Feeding Young Children Raw Foods

Dear Nomi

I love your cookbook, The Raw Gourmet. How can I use it to feed my 5 year old daughter and 19 month old son? A few weeks ago I radically stopped giving my daughter bread that she loved and ate so much. Now I am teaching her to eat vegetables. She now eats potatoes, rice or quinoa cooked, carrots steamed, broccoli, lettuce, cucumber, avocado, alfalfa and fennel. Can you help me make a weekly plan so that the meals can be varied. My baby has breast milk and likes to eat fruit. In the evening he wants to eat vegetables. He eats avocado and tomato but now he wants other vegetables. What can I give him. Nomi, every day I ask myself what will I give my children to eat. I would like this to come natural to me. Please help me! -from Julie in the Netherlands

Nomi’s Answer:

Dear Julie

The answer changes every day as your children mature and as you experiment more and more with healthy raw foods. In many ways you are doing very well with the children. Of course, I am sure that by now you realize that never introducing them to bread would have been easier and healthier, but I must congratulate you on weaning your daughter off that harmful substance when you realized it was not good for her. Wheat (and gluten)  based products are very harmful to many people, unfortunately the symptoms can be very subtle and it can be quite hard to recognize that wheat is the culprit. In the US it is estimated that one out every 100 people have some sort of gluten or wheat intolerance.

Mothers of young babies have been conditioned to look to their Doctor to tell them what to feed their child. I think that the first thing you need to do is trust your own instincts and not that of a physician who probably spent less than 40 hours studying nutrition while in Medical school, and probably knows nothing of the miracles of raw food.

You ask me what to feed your 19 month old. Once a child has teeth, they are able to eat the same food that you do. Perhaps pureed, or grated, or cut up into little pieces, but commercial baby food is not in order here. At his age, he is no doubt happily putting bits of food into his own mouth. Other than nuts, which can be a choking hazard to very young children, there is no reason why you can’t adapt your raw diet for the whole family. If you are eating a salad, why can’t they? Or, put the ingredients in a blender and serve it to them as soup.

Keep in mind that your children need calories and good fat, as we all do of course, but they are growing and very active so you need to keep the caloric level up. Do not restrict good fats like: young coconuts, flax seed oil, ground flax seeds, olive oil, avocados, almond butter, tahini (raw sesame seed butter), etc.

In the morning a raw pudding or smoothie would be a nice way to start the day. Add in some tahini as in my Vanilla Bliss recipe in the book (water, frozen bananas, and tahini), or add tahini or almond butter to puddings (try banana, papaya and tahini, or plain banana and avocado blended together). I especially like tahini for young children as it is highly digestible, contains good fat, is high in protein and calcium and is not very expensive.

Snacks are very important as children can not eat a great deal at one sitting. Offer them fruit, perhaps pieces of an apple dipped in nut butter, dehydrated flax crackers, (if they can chew them thoroughly) whatever you have in the house that appeals to them.

When first starting a baby on solid food, at perhaps one year or so of age, it is a good idea to introduce one food at a time. A week or ten days is long enough to be sure they are not having an adverse reaction to the new food. Some parents choose to begin a child earlier, at perhaps 6 or 9 months with well strained carrot juice, or some juiced greens. For teething discomfort, gnawing at a large chunk of cool cucumber can be a real comfort. When ready to introduce solid food, applesauce, or any fruit pureed in the blender would be a good choice. Likewise blended vegetables. When more teeth come in, graduate to chunkier food, and finally bits of food for them to feed themselves. This is really not unlike conventional advice, based on common sense, only with all raw foods. One mistake many new parents make is rushing into feeding solid food. In most cases, if breastfeeding, one full year on breast milk only is a great beginning

If you follow common sense guidelines and offer your child anything you would eat prepared in ways suitable for his age, you will have a child who is willing to eat a large variety of fresh seasonal foods. Maybe by the time he or she reaches school age, if they are given a Twinkie by a playmate, they will taste it for what it is, a bunch of chemicals, and spit it out!

For parents who don’t feel completely confident about choosing foods for their very young child, I recommend following the guidelines of a good pediatrician, in my day it was Dr. Spock (not the guy from Star Wars a well-known pediatrician who wrote many books about child raising.) Just make the food raw. For example, if the ‘book’ says OK baby is ready for peaches and plums, just skin and pit them, puree in blender, feed fresh, freeze the rest in ice cube trays. Breast milk provides all the protein a baby needs.