ArcaMax

Back to School

I was talking to a woman a while back. This discussion came around to breakfast cereal and I started in about how bad cereal is for kids. This woman screeched back at me. “Ya gotta get ‘em fed and on the bus! What else are you supposed to feed em?!”

Well, I do have some ideas. There is no cereal that is going to keep a kid full and focused. Protein and fat will. Keep the carbohydrates down and the kid will be able to concentrate and won’t fidget. Try it. The teachers will appreciate the change.

And don’t get me started on the school lunch programs. What an abomination. That’s what happens when we feed our kids subsidized, cheap food.

What I am going to do here is give you ideas for breakfast, lunch and after-school snacks. If you’re a mom, a child care provider or a grandparent, you can use all the help you can get. Instead of just one recipe today I am also going to give you several links to recipes. The kids deserve tasty, healthy food.

Breakfast

First off, don’t give your kid a glass of juice. There’s enough fructose in it to cause real problems. The nation’s preeminent childhood obesity expert Dr. Robert Lustig of UC San Francisco calls fructose “poison” and he backs up his claims with science. Mother Nature gave you the antidote to the fructose when she invented whole fruit. The antidote is the fiber. Little kids will love a clementine. They are small and peel easily. It will take a kid a lot longer to peel and eat a clementine than it does to down juice. It’s plenty sweet and has plenty of vitamin C in one dose.

Eggs. Hard boiled eggs are transportable if you have to rush your kids off to the bus. If they can sit, any kind of eggs are good. Cook them any way they like. You can even make Breakfast Quiche Casseroles so you have more than one day of breakfast. They keep in the fridge easily.

Sausages and meat. Kids love to pick up a sausage link with their fingers. You can serve them any kind of meat too. There are plenty of breakfast meats if they like bacon, Canadian bacon, or ham. But don’t limit yourself to traditional breakfast meats. If your kid wants the leftover chicken from last night, give it to them. Steer clear of the sausages packed with sugar. Quality control is important here. Read the label on the box or better yet buy them from the butcher. Stay away from processed food as much as possible.

Pancakes. Yep, there are healthy pancakes. When pancakes are made with almond flour they are healthy. Some kids have a nut allergy but most don’t. You can smash berries and mix with a bit of Truvia instead of syrup or spread them with unsweetened peanut butter. You can find good peanut butter now. Steer away from peanut butter with high fructose corn syrup in it. Again, read the label.

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