Wednesday, November 30, 2011

What Matthew Ate Wednesday

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This week I am changing up the "What I Ate Wednesday" post and instead, giving you what my four year-old son ate.

Though my husband and I eat fish and chicken a few times a week and occasionally eat beef, we have chosen to raise our children to be vegetarians.  Neither of our kids have ever eaten meat.  There are several reasons for this. 
  1. It freaks us out when we see little kids (and especially babies) eating meat.  Meat is a dead animal.  We have no desire to let our kids eat dead animals, especially when our children are so young.  I could see a child foraging on his/her own, picking veggies or fruits and even chewing on grains, but not grabbing a cow or chicken and gnawing on it.  (However, we NEVER say anything to other parents about how they choose to raise their children or what they feed their kids.)
  2. Our four year-old son thinks meat is gross.  When we have others ask him if he eats me he yells, "NO!"  One day, after I told him how bread was made, he asked how to make meat.  I can't describe the look on his face when I told him meat was made of dead animals.  "YUCK!"  He yelled.  They may choose to eat meat someday, but we don't offer it to them.
  3. Our children have likely inherited our wonderful predisposition to heart disease, stroke, cancer, hypertension, and diabetes.  If they decide to remain vegetarians all of their lives, they have a greater chance of avoiding these diseases.  Giving them a vegetarian beginning may help them live much healthier, longer lives. 
Since my son is a vegetarian and we live in Nebraska, a state with more cows than humans, I often get asked what he does eat.

 Breakfast:  Oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins and orange juice.

 For a snack, he wanted Louise and Kenny's Swedish Rye Bread with butter.
(Okay, so he just asked for bread and butter,
then he asked what kind of bread it was after he ate it.)
 Matthew is usually too "busy" to eat lunch at noon.
Instead he eats at around 2:00pm. 
I offered orange juice, unsweetened applesauce,
You can see he already ate half a slice before I could get a photo taken!


For supper, I suggested a bean burrito
He told me he wanted two bean burritos.
Matthew ate both of them and finished the smoothie.
He will only drink smoothies that have spinach in them.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, Matthew is a very healthy boy.  He has great focus and his weight is ideal for his height and age.  He doesn't have any chronic health conditions except mild seasonal allergies.  He only gets a cold once or twice a year. 

Matthew's diet is kind of boring, but he likes it.  He gets very little processed food and rarely gets food with dyes or artificial flavorings.  He has only had 2-3 sodas or Kool-Aid type drinks in his life.  We started out feeding him like this, so there was never a struggle to get him to eat healthier.  Some days he even eats better than his father and I do!

What did his 4 month-old brother eat today?  Mommy's milk. ; )

If you have children, what do you feed them?

If you don't have kids yet, what kind of foods do you hope to give them?

  • Be sure to come back tomorrow for Garlic-Cheese No-Knead Bread!







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8 comments:

  1. Cute idea! Looks like you've got a healthy eater on your hands :)

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  2. I love the idea of sharing your son's eats!

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  3. That's interesting :) Good to see you're raising your children healthily! It's inspiring and I hope they keep it up as adults.

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  4. Looks like Matthew is eating pretty healthy...good job, Mom!!

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  5. Wow. Your son only eats smoothies with spinach? That is impressive for a little boy. My brothers are 18 and 24 and they will eat no veggies at all. Maybe a salad if we are lucky. Haha.

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  6. The funny thing about spinach is that unless you get carried away and add too much, it has no taste at all.
    Maybe you can make your brothers one, Lindsay, and do a blind taste test? LOL

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  7. Kudos on offering your son beans and helping him aquire a taste for them at a young age! They are SUCH an awesome superfood in my eyes and it makes me happy to see kids eating them! Keep up the great work! many kids I used to counsel were vegetarian but not offered vegetables or legumes hardly ever! they just ate fruit and grains 24-7. So you're doing great!

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  8. Thanks! We try to offer him new foods by putting them on his plate and asking him just to try one bite. The rule is that if he is trying something new at home, he can spit it out gracefully on his plate if he doesn't like it.

    The reward is that if he tries something new he gets a cup of ice cream after dinner. He doesn't always want to try new foods and we shrug it off. We also tell him that grown ups eat it and he just isn't old enough yet. ; )

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