Jessica Fenton’s Top Ten Tips for Raw Moms

Jessica came highly referred to Raw mom by one of our readers who enjoyed the Raw Mom Summit, and I love hearing about inspiring raw moms out there and know you do too!

Jessica Fenton’s Top Ten Tips for Raw Moms

• Eat with your child at every opportunity
  • Children are sociable creatures and love to interact as they eat. Eating as a family is crucial to your child’s development as it teaches him to try new foods and gives him the confidence at meal times to explore new foods. Often if he sees you enjoying a food, he will too.
• Introduce new foods slowly
  • If your child doesn’t seem to like a new food don’t panic just try him again with it at later date.
• Make food fun
  • Make a game out of meal times and trying new foods. If your child seems unsure at first let him see how much you love it. Make fun faces out of his food on his plate and rename the meal with a silly name to entice him.
• Don’t make issues out of meal times

If your child is not willing to partake in a meal time let him get down from the table to avoid getting locked into a battle over the dinner table. Just make it clear that this is his main meal and there may be no more snaking until later.

• If your child wants to eat cooked food – let him
  • This is especially important if your child has previously eaten a cooked diet. Just make sure that it’s home cooked with love and consists of the healthiest cooked foods possible. Avoid the common nasties such as refined sugar, refined salt, wheat, gluten, dairy, meat, etc. Don’t deny him the foods he craves or else he might resort to eating them in secret, which no child should ever have to resort to.
• Let your child help with creating his meals if he is old enough
  • you dividends when he is older and knows how to ‘cook you up’ a raw storm. But you’ve got to let him practice his culinary skills from a tender age! Children love helping out in the kitchen, so even if it’s the simplest task, let him feel like he’s really getting involved and helping.
• Let your baby go back and fourth between ‘main course’ and ‘dessert’ if he wants to
  • As your child learns and starts to understand tastes and texture he will naturally begin to eat food in a certain order. Until then it is important that he experiments with his taste buds and fully explores his food. Allow him free reigns with what course he chooses to eat at meal times.

Introduce your child to a balanced raw food diet not excluding any of the main raw food groups. Fruit (fresh and dried), leafy greens (juiced and blended), vegetables (whole, juiced and blended), nuts, seeds (soaked, ground down, butters, milks and ‘cheeses’) superfoods (chlorella, spirulina, maca etc) wild foods (dandelion, nettle, berries etc).

Babies and children need a varied, high calorie, high nutrient, organic/unsprayed raw food diet. Food should be consumed from all areas of a raw food diet.

• Look at what your child is eating in a typical week, not just one day
  • Some days we eat more than other days, our child is just the same. Don’t be worried if your child seems to over or under eat on occasions. Base you analysis of his diet on his intake over the course of a week not a single day.
• Don’t feel pressured into feeding your child common SAD foods, ever!

As a mother living a raw food lifestyle in a busy, modern world it’s sometimes hard to ignore what other parents are feeding their children. Try and stay focused on the foods that you want to fuel your child and keep him healthy, regardless of how bright the advertising campaigns appear.

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