Can You Feed Your Children Raw Food

31.    Can you feed your children raw food?

Every mother wants the best for her child.  You want your child to look healthy, grow proportionately, feel energized and have a great immune system.  So, why do most parents in America feed their children junk food by the time they start eating table food?  Why do most restaurants serve French fries or macaroni and cheese for side orders and not steamed broccoli?  It is really a sad situation to watch young children who are obese.  Even schools offer peanut butter and jelly or ice cream for lunch. 

To ensure that your child is eating correctly you must feed them plenty of fruits and vegetables.  But the trick is to make it delicious and fun.  For instance, for breakfast, arrange a platter of fruit, oranges, grapefruit, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, they will love it!  Make faces out of the fruit.  Have them drink only water and no sugar 100% fruit juice that you juice yourself.  Get them used to eating vegetables that are uncooked.  Whenever they get hungry, offer small baby carrots, or celery, they will grow to love the taste just the way it is.  You can introduce a new vegetable each week and learn how to hide it into your food.  For instance, chop up Portobello mushrooms in a chopper and add it to your pasta sauce and watch them gobble it up, barely noticing the mushrooms.  Make blanched broccoli (plain) and eat that for dinner.  If they see you eating healthy, they will learn early on to eat that way.  Do not let them eat packaged foods, such as macaroni and cheese, or fried chicken fingers, or anything fried for that matter.  Make sure that they eat vegetables at every meal and be careful when you go out to eat. 

Offer natural desserts that you have made at home, such as homemade sorbet, or fruit smoothie, or peach cobbler pie (all natural).  Stay away from cakes, cookies, etc that have preservatives and other unnatural flavorings.  Make it yourself and offer it occasionally.  You will find that they watch you and what you eat and if you incorporate a much healthier menu, so will they. 

The best part of raising your children to learn to love fruits and vegetables is that you will notice that they will turn down junk food when you are not around.  At that point you will know that you have done your part in raising healthy adults.