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Guest Post: Getting Your Toddler to Eat Veggies

Posted in Children's Health,Food,Nutrition,Recipes,Toddlers on 05/14/2012 at 4:42 pm by Caroline | No Comments

This is the first in a five-part blog series written by students enrolled in the University of Texas’ Nutrition Through the Life Cycle class. Funmi Babalola is a UT freshman who is majoring in the Didactic Program in Dietetics and is Pre-Med.

“Eww! Broccoli tastes nasty.”

Unfortunately, this is a sentiment shared by many toddlers. Parents know that a toddler should be eating plenty of vegetables (according to MyPlate guidelines, 1/4 of their plate should be vegetables), but convincing your child to eat these foods can be a daunting task. Although it may be difficult to change your toddler’s food preferences, it is possible to increase the vegetables in a child’s diet by following these 10 guidelines and by using NurturMe foods.

1. Introduce vegetables earlier.

Toddlers begin having strong food preferences at around 2 years of age. Introducing healthy vegetables into their diets before age two is a smart tactic to help your toddler become accustomed to the taste of vegetables. Then, as they grow older, they will already love or at least be accustomed to the taste. NurturMe baby food comes in 6 flavors that are suitable for children between 4 months and 4 years. Introducing NurturMe foods and appropriate vegetables early is a great way to accomplish this task.

2. Invent creative nicknames for vegetables.

Toddlers are often more willing to eat vegetables if you have creative names for them. Instead of broccoli, say baby trees; carrots can become orange swords. Being playful and fun about vegetables encourages young children to eat them.

3. Cleverly mix in vegetables with foods they already love.

If your son or daughter already loves macaroni and cheese, incorporate some NurturMe Scrumptious Squash into the mix as you cook it. Your little one will love the taste and will unknowingly benefit from the additional vitamins and minerals provided by the squash. This tip can be used with many foods. Just add a package of a NurturMe vegetable that blends with the color of a food that your child already loves.

4. Eat vegetables with children.

Toddlers love to imitate those around them and love to please their parents with their actions. In addition to verbally encouraging your toddler to eat vegetables, eat vegetables with them. If a toddler sees you eating what you have prepared for them, they will want to eat the same thing. Set a good example and provide positive reinforcements.

5. Let them prepare dishes with vegetables with you. Read the rest of this entry »

Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine Asked Our Expert

Posted in Children's Health,Green,Nutrition on 04/24/2012 at 9:20 pm by Caroline | No Comments

Ask the experts: Organic baby food

Written by: Caroline Freedman

Read the original post here.

To conclude our green parenting month, we asked Caroline Freedman, the CEO and co-founder of NurturMe, the first and only certified-organic, all natural and gluten-free baby food company, to answer some questions about the importance of organic eats.

Why should parents choose organic baby food products?
Feeding your baby organic foods protects her from harmful synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, which are often used on conventionally grown farming. Pesticides are toxic by design and can cause harm in humans, particularly to infants who are smaller, have immature immune systems and rapidly growing brains.

What are the benefits for the environment?
In addition to being better for humans, organic food grown from organic farming methods is also beneficial to the environment because it reduces the amount of harmful toxins being used on the land. This improves the quality of the foods produced, the soil, the water supply; Responsible farming can have a ripple effect, positively affecting many aspects of the environment. (Unfortunately, the opposite is also true about conventional farming.)

How has green baby food made an impact in your life and the life of your babies?
Healthy living is about healthy eating, sure, but it’s also about clean living and responsible consumption. Feeding your child “green” baby food is one way to express your commitment to healthy living. And often times, once people make a habit of purchasing one type of green product or a specific brand, that buying/consuming behavior begins to replicate itself until, eventually, one is making general lifestyle choices that support health and sustainability.

Do you have any tips for making your own baby food?
Making baby food is easy enough, but it can be time consuming. Modern parents have a lot on their plates—jobs, kids, household duties. When it comes to feeding time, I say, simplicity is best. Use the freshest, best quality ingredients you can—organic bananas, organic peas, organic apples, you get the point—and puree them. To save even more time, you can try the NurturMe dried baby food and just mix with liquid (even breastmilk) to create a puree. Either way, the important thing to remember is that feeding at these early stages is about complementing the infant’s diet of breastmilk or formula; They will still be getting most of their nutrients from those sources. So, feeding time can be kept simple—the point is to help your child get a healthy start in life by introducing them to fresh ingredients and quality foods, in the hopes that they make healthy choices about foods later in life.

A Recipe for Starting Something That Matters

Posted in BuyOneDonateOne,FeedTheChildren,Journey on 03/22/2012 at 3:59 pm by Caroline | No Comments

Our friends at TOMS Shoes invited us to discuss our Feed The Children campaign on their “Start Something That Matters” blog, started by TOMS founder, Blake Mycoskie. We are so grateful for the opportunity! You can read the original post here.

If you want to start something that matters, at some point early on you need to figure out where to begin. It was with the below-listed items that I took the idea for creating baby food in a new & different way and turned it into a reality.

INGREDIENTS

1 Thing you passionately care about (in this case, organic foods and healthy babies!)

1 Hardworking and trustworthy partner

4 Advisory board members

3 Reputable suppliers

1 “Yes” from a buyer(s)

180k in startup funds

Countless hours on the road, at the computer, in meetings, on the phone, etc.

An open mind to the opportunities that await

A will to make a difference and give back

PREPARATION METHOD

After I gathered and made use of the first seven ingredients, things began to happen. Last March, my partner Lauren and I were setting up a booth to debut our product at an annual, all-natural foods expo – the Mardi Gras of all things organic, eco, and basically, cool. Seriously – even Fabio was there. It was late, we were tired, my two-year-old was overdue for bedtime, and we still had several green carpet tiles needing to be installed. We’d been traveling since 6:00 in the morning and had spent a good portion of the sparse funds we had to attend the show – we were hopeful that our investment would pay off. The morning of the show, we arrived early to our partially-assembled, cheerily green-floored booth, completed the installation, and waited.

Suddenly, it started to rain. Passersby nodded enthusiastically when tasting the foods. Bloggers smiled heartily when listening to the story of how we got our start. Distributors and brokers filled their pockets with samples and sell sheets. Investors pressed business cards into our palms. Most importantly – especially at that early stage – the buyers came. A team of three sales execs from a baby superstore chatted up Lauren while a broker interrupted his sales pitch to me by saying, through clenched teeth, that’s our biggest competitor, before he turned around to address the threesome with polite flourish.

It all happened quickly. Read the rest of this entry »

Milestones

Posted in Babies,Motherhood on 02/27/2012 at 7:26 pm by Caroline | No Comments

Look who’s starting solids! Elle has had her first bites of iron-fortified organic oatmeal… you know what comes next! I can’t wait to see which NurturMe flavors she likes best!

Announcing Our Partnership With Feed The Children

Posted in BuyOneDonateOne,FeedTheChildren on 02/16/2012 at 6:16 pm by Caroline | No Comments

Starting this Valentine’s Day, we will begin donating one 18-serving variety pack to Feed the Children for every one purchased on our website. The goal of our Open Your Hearts, Nurtur For Nutrition campaign is to provide American children with over 100,000 meals over the next six months.

The donations will benefit Feed The Children’s “Americans Feeding Americans” Caravan, which has helped more than 335,000 families across the country since it began in 2009. Feed The Children’s tractor-trailers deliver a 25-pound box of food, a 10-pound box of personal care items and a box of Avon products to pre-identified families. The boxes are designed to help a family of four for up to one week.

NurturMe’s 18-serving variety pack is an exclusive item available only atnurturme.com in association with this campaign. It contains three pouches of each of NurturMe’s six flavors – Crisp Apple, Plump Pea, Hearty Sweet Potato, Scrumptious Squash, Sweet Banana and Crunchy Carrot.

We are proud to launch this campaign in partnership with Feed The Children, and hope you’ll help us spread the word! Follow @NurturMe and @FeedTheChildren on Twitter using hashtags #nurtur4nutrition and#BuyOneDonateOne to stay up to date on the Open Your Hearts, Nurtur For Nutrition campaign. You can also visit our Facebook page and share the campaign details with others in your network.

We sincerely thank you for your support!

Perez Hilton’s “Perezitos” Includes NM On Its Must-Have List for Feeding

Posted in Press on 01/20/2012 at 6:45 pm by Caroline | No Comments

Adventures in Mommyhood: Breastfeeding

Posted in Motherhood,Pregnancy on 01/06/2012 at 11:25 pm by Caroline | 1 Comment

With this post, we pick up where the Pregnancy Blog left off and kick off the new year with a regular series entitled “Adventures in Mommyhood”. As with the Pregnancy Blog, we hope you NurturMoms & Dads out there will weigh in with your own tales, advice, and thoughts about the adventures (and misadventures) of parenting.

I have a love/hate relationship with breastfeeding. In the early days with Elle, it was mostly hate. I didn’t remember it being this hard with Audrey! Why was I engorged all the time? Why did I seemingly always have either a baby or a breast pump attached to me? Why was this such a commitment? I mean, really – it’s too easy for moms – deliriously tired, emotionally spent, desperate-for-some-normalcy moms to decide early on, this is for the birds! But lately – at last – my hate has turned to love, as the weeks have gone by and I’ve gotten into my nursing groove.

A few weeks ago, a mere nine weeks post-partum, I was still in the “mostly hate” phase of breastfeeding. I was jolted back into my work routine by having to make a one-day business trip to Chicago to meet with the buyer of a huge national retail chain. The meeting itself didn’t make me nervous one bit; I didn’t flinch for a second that the success of this meeting could potentially double next year’s revenues. But wrapping my head around pumping throughout the day (when? where?), traveling with the breast milk, having enough of it stashed for my little one back home – these things gave me a stomach ache for days leading up to the trip.

On the morning I was to leave for Chicago, things got off to a great start. I woke up to a 4:30 alarm, dressed in the clothes laid out at the foot of the bed, left an emergency bottle of breast milk on the bedside table for my husband, then air-kissed him and the babe good-bye with my fingers crossed. I showed up at the airport for my one-day trip looking like an overdressed Christmas tree weighed down by ornaments. Dangling from my limbs were a laptop, purse, breastpump, and a cooler for breast milk. I had brought these things not knowing how or where they’d be used, but confident I could figure it out and would get the necessary assistance along the way. That turned out to be mostly true.

Prior to my departing flight, I was relieved to find a “Special Assistance” restroom with an outlet and countertop, perfect for pumping. Setting up the pump, I was positively smug – working mom on the go! Taking care of business! Comically, I even had the laptop out on the countertop in front of me and caught up on emails while I pumped. Though self-satisfied, I was also genuinely relieved to know this could be done, and that it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d anticipated.

Cut to about 10 hours later, and I was positively bedraggled. Read the rest of this entry »

10. Wearing yoga pants and socks to work.

9. Getting the help of friends & family during work events.

8. Office walls filled with newspaper clippings and other mementos from our journey.

7. “Yacht Rock” internet radio, the soundtrack of our workday.

6. Brainstorming sessions around the kitchen table.

5. The personal sense of pride from reading a favorable product review.

4. The thrill of getting a “yes” from a buyer!

3. Getting to see our kids & pets during the workday.

2. Laughing all day long.

1. Inspiring others to live their dreams.

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