Why I cried into the mac and cheese today

I don't usually stray into personal territory on here - it is a kid's nutrition blog after all. However, today I had one of those moments of clarity that reminded me why you bother.

I was chopping up brocolli into suitably small pieces to hide in macaroni and cheese and I thought to myself - why do I always make such an effort to squeeze an extra vege into everything? I know there are lots of people out there who eat mac and cheese minus the greens as a normal meal and in fact I'm pretty sure we did as kids sometimes for lunch growing up (Dad didn't think pasta was an appropriate dinner food). We also often had pizza, fish and chips or cheese toasted sandwiches for dinner and my sister and I are healthy people with great attitudes to food and eating right. This is certainly no criticism of my wonderful mother who is also an excellent cook, it's just that sometimes Mum was tired and Dad was a big supporter of takeaways.

Then it hit me, it's not even just about what kids need to eat and how they learn about food. It's about what the parents eat too. Dad died of bowel cancer - surely one of the most diet-linked ways along with heart disease and other obesity-related illnesses. Dad wasn't obese or anything, he just really liked refined crap like donuts, hot dogs and pretty much anything that had been deep fried and now he's not here to see my son grow up and do all the things that a grandfather should havea chance to do.

This might not have made me me cry in a normal week but as I am pregnant and full of whatever hormones that makes you overloaded with, it was all a bit much. At the very least it was a good reminder about why I try so hard - I want to be here as long as I can and I want this for the family as well. It's worth the effort.

I'm not a scientist but...

As you may have guessed from the theme of this blog, I can't help but read articles about nutrition when I stumble across them and Sunday papers are a popular host for this topic. So this morning I was reading the Sunday magazine of the Age newspaper, I was drawn to an article by Michelle Bridges, of Biggest Loser fame, about whether genetics plays a role in weight problems (sadly it's not online yet so I can't make the link).

The article starts out by saying "I am not a scientist". No problem, I'm not a nutritionist either but I like discussing stuff around the food and nutrition. However, I'm a bit nervous that a series of scientific conclusions are drawn from some research that Michelle has read and the way her arguments are played out.

The thrust is that "it's not the genetic cards you've been dealt, but rather how you play them that determines much about your physical health and wellbeing." I actually like this bit of the argument as it's a good message that people can control their own health destiny and that eating right and exerising can improve your health - even if that is a bit of an obvious message.

The bit of logic that concerned me was that this therefore dispels the "fat-gene" theory which suggests some of us are incapable of losing weight. Whoa,whoa, whoa Michelle - are you trying to say that people don't have different metabolisms?? She goes on to note that the Biggest Loser trainers manage to get weight off people even when they claimed nothing worked. Sure they did, but these contestants had also never been able to take 12 weeks off work before to exercise and be cooked healthy, nutritious meals all day, every day.

I think it's a important, and only fair, to acknowledge that some people find it much harder to lose weight than others and that this is kind of a "fat gene", and that this means some people need more or less food and exercise than others. I think we've all met someone who can shovel it in and be rake thin (I live with one of these people). Metabolism rates are real and shouldn't be dismissed as a lame excuse.

Recognising different metabolisms seems to me to be such an important thing when you're feeding kids too. It's easy to worry that you're little guy is eating too much when he has had three breakfasts when you've just met someone who said their kid wouldn't even have a cup of milk in the morning. However, kids seem to know better than grown ups what their bodies need (when offered reasonable food choices of course).

It seems to me that teaching kids to eat and drink when they're hungry is an important step in making sure that they have a healthy attitude to food into the future. But as I said, I'm not a nutritionist...

The art of the hidden vegie

Some time back I mentioned that I never intended to be the sort of parent who hides vegies for their child (or the sort of parent who bribes their child with food, or the sort of parent who distracts a child with food etc etc). Yesterday I realised that, while Leo does still actually eat a wide variety of vegetables, they are now all of the hidden variety. I genuinely can't think of a vegie that he would pick up and eat on its own anymore - unless you would count potato/sweet potato in hot chip form and the very occasional snow pea. This despite my clear, pre-baby vision of a child who would munch celery and carrot from a re-usable container made from environmentally friendly plastics while wearing spotless organic cotton outfits.

This hidden vegie realisation came when we were having a roast dinner on the weekend at my Mum's house and Leo looked at it all like it was a plate full of foreign substances. I often present him a dinner like this but always with at least one thing that I know he will eat (i.e. fish cakes including hidden vegies that he will eat served with three unhidden vegies that he will probably leave). So, of a full plate full of roast, he ate two mouthfuls of potato and half a slice of bread. Lame.

I've shared a couple of my best vegie hiding recipes on here before: chicken stir-fry, shepherd's pie, and pumpkin lasagne and I thought it was probably time to throw a new one in the mix. Here is my recent burger recipe - you may need to adapt depending on the size of the vegies that you use:

Eleanor's Hidden Vegie Beef Burgers

Ingredients
500gm lean beef
1 onion grated
1 small zucchini grated
1 small carrot grated
1 egg
Bread crumbs
Olive oil
4 wholemeal burger buns
4 slices tasty cheese
Tomato relish
Oven chips and snow peas to serve

Recipe
Mix beef, onion, zucchini, carrot and egg in a bowl. Add bread crumbs until the consistency is easy to handle and not too sticky. Form into four (or more) patties.

Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan and fry the patties until they are cooked through. Toast the buns under the grill until golden. Make the burgers up to your taste with cheese and relish etc. If your children are more open minded than Leo, you could obviously add lettuce, tomato, beetroot, goji berries etc. Serve with chips and snow peas.

The "at least its better than Maccas" clause

I've recently realised that sometimes I can convince myself that I am doing something good by rating my decisions against a very low bar. For example, I don't get much aerobic exercise but I figure tai chi, pilates and walking to the train station are more than some people who don't do anything at all - like this is a good standard to compare against. If I eat a chocolate bar I tell myself that there are people who eat them every day so one is not so bad. Similarly tonight when I decided I wasn't really up to cooking, I made some homemade pizzas for the boy and me (Mr Williams was out for Friday night drinks) and figured well, at least it's better than Maccas. Not a very high standard, but when I gave Leo a cup of milk and some apple slices I figured it was passable. It's probably worth noting that Maccas has already realised this is all that is required to knock over parental guilt and will sell you a cheeseburger with milk and apple slices too if that's what it takes to get you in the door! I'm not sure if it's worth writing a recipe out for my pizzas but I do find they are a big hit with the kiddies. It is literally just wholemeal pitta breads with some low sodium pasta sauce, ham and cheese (or anchovies, olives and roast capsicum for me). It's probably quite sad but I convince myself as there are tomatoes, onions and mushrooms in the pasta sauce, it's pretty much a balanced meal. But hey, as I said, it could be worse...

Can veganism kill kids?

I really have never blogged about anything too serious in the past, but I have to say the media articles over the last few days about the French vegans who are being charged with their baby's death had me amazed and concerned - not about veganism but about questionable media practice. Let me say up front, I am not a vegan but I do generally believe that a vegan diet can work for most people if managed properly. This French family's situation a bit more tricky that the papers make out. While it would seem easy to conclude straight up that a vegan diet is inappropriate for small children there is a lot more to going on here. Firstly, the parents had decided only to feed the baby breast milk for nine months even though she wasn't putting on enough weight. Secondly, they ignored the symptoms of bronchitis which were picked up in a routine nine-month check up and only decided to treat it with some questionable home remedies (I don't know what a cabbage poultice is). Thirdly, the parents are not believers in supplementing their vegan diet to get vitamin B12 which is generally accepted as something that a vegan diet cannot provide. Interestingly, a Canadian article I read clearly stated that that the cause of the baby's death was pneumonia-related illness (the bronchitis no doubt) and that the subsequent autopsy showed vitimin deficiency. However, when the issue was relayed in the news in Australia, the wording had changed to say that the baby died suffering from vitamin deficiency - which is technically true but misleading in suggesting that the vegan diet was the cause of death. This suggestion concerns me because I have read plenty of sources that say a vegan diet can be managed even for small children but that it needs to be carefully monitored and should be supported with vitamin B12 supplements. The French parents were not making any sensible decisions from the information available - they were not offering a diverse diet to their child, they were not offering vitamin supplements, and they were ignoring professional advice and not seeking medical advice for an obvious illness. So while I think it is absolutely reasonable that these parents are being held to account for the neglect of the wellbeing of their child, veganism really shouldn't be on trial here. That is an issue to be dealt with elsewhere and ideally backed up with research and evidence if it is to be deemed totally inappropriate for young children. I say veganism doesn't kill but that it is a choice that needs to be made with the backing of nutritional advice and a serious commitment to the health needs of the people involved. Ok, serious blogging over - next time I'll tell you about the wonders of "space food".

If only brocolli tasted like biscuits...

A colleague of mine sent me this article which starts with the no-surprises statement for any parent of a toddler "given a choice between raw brocolli and a salty cracker, 18-month -old children will invariably choose the tastiest: the biscuit." Ok, so no news here. Then it goes on to explain that if an adult says "yuck" to the biscuit and "yum" to the brocolli, then the child does not, as you would hope and pray, think "that brocolli must be rockin", instead according to this research, they think "that adult must have strange taste that is different to mine." It seems these small children are cleverer than we thought. Damn! I've invested so much time in being a great role model who loves crunchy, carrot sticks and it seems that all this will have achieved is making Leo think I am a bit strange. I tried to work out how this could be used for reverse psychology - so I maybe should say that the salty biscuit is yummy? But soon realised that the whole point is that children are very smart and cannot be fooled that easily. I guess the only take away message here is that you don't want to force vegetables to compete with biscuits. We sometimes have to keep this in mind at our house when we want to have some garlic bread with pasta - the bread has to come out after most of the pasta has been eaten because just like brocolli vs biscuit, there is only one winner in the battle between buttery, hot white bread and vege-laden, wholemeal pasta!

You gotta eat your spinach baby!

Well, those scientists have done it again - as outlined in this article spinach has been found to be good for you...as we thought all along. As it turns out, it's not the iron that makes it so special but rather, the nitrates. Admittedly, I can't understand the scientific explanation for this but apparently the benefits can be cancelled out by mouthwash - weird hey?

I love hearing this because spinach has proved to be, in my experience, an excellent hiding vegetable. I quite like to sneak it into all things containing mince like spaghetti bolognese, chilli con carne, shepherds pie, and even an unconventional san choy bau.

Here is the shepherd's pie recipe that has been working for us lately - enjoy!

Eleanor's sneaky spinach shepherd's pie

Ingredients
500 grams lean mince beef
half a jar of low salt pasta sauce (we use Stromboli)
One handful spinach finely chopped
2 cups mashed potato
1 handful grated cheese

Recipe
Heat the oven to 180 degrees
Brown the mince in a saucepan and add the pasta sauce
Simmer for 15 mins then add chopped spinach
Pour mince mixture into a pie dish and cover with mashed potato
Sprinkle with grated cheese
Bake in over for 30mins or until golden on the top