Parents of young-ish kids: Do you fix different foods for yo

Nope they eat what we eat, but we try some new recipes and maybe if we are doing like a pork with a marinade, we will leave it off their portion.

I am the same as the previous poster. I do not eat the same breakfast or lunch (they usually have cereal, waffles or pancakes for breakfast and sandwiches or something else quick for lunch). We do however eat the same dinner. They used to refuse to try much, but in the last few months their palates have definitely expanded! They are 8 and 5 year old girls by the way They love everything I have been cooking and my 8 year old repeatedly asks me to make the skinny taste baked ziti with spinach.

I have four boys and they eat whatever I eat besides greek yogurt and egg beaters. My 2 year old actually prefers a lot of fruit and any vegetable you place in front of him. If I am eating something, he wants whatever I'm eating including peas! Weird child. :laugh: I made it abundantly clear that we were going to start eating much healthier than before, not that I fed them all junk food but, it was still too much junk food in between meals. They have adapted quite well to the change.

My favorite food to eat that my kids enjoy too is apples and oranges all day.
Spaghetti is an easy dish to make healthier changes to i.e. ground turkey instead of ground beef and organic spaghetti sauces and noodles (the kids can't tell a difference). They also prefer turkey burgers and bacon now instead of beef.

I have 2 fairly picky kids (ages 3 and 6)

For breakfast my daughter (3y/o) eats cereal or a cereal bar. My son (6y/o) eats cereal bars or pinwheels.

For lunch, my son is at school M thru F so he eats whatever hot meal they have. My daughter for a long time wants the same lunch: a banana, piece of cheese, 4 slices pepperoni, container of yogurt and animal crackers or pretzels.

For supper, they like pasta a lot. I make up batches of homemade mac n cheese and it lasts 2-3 nights. They love spaghetti with lots of cheese. One night they have chicken nuggets and homemade fries. Stuff I don't want the calories for.

I don't eat the same things at all. I eat pasta maybe once a week. I like salads and my kids don't. I like soups (homemade) and they don't. I don't want to feed them tons of stuff they hate so I try to reason with them.

I'm a mom to four: 10, 8 and 5 yo twins. I do cook pretty healthy for my family, but sometimes a bit more caloric and saucy than I want to take in for my calorie count...

So my questions are:
Do you eat different meals from what you cook your family?
What's your favorite thing that your kids eat that you can eat too?
What kid-friendly meals do you cook that are easily adapted to someone who's watching calories?

Just curious to see how other families deal! My oldest is a "healthy food" anarchist and won't touch anything if she thinks it's at all healthy for her (ie if I try to sneak whole grains into pancakes, etc.) so I sometimes have to be sneaky and creative

TIA for any thoughts!

My kids are 2.5 and 1.5 yo, respectively.

I do not make anything different for them. We all eat well and they nearly always have healthy appetites (it varies, just like ours . Make the food YOU want and let them adapt. Keep sneaking those whole grains into your pancakes, eventually she'll eat them. They won't starve themselves. Remember that these crazy kids change their appetite frequently, they have "graze" days where you can't get anything green into them, and other days where they eat like a horse. If all you offer is good food, they will adapt to it and accept it.

We love chili and cornbread, very nutritious and delicious! I make it mild for the kids and DH and I add hot pepper flakes.

We love macaroni and cheese, you can use whole-wheat pasta and slice up nitrate-free hot dogs in it, make your own cheese sauce from scratch with lowfat milk and cornstarch and some dried mustard and pepper.

Cooking from scratch is a PITA sometimes but well worth the effort - especially if you're taking the time to cook, make a double-batch so you can skip cooking another night in the week

Pureed soups are another favorite here, Roast veggies (think sweet potatoes, carrots, onion) and simmer in some vegetable broth with ginger, puree and serve with a dollop of nonfat sour cream alongside a grilled cheese on whole-grain bread.

Keep doing your research and hit up allrecipes.com and cookinglight.com for ideas. Tear out pages in cookbooks and make a list in Excel of all the new things you want to try.

My kids are 8, 7, 4 and 3 and they actually prefer to eat healthy stuff most of the time. We typically don't buy "junk food" or we'll all scarf it down. We don't buy potato chips, snack cakes, donuts, candy, etc. Instead, we get snacks like popcorn, fruit, low sugar yogurt (mixed with chopped fruit), cottage cheese and low sugar/low calorie popsicles. The entire family eats the same thing for dinner, sometimes lunch and breakfast too (they love eggs and whole wheat pancakes!). They'll eat just about every kind of meat we prepare (grilled or baked chicken, tuna, pork, etc.) The biggest thing they don't like are cooked vegetables. They'll eat most raw veggies so we go with those a lot of times. They still eat things like Mac and cheese and frozen pizzas from time to time too but not real often.

They always complain when dinner consists of chicken or pork because we do eat a lot of it, but it's also one of the only meals that they devour quickly and want seconds of. They eat meat and veggies much better than they've ever eaten Happy Meals from McDonald's!

my kids eat at 5.30ish, whereas me and dp dont eat till 8 or 9pm, so we dont eat the same stuff normally

My daughter just turned two. The only thing different between what my husband eats, what I eat, and what she eats is portion size... and she eats a lot more mandarin oranges and strawberries ("stars") than we do. (but to be fair we drink coffee and she doesn't get any, yet. :laugh:)

Definitely not. What better way to encourage healthy eating than by feeding the whole family healthy food.

My daughter eats anything I put in front of her - probably because she knows that if she were "picky" then she'd be "hungry".

When I was a kid, we ate what we were given and were grateful for it or we ate nothing at all.

This is how my house operates. If you want to eat something in my house, you eat what I make or you go hungry. I cook healthy, I have healthy snacks around and there is plenty of food to keep everyone from starving.