You’re probably well aware of cutting fats out of your family’s diet. Over the years you’ve learned to trim fat and remove skin from your meat. Fritos and potato chips don’t make it to your grocery cart anymore, and your favorite department is produce. But what about healthy fats and how do you make sure your kids are getting enough of those?
For a healthy growth rate and development in children, make sure to provide foods like raw nuts, seeds, legumes, and avocados. Not only are these foods loaded with healthy fats, they’re full of nutrients too. Food like raw nuts and seeds have been proven to help us live longer and prevent heart disease and cancer.
Try including these raw nuts and seeds in your child’s diet: Walnuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, pistachio nuts, and flax seeds. These are just a few suggestions. Experiment to discover new family favorites, and try to make them available for a quick and energy boosting snack.
We keep a glass container of trail mix in the front of the cabinet for easy snacking. This means that the kids (and me too) eat a lot of sunflower seeds, uncooked pumpkin seeds and almonds.
My question is what to do with avacado? It isn’t really a staple here in New England. I need a little tutorial.
Do you have any fun ways to use flaxseed? Some tried and true kid tested?
Hey you two! Thanks for the great questions! I’m going to post the answers in the coming days so I can give you more thorough answers. Great topics – thanks!
i like making homemade granola to incorporate nuts and oats, since my kids don’t like the texture of oatmeal. i take 8 cups of rolled oats, 1 cup almonds, 1 cup walnuts. i make a syrup with water and brown sugar (but you could use honey or maybe stevia). i use 1/2 cup water and 1 cup brown sugar. i pour it over the granola and bake at 300 for an hour until everything is toasty and nice. then i add dried fruits, like cherries, plum, and blueberries. they love it as a little treat, about 1/4 cup at a time.
Michal, I just tried my granola recipe with some chopped dates too. I loved that! I’m crazy about dried cherries – I’ll have to give that a try. Thanks for the recipe! I should post all the granola recipes you guys share because they’re all a little different.
[...] and you know it’s good for you. But what on earth do you do with it? A previous post of mine, Feeding Your Children Healthy Fats, mentioned flax as a good source. In the Comments, Elizabeth asked me for some fun ways to give [...]
[...] and you know it’s good for you. But what on earth do you do with it? A previous post of mine,Feeding Your Children Healthy Fats, mentioned flax as a good source. In the Comments, Elizabeth asked me for some fun ways to give [...]