The Real Life Vegan Kids Podcast

The Recipe That Accidentally Became My Whole Method

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0:00 | 5:29
SPEAKER_00

Hey there, it's Jen. So today I'd like to tell you the story about where my kind of backwards nutrition methodology came about. Now you'll remember in the last episode, I was talking about the 12-month appointment that I had for my son and how his growth and weight were really, really low. So one thing that happened from that appointment is I was referred to a pediatrician who, I'll be honest, wasn't overly helpful. But she did have one comment, it was kind of a throwaway comment that she made that was absolutely life-changing for me. So she mentioned that dietitians often suggest things like fortified rice cereal, the baby cereal, for helping kids have more iron. And she basically suggested that you can put it into mix it into lots and lots of different foods like yogurt and apple and stuff like that in order to increase their iron. So one of the things that we found was that my son was low in iron. And as an aside, just to let you know, we did actually learn that there wasn't anything medically wrong with him. He just has hyperactive ADHD and was far more interested in running around everywhere than he was in actually eating. So the problem was that he wasn't actually eating enough, and what he was eating wasn't giving him enough nutrition. So I had this challenge: how do I get enough nutrition into a very small amount of food that he will actually eat? And at around the same time, if you remember, I started, I went back to uni to study nutrition. So I had just started, and we got access to this nutrition software. It's the one that the dietitians use, and it has access to all of the government uh nutrition databases and everything. And I remember this point really clearly. So I was standing in my kitchen, laptop open, and I just started putting into this nutrition database every single food I could find in my pantry. I put all the nuts, all the seeds, oats, everything. And I just kept going, and then I realized that there are actually so many foods that are high in iron that no one really talks about. Like pumpkin seeds are have a huge amount of iron in them. It's basically the same amount of steak. And cocoa, cocoa powder, has 11 times more iron than steak. And so something kind of just clicked. And I pulled out all the high-iron foods that I had and I threw them on the bench, and I grabbed my food processor, and I thought, okay, I'm just gonna put all of these into one thing. I didn't know what I was making yet, I just knew that it needed to be high in iron, easy to eat, and something that my toddler son would actually like. So I kind of threw everything in and then I added a heap of bananas because he loved banana. I added some maple syrup, I added some vanilla because he liked vanilla, and I kind of processed it all up and I turned it into this slice. I topped it with chocolate, because you know, most kids like chocolate, and I gave it to them and they loved it, like absolutely loved it. Can we have more mum? Can we have this every day? And that was kind of the moment that everything shifted for me, because up until then it felt like there are all these foods that they should be eating. Now, how am I supposed to make this happen? But this was actually the opposite. I had started with stuff that I already knew they liked, and I'd made it more nutritious. And the slice actually ended up being the first recipe I ever put on my blog. I called it Breakfast Slice because it needed a name to be up on the blog. I've later learned that it's probably more like a flapjack if you're in the UK. Um, and it's actually the most popular recipe on my blog. But more importantly, it became the foundation for everything that I do now. Because from there I started doing the same thing with protein balls, with muffins, with everything that my kids enjoyed eating. And instead of having to fight them to eat healthy foods, I was just upgrading the foods that they already liked and ate. And that is the difference. Because the thing is, it doesn't matter how healthy a food is if your kids won't eat it. The nutrition only counts in the food that actually goes in their mouths.