Raising Adventurous Eaters in Nut-free Schools

With food allergies on the rise, many schools are now considered nut-free environments to help keep all kids safe and healthy.

“Do your kids have nut allergies or go to a nut-free school? ”

For my son’s classroom this year, he cannot bring in peanuts and tree nuts, as well as chocolate or packaged food that was made in facilities with peanuts and tree nuts. Foods also must be non-microwavable.

Over the past few weeks, I have been creating the following list. These wholesome options follow the nut-free school policy while providing him with enough weekly variety.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

Homemade Recipes

Suggestion: Make a large batch and freeze the left-overs. Then pop them in the microwave whenever you need them.

• Veggie Packed Muffins

• Spelt Flour Pancakes

• Quinoa Pancakes

• Pumpkin Pancakes

• Pear Muffins

• Banana Oat Bars

• Homemade Pizza

Easy to Prep Whole Foods

·      Pasta with butter

·      Cold cut sandwiches

·      Tortilla roll ups

·      SunButter and Jelly sandwiches

·      Various fruits (e.g., Apples, Clementine, Pineapple, Strawberries)

·      Various vegetables (e.g., Cucumbers, carrots)

·      Various beans (e.g., edamame, kidney beans, peas, lentils)

Packaged Foods:

·      Bear YoYo Fruit Roll ups

·      Nature’s Bakery Fig Bars

·      “That’s it” Fruit Bars

·      Dried fruit (Mango, banana, apricots)

·      Hippeas: Organic Chickpea snacks

·      Graham Crackers

·      Pretzels

·      Yogurt raisinets

·      Various Crackers, e.g., cauliflower crackers, Annie’s whole wheat bunnies, Crunchmaster multi-grain crackers

·      Various Cereals that are not made in nut facilities, e.g., Life Cereal, Chex, Cheerios

To help raise adventurous eaters, here are THREE strategies proven to help improve mealtime battles and picky eating:

1. Division of Responsibility – This is an effective guiding principal that allows parents to set specific boundaries for mealtime. It also encourages kids to trust their own hunger and fullness cues. The parent’s job is to decide what is going to be serviced, when it will be served and where mealtime will take place. The kid’s job is to decide which of the foods s/he will eat and how much s/he will eat.

2. Food chaining – An approach that encourages caregivers to introduce new food in a gradual and systematic manner. New food is introduced that have similar sensory features (e.g., taste, texture, tint, temperature, shape/size) as foods that are readily accepted by a child. This approach considers a child’s natural preferences and builds upon his/her successful eating experiences. A new food is attempted consistently and subtle variations are added slowly.

3. “Love it, Like it, Learning it” – This is a feeding approach created by Pediatric Dietitian, Ashely Smith from @veggiesandvirtue. It fosters exposure to a variety of foods and creating a well-rounded food environment. Research shows that kids need to be exposed to new foods repeatedly before they accept it. Also, learning something new make kids uncomfortable at first. This approach provides the necessary exposure to new or less preferred foods in a non-coercive environment. On every plate, parents are encouraged to present all of the following:

   •  “Love it” foods - foods that your child consistently likes and will eat most of the time

   • “Like it” foods - foods your child usually likes, but may eat less of when offered “love it” foods)

   • “Learning it” foods - foods your child rarely, if ever, likes and may not have ever been exposed to before

If mealtime is more complicated that this, and you and your child are feeling stressed during mealtime, seek out the advice of a speech-language pathologist for an assessment and further clinical opinion.

At Midtown Speech NYC, we offer feeding assessments and interventions to help you and your child. Please reach out to Founder, Rebecca Iswara at MidtownSpeechNYC@gmail.com for a free consultation.