Day 15/16 – How to stop worrying when your kids plate doesn’t look like Canada’s Food Guide

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I didn’t get a chance to write my blog post last night – so today’s post will have to do double duty. However, I should tell you that our menu was exactly the same. We had leftovers – without any sort of “planned-overing” on the menu both yesterday and today.

Our menu

Our menu was happily easy to pull together thanks to my Sunday meal prep. Here’s what I served:

1. Chinese 5-spice marinated pork tenderloins (I cooked two the first night, so I could serve it twice. I can’t find the recipe freely available online but it comes from my SkinnyTaste cookbook)
2. Steamed Basmati Rice
3. Broccoli Salad

Why this meal works as a cook once and serve twice

This meal works as a cook once but serve twice meal for a few reasons. First, nothing in this menu wilts or gets icky – for example a romaine lettuce based salad such as Caesar salad will start getting limp within a few hours of adding the dressing.

Second, both the pork and rice don’t get too dry when we reheat it. This pork recipe is a bit drier the second day but I actually think it tastes better because the marinade flavours are stronger and the crust on the outside of the pork is a bit more crispy. I should note that we re-warm it whole and then slice it before serving on the second day.

After our dinner on the first night the meal is served, I pack up the rice and pork in my Le Creuset casserole pan with a lid. I put the whole pork tenderloin and rice in the casserole pan and put all the juices that are leftover from cooking the pork on top of the rice. This helps keep the rice moist upon rewarming and makes it taste so yummy.

How to warm things up

The main reason I pack the leftovers up in the Le Creuset pan is that I can put the lid on and then put the whole thing in the fridge over night. The next day, when I get home from work, I warm up the oven to 300 degrees and put the entire thing in. I keep the lid on to prevent what’s warming up from getting too dry.

If you don’t have a casserole dish with an oven-proof lid, you could use tinfoil/aluminum foil, it would just take you a minute to wrap it up.

What did they eat?

The first day the meal was served both boys wanted the pork. You can also see that my one son had some leftover banana bread from his lunch. I forgot to snap an after photo – but both boys liked their pork, had a small amount of broccoli but skipped the rice.

Tonight’s before pictures – show that my one son opted for rice and broccoli salad today but only a small slice of pork. My other son held true to his choice from last night and only wanted the pork. You can also see he had a leftover piece of dried mango from his lunch and a sucker that he got from his piano teacher.

Tonight’s after pictures show that my older son ate most of his rice, broccoli salad and pork. My other son ate his sucker and mango and had a few bits of his pork.

Do you worry when your child only eats one of the dishes thats served?

It’s common for caregivers to worry that their kids aren’t getting a balanced diet if they don’t have a something from every dish that is served. And I really can’t blame them for worrying about this.

I mean, Canada’s current version of the Food Guide uses a plate model (image shown on the left) that looks ALOT different than what my kids plates look like.

So does this that mean that I should make my kids dinner plate look like this and then courage them to eat it?

The answer is no. I think developing nutrition guidance documents that are relevant to a whole population can be challenging, and I want to point out that from the food guide website you can access an article specific for parents feeding children, but in some ways I think how the older food guide (image shown below) framed nutrition recommendations made things a bit easier for caregivers.

When I used to look at this document and talk to parents about feeding their kids – I would say to them that the goal was to meet the recommendation for each specific food based on the weekly average. For example – if you had a 3 year old, their weekly average intake of fruits and vegetables should be around 4 servings per week. Check out this example “food journal” for the three year old below.

In this completely fictious example, even though one day the child didn’t have any fruits and vegetables, on average their weekly intake of fruits and vegetables was still 4, so they were meeting the recommendation.

Now, don’t get me wrong I think even this could be hard for many kids and I am glad that the new food guide isn’t quite so black and white. It isn’t true that every 3 year old child MUST get an average for 4 servings of fruits and vegetables every week or else. Like – what if they got 3.75 on average, or what if some kids love fruits and vegetable and get 6. I know that these kids aren’t doomed to nutritional failure.

Sometimes kids miss a food group at a meal

My point is this, that notice in this meal served to my family on both Tuesday and Wednesday that on the first day my kids opted only for meat. On the second day (my one kid anyways!) had almost no meat and opted for rice and broccoli. He is naturally choosing foods from across the different food groups – even if he isn’t necessarily doing it at each meal.

And your kid might do this too – and its totally ok!

So what?

Let your kids pick and choose what they want from the dinner table and eat as much or as little of the foods they pick. Its OK if today they just want to eat meat today – maybe a little, maybe alot. The next day – might be totally different and they may only want to eat bananas or apple sauce or yogurt or whatever it is that you are offering, that they are in the mood for.

My experience is that in most cases, if we look over a long enough time frame (be it 1 week or 1 month) most kids even out and get their nutrients from a variety of foods. Though if you have concerns – speak to your doctor or ask for a referral to a dietitian.

Have you noticed that some nights your kids only want to eat one (or two) of the foods offered but not the whole meal? Do you worry about it? If you have questions or concerns – send me an email or leave me a comment. I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading!