The nutrition police

The longer you are around baseball Moms, you should be able to spot one of these a mile off - the nutritionally sound Mom - she brings a pre-packed cooler loaded up with fruit, veggies, whole-grain granola bars, and 100% juice boxes. In our little circle......that's me! My total obsession over nutrition origionally began when I suddenly realised how much of my paychecks were filling the snack-bar's cash register! It seemed as though our wonderful days at the baseball field were suddenly getting rather expensive, coupled with the fact that my children were seeming exceptionally cranky when the day was done! I had been ATTEMPTING to monitor quite how much sugar they were purchasing and consuming, with some success, but they had gotten smart to the "sugar" part, and so would purchase high-fat snacks instead......Now please don't miss-understand me here - I love that I can and DO allow my kids to buy a treat from the snack bar, but what I'm talking about here is treat, plus another treat, plus yet another treat...enough treats that your child then doesn't want to eat dinner, and then you wonder why they are a whining pille of mush at the end of the day! After my little wake up call, I also began observing my oldest son - he seemed constantly tired and rather pale....my Mommy-red-flag thought was a wondering about anemia, and enough iron in his diet, so I began reading up on sport-nutrition for children. There are PLENTY of websites out there if you just google it, and from my reading I began to develop my own philosophies! I realised that a huge part of the puzzle is convinience - baseball season, especially during all-stars or tournaments, means a lot of rushing here, there and everywhere. Grab-and-go sees to be the name of the game, and so any hope you have about eating heathy food needs to be planned out somewhat! Personally, I feel that the time it takes to fill a tupperware with blueberries and strawberries, really isn't a big deal, and I'd rather feed THAT to my children than save myself 3 minutes, and hand them another dollar for the snack bar. The other part I was realising, is that during intense training times, I need to bump up the "big-and-strong foods".....breakfast, even though it isn't always easy getting them to sit down and eat it, really IS super important - in our house, I've found that allowing an extra 15 minutes, even if you have to wake them up earlier, so that you make sure you can sit and eat something that is appealing and healthy, makes a big difference in attitude and endurance. There are numerous things that you can stash in that "nutrition police" cooler too......applesauce now comes in handy squeezy-things, so no spoon needed.....pita chips, trail mix, pretzels....all available in large/small sizes, and not too expensive.....fruits/veggies in the ever-handy tupperware.

To end this post, I wanted to share one of my older son's favorite breakfasts......he went through a scrambled egg phase, which was a good pre-game THING, and now we're in a smoothie-and-yogurt groove.....his usual smoothies we're basically a banana milk shake, now we have graduated to THIS...he claims it tastes like a reese's, but as nutrition-momma I tend to think of it in terms of the perfect blend of carbs-protein and kid appeal!

BILLY'S BREAKFAST REESES-SMOOTHIE
-One ripe banana
-A Tablespoon of peanut butter
-A Tablespoon of nesquik chocolate powder
-Milk

Mash the banana with the peanut butter, then add it to the blender. Add the choc powder, then slosh on as much milk as you want - Billy likes his with enough milk to cover the other ingredients, plus about an inch. Blend. Drink. I suppose you could add a scoop of protien powder if you wanted to beef it up some more, but the milk and peanut butter are good sources for that too.