• Buy organic whenever possible. Limiting exposure to chemicals, preservatives, and pesticides makes a huge difference to everybody’s health.
  
• Buy free range vegetarian-fed eggs. These taste so much better and are more healthy for you than eggs from chickens that have been stressed or cooped up in tiny cages.
  
• Choose organic dairy products. If you were to make only one change in the way you feed your kids, this is the one to make. Bovine growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and animal by-products fed to vegetarian animals – these are the scary facts of the non-organic dairy industry.
  
• Buy organic meat. You don’t want to feed your kids meat that is full of hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides. You also don’t want meat from vegetarian animals that have been fed animal by-products (including scraps and feces).
  
• Try to buy and serve food as close to its original state as possible.
  
• Minimize the processed food in your cupboards. If it’s not there, your kids can’t eat it. When you do give into the junk food temptation, buy organic cheese puffs and potato chips made with olive oil. Flavored rice cakes are good too.
  
• Never allow your kids to eat fake sugar. Avoid anything that contains Aspartame-NutraSweet, Equal, and Spoonful. For truly scary information about the health risks associated with this sweetener go to www.alaskawellness.com and look in the archives section under Aspartame.
  
• Serve fruits and veggies with every meal. Think of creative ways to include them and use as snacks. Cut veggies into small pieces -- most kids like them better if they are small.
  
• Make soup, sandwiches or scrambled eggs your “fast food” dinner.
  
• Do not keep sodas in your house. Serve water with every meal and make it a rule that no one may leave the table until they drink all of their water. Most kids are dehydrated.
  
• Sweet cereal is not breakfast; it is candy. Almost all boxed cereals – even organic brands – include a lot of processing, and the cereal converts to sugar very quickly in the body. Granola, oatmeal, and other grains are a better choice. Most kids rarely get tired of toast -- use Ezekiel bread if possible.
  
• Only use real butter and olive oil. Many spreads are just one molecule away from being plastic. Yuk!
  
• Replace white flour with alternative grains like spelt or kamut. Don’t buy wheat flour – we get enough wheat in everything else.
  
• Replace white sugar with turbinado or unbleached sugars that are less processed. Or, use honey.

I know this looks like a lot of don’ts – that is why I suggest you take it slow. If you make changes too quickly, your kids may resist. One easy way to make changes is to join a co-op. It will keep you and your kids out of the grocery store more often, so there will be less temptation to buy junk. You will also save a lot of money and time.

But They Won’t Eat Veggies…

This is the perfect time of year to start making changes in your family’s diet. One easy, fun way to get your kids to make better choices is involve them in growing their own vegetables. Container gardening is perfect for kids. To make container gardens, fill some pots with good soil, compost, and plant away! If you are really ambitious and have the space, you could make a few small raised beds for your kids’ crops.

Beans, peas, lettuce, carrots, kale, spinach, and broccoli are all easy to grow and kid favorites. Beans and peas come up very fast. Plant seeds a couple of weeks apart in your containers so that you have a continuous crop ready to eat. Mint, dill weed, and nasturtiums are all completely edible, fun, quick, and easy to grow. Remember that containers dry out quickly so you may have to remind the kids to water daily.

Now, this is an organic garden, so no chemicals! Make your own compost (see recipe below) or buy it at the store to feed your plants. Add compost frequently to your pots to nourish your plants. Soak compost in a bucket of water and use the water for your plants.

You might also help your children research organic gardening. There are several fun and kid friendly books available, or try the Internet. When your garden is ready, send the kids out to harvest their own veggies for dinner. It’s fun for them and they are more likely to eat what they have grown. Between my daughter and the dogs, hardly any of the vegetables we grow make it to the table. Mission accomplished; she is eating her veggies!

Easy Compost Recipe

Soil
Kitchen scraps (no meat, fats or oils)
Weed and grass clippings
Containers

Place a little soil in the bottom of your container. Take your kitchen scraps, clippings, etc., and add them to the soil. Mashing or chopping up the big pieces beforehand will help them decompose faster. Add a little more soil when needed to keep the mixture of ingredients half wet/half dry. Keep your “cooking” compost in a warm sunny spot. When the containers’ contents are all crumbly dirt, you can use it to nourish your plants. It works best to use several smaller containers. That way you will have some compost ready while another is “cooking”. It is normal for your compost to be hot and steamy – this means it is breaking down fast.

Lorrie Montgomery is a volunteer for the Healing Toby Network/Kid's Clinic, offering free holistic healthcare for children. Please call her at 243-9533 to volunteer, donate or ask questions.