Children's nutrition package recipes

1. Multigrain rice (cooked rice + millet/oats at a ratio of 2:1) + about 100g steamed sea bass chunks + 1 small plate of stir-fried broccoli + 2 steamed pumpkin chunks； 2. 1 bowl of hand-made tomato and egg noodles (approximately 100g of noodles) + 3-4 slices of sauced beef + 1 small plate of cold lettuce + 3 boiled quail eggs ； 3. 1 piece of corn cake + 1 shrimp and smooth egg (about 50g of shrimp, 1 egg) + 1 small plate of stir-fried lettuce + 100ml of sugar-free yogurt.

Don’t think these things look ordinary. I have been a family nutrition guide for children for almost 8 years. I have seen too many parents save up various recipes for “high calcium meals” and “intellectual meals” that are popular on the internet, buy a bunch of imported ingredients and spend two hours. In the end, the children either hate the taste and run away, or suffer from indigestion and nosebleeds. I have tried these three sets for 30 or 40 families around me, and they are almost universal. The ingredients are easy to buy, and the preparation is not time-consuming.

There are actually two different ideas in the industry about the scale of children's meal matching: one is a strict quantitative school, which advocates that it fully complies with the recommended amounts of the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)", such as for 6-year-old children You need to eat 200-250g of cereals and potatoes, 150-200g of fish, poultry, meat, and eggs, and 300-350g of fresh vegetables every day. The ratio of carbohydrates, protein, and fat in each meal is strictly stuck at 3:2:1. You are almost afraid of insufficient nutrition.； The other school is the natural feeding school, which believes that there is no need to dig out numbers at all. As long as the food ingredients within a week cover the four major categories of cereals and potatoes, meat and eggs, vegetables and fruits, and milk and beans, the children can eat as much as they want. Forcing children to eat will easily cause anorexia. In the cases I have come across, both methods have been successful. For example, there is a mother who works as an accountant and is sensitive to numbers. She prepares each meal by the gram. Her baby has very good eating habits and his height and weight have always been above the median. ； But there is also a mother who followed the quantitative standards for two months and struggled with her child every time she ate. In the end, the child cried when she saw the bowl and lost two pounds. In fact, there is really no need to stick to a certain school. As long as your child is not short, fat or lacking in trace elements, he can do whatever he feels comfortable with.

A while ago, a mother came to me and said that her 9-year-old son only loves fried chicken burgers and doesn’t touch a bite of green leafy vegetables. She asked me if I should force him to eat it. I didn't give her a list of taboos. Instead, I asked her to arrange an "independent meal day" for her children once a week. She allowed her to order what she wanted, but it had to be paired with the same vegetables and staple food. She later told me that the first time her child ordered air fryer chicken wings, she paired it with roasted sweet potato fries and chopped lettuce sprinkled with salad dressing. The child actually ate all the lettuce, and then gradually asked for cherry tomatoes and cucumber strips. You see, children's meals are not as perfect as textbooks. First, the children must not resist eating so that the nutrients can enter their stomachs, right?

Many parents always think that the more refined the food for their children, the better. Vegetables should be chopped into porridge, fruits should be beaten into juice, and even corn should be peeled and ground into paste. In fact, it is not good for babies who are in the teething period. Appropriately give some chewy ingredients, such as steamed corn segments, crispy apple chunks, and beef with soy sauce with a little gluten. It can not only exercise chewing ability, but also delay the rise of blood sugar. It is much better than eating paste. Oh, by the way, don’t panic if your child has food allergies. If you are allergic to cow’s milk protein, replace yogurt with sugar-free thick soy milk. If you are allergic to seafood, replace fish and shrimp with lean pork or chicken breast. As long as the protein intake is sufficient, you don’t have to buy expensive ingredients. It’s really not just eating sea cucumbers and abalone that is nutritious.

My own nephew used to resist eating cereals, and my sister would cry every time she forced him to eat them. Later, I taught her to grind cereals into powder and make bear-shaped cakes with some dried cranberries sprinkled on top. Now this kid always asks if there are bear cakes every time he comes home from school. Even the purple sweet potato he didn’t like before, he also rushes to eat the bear buns made with purple potato filling. To put it bluntly, children simply cannot understand what you mean by "eat this to grow taller" or "eat this to supplement calcium." You have to make the food to their liking first, making it look good and smell good before they are willing to eat it.

Finally, let me tell you the truth. You don’t have to buy those Internet-famous children’s nutritional meals that cost tens of dollars a portion, and you don’t need to supplement all kinds of nutritional supplements. As long as the staple food of meat, eggs, vegetables and milk is covered in your daily meals, your children can run and jump vigorously, sleep well, and don’t get sick often. If you really don’t know what to cook today, just go back and look at the first three sets. You can change the ingredients as you like. Bass is replaced by salmon, broccoli is replaced with kale, and multi-grain rice is replaced with oatmeal. You can do whatever is convenient for you, and you don’t have to make so many fuss.