vegetarian (and if you only eat those things rarely, you may still consider yourself at least "mostly vegan"), or you're pescatarian if you eat fish. The modern Paleo way of eating doesn't have that yet. It's got some different names (Paleo -- which is generally Cordain based, Primal, AIP, recon paleolithic, Asprey's Bulletproof Diet), but most things beyond "Paleo" are not well known, so it's easier to just say you do Paleo than trying to explain that you follow one of the variations and then explain (for the umpteenth time) the differences on top of all the other questions you inevitably get.

Is it counterproductive to the perception of the larger Paleo movement as a whole? Perhaps. Most people who follow it prefer to use their own health and successes on it as the necessary evidence for getting the people they know to try it, though. The bickering on here is generally nitpicking over details about which the Paleo community has largely said, "these are the big names that say that's okay and why, these are the big names that say it's not okay and why. Pick a path for yourself and try it and see how it works for you." The "point" of Paleo is the foundation of the way of eating, the focus on quality, nutrient-dense food and avoiding the things considered objectively harmful, and being mindful of where your food comes from and how it gets to you.

That said, yes, most people who actually do Paleo do so for health reasons. Many books market weight loss as part of the hook, but that's marketing. Many vegetarian and vegan books have that as part of their marketing hook, too.

Do some people do either of these to lose weight? Certainly. The ones that start solely to lose weight, thinking of it as a fad diet, usually go in one of two directions -- 1. they're sorely disappointed and move on to something else, because when it comes to weight loss, Paleo/veg*n aren't magically faster than anything else, and can actually be quite a bit slower, since the focus is actually on health, not weight loss; 2. they realize they feel better -- even independent of weight loss -- and stay with it as a lifestyle change.

^ this is my point about "verbal gymnastics"

do you really think that paleolithich people walked around caring about what kind of potato or carb they found? Of course not, that is ridiculous. They were hunter/gathers, more than likely primarily gathers who ate plants, fruits, leaves, grubs, etc...and most of that was consumed raw...

the whole concept of paleo is ridiculous and not even based on how real paleolithic people ate...

Are you just arguing that you don't like the name? If you were to remove the word "paleo" from the diet along with the ancient-man philosophy, it's a pretty flexible dietary style that allows the gamut of low carb to high carb, vegetarian, etc. It ends up just focusing on whole foods and limiting starches and grains.

Doesn't seem too far out there for me if it was called something else.

YEP YEP YEP. God forbid someone minimize grains and dairy. Why do people get so hung up on the name? Its just a marketing ploy. None of the people I know who eat paleo do so because they actually want to replicate living like a cave man. It was this overarching narrative behind the diet, which in actuality is perfectly reasonable and healthy.

because it is total unnecessary for weight loss and health...

then change the name from Paleo to "we don't like grains and dairy" but then I guess the paleo folks would not be able to sell books if they did that, now would they?

dbmata

SezxyStef wrote: »

dbmata wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

ndj1979 wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

ndj1979 wrote: »

SezxyStef wrote: »

how about this for a compromise...leave in the pasta and switch the ground beef in the sauce for ground deer meat...I have some if you need it...now that's paleo...nom nom.

so paleolithic people ate pasta?? really??

I have no idea...I have to assume not...but the ground deer meat sure fits the paleo thing...and that's what I meant by "now that's paleo"

paleo people ground up dear meat....hmmm interesting..

I believe they ate it raw after tracking said deer down..

given that early paleolithic people probably did not have advanced hunting tools, they probably found already dead deer and ate that...I doubt there was any grinding up of deer meat involved..

I apparently need to find the "joke" font as someone is taking this way too seriously...

I am with you...paleo is silly. No one knows what they ate really...it's the latest "craze" that doesn't make any sense esp since people ammend it as they see fit. Going so far as to rename it primal to include dairy.

I believe in a well balanced diet of whatever the heck I want to eat which includes deer meat, pizza, chocolate and the occasional bacon double cheese burger from the Mickey D's value menu.

A meat grinder is a fairly new invention.

hence me needing a joke font apparently...

apparently, since you can make them but not ID them in the wild.

buhbyefatso

That you eat fresh, natural, UNPROCESSED foods. Foods that we did not evolve to eat, but that man ate from the second man became. That's paleo ideals. Am I a cave person? No. Had I grown up on over processed junk like I'm almost positive you all did? Yes. Do I want that for my children? No. What am I doing to change that? Cutting out almost ALL processed foods. It's quite easy and affordable. It DOES offer variety like so many think it does not...seriously, do you know how many many ways I can cook an eggplant? I say I'm cutting out *almost* all, because, I am human, I am a creature of habit, and also, there are just some modern conveniences and delicious things that I don't think are that bad, that I don't choose to give up. Like All Natural Peanut Butter. My kids love peanut butter. I'm not going to rip away a snack they've grown on for years, especially one that really isn't doing any harm. Do you guys really have nothing better to do than monitor my choices?
I have to go make some SQUASH NOODLES now.

dbmata

explain unprocessed.

I hunt, but my meat is all processed prior to intake.

ndj1979

buhbyefatso wrote: »

That you eat fresh, natural, UNPROCESSED foods. Foods that we did not evolve to eat, but that man ate from the second man became. That's paleo ideals. Am I a cave person? No. Had I grown up on over processed junk like I'm almost positive you all did? Yes. Do I want that for my children? No. What am I doing to change that? Cutting out almost ALL processed foods. It's quite easy and affordable. It DOES offer variety like so many think it does not...seriously, do you know how many many ways I can cook an eggplant? I say I'm cutting out *almost* all, because, I am human, I am a creature of habit, and also, there are just some modern conveniences and delicious things that I don't think are that bad, that I don't choose to give up. Like All Natural Peanut Butter. My kids love peanut butter. I'm not going to rip away a snack they've grown on for years, especially one that really isn't doing any harm. Do you guys really have nothing better to do than monitor my choices?
I have to go make some SQUASH NOODLES now.

LOL so much wrong...

define processed junk...?

if you cook an eggplant it is not processed..whoops...

kgeyser

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