Episode 9: Do Kids really need vegetables?

Episode 9: Do Kids really need vegetables?

Welcome to The Easy Feed Podcast, today, we're diving deep into the million-dollar question: "Do kids need to eat vegetables?" You may be surprised by my answer!

Join me as I explore the various nutrients that vegetables contain… and whether or not these can be found in other foods that children eat!

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Links
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Highlights:

Introduction (00:00.078)
The Importance of Vegetables in Children's Diet (00:31.214)
The Importance of Vegetables in Children's Diet (02:48.654)
Understanding the Importance of Vegetables in Children's Health (05:09.454)
Plant-Based Dietary Phytochemicals (07:32.942)
Nutritional Needs of Children (09:58.702)
Gut Health Importance and Fiber (12:20.078)
Providing Children with Fibre and Phytochemicals (14:42.606)
Nutritional Guidance for Kids (17:11.694)
Parenting Tips for Vegetable Intake (19:35.822)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

Welcome to The Easy Feed Podcast, today, we're diving deep into the million-dollar question: "Do kids need to eat vegetables?" You may be surprised by my answer!

Join me as I explore the various nutrients that vegetables contain… and whether or not these can be found in other foods that children eat!

Here’s what you’ll hear:

1. The Vegetable Dilemma: I discuss the age-old struggle of kids eating veggies and the frustration parents encounter when attempting to incorporate vegetables into their children's diet.

2. The pressure cooker: Exploring the immense pressure parents put on their kids during mealtime and how it affects the overall dining experience. I explore ways to ease the stress and make mealtimes enjoyable.

3.Personal Tales: I share a glimpse into my own experience as a parent, including the nightly ritual of discovering untouched veggie compartments in my son's lunchbox.

4. Nutrient Breakdown Delving into the nutritional value of vegetables, from vitamins and minerals to fibre and phytochemicals. Discover alternative sources of these essential nutrients if veggies aren't on the menu.

So can kids survive without vegetables? Find out in this podcast!

For more expert guidance and support, joint My Nourishing Kids Membership Waitlist HERE

Remember, it's a journey, and small wins should be celebrated. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and leave a review to help spread the word to other mums and parents. Thanks for joining me on The Easy Feed Podcast—bye for now!

Learn more about my membership program, head over to: https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Introduction (00:00.078)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number nine. Do kids really need to eat vegetables? Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learned all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed Podcast.

The Importance of Vegetables in Children's Diet (00:31.214)
Welcome back, welcome back, great to have you. You know, I don't actually ever get asked this question, ever, from parents. Isn't that interesting? As a paediatric dietician of 21 years, I don't think I've actually ever been asked this question. Does my child really need to eat vegetables? Do they really need them? And I think it's because they don't want to hear the answer. But I guess my question is, is that...

really as bad as they think? Like, is it really because parents don't actually want to know the answer? But then what actually is the answer? And that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So is it as bad as we think? Like, can they live without vegetables? And that's what we're going to be talking about today. So, you know, I think the biggest frustration that parents face when feeding kids is their lack of vegetables.

They worry that they're not getting enough coloured vegetables for their health. And it's quite probably the biggest frustration that parents face is their children's lack of vegetable intake. And we are taught that our children need vegetables to be healthy and rightly so. Vegetables are super nutritious and super healthy, but at the same time, children...

don't necessarily want to eat a lot of vegetables and certainly that's been my experience and is still my experience feeding children. And it's, it's an evolving journey, I think, with vegetables and sometimes the parents' level of expectation of what they want or they think their child should eat in terms of the vegetable world or the vegetable kingdom is...

is a big mismatch to actually where the child is actually at in terms of the variety of vegetables that they will eat. So if your level of expectation of what your child should eat is too high and your child is eating a very small variety of vegetables, that mismatch creates a lot of worry, stress, tension, pressure at the dinner table. So this podcast is...

The Importance of Vegetables in Children's Diet (02:48.654)
for those parents that are really struggling to get their children to eat any vegetables. And it's designed to reduce your worry and stress around the child eating vegetables so that it actually reduces the pressure that parents put on their kids at dinnertime. Because that's going to be a complete game changer and it will actually turn everything around and create happy mealtimes and have a massive ripple effect in a positive way.

And I think it all starts with how much pressure we put on ourselves to get our children to eat vegetables and how much we place an emphasis on them eating vegetables at dinner. Because dinner is like one sixth of their day. So vegetables need to be incorporated throughout the day, not just at dinner. And again, this is another factor I think that plays into how much pressure we put on ourselves and our kids to eat veggies at dinner when we actually need to be perhaps changing the way we think about vegetables.

on a bigger scale. So that's what this podcast is about today. All about vegetables. And you know, like it was only last night that I was emptying my own son's lunchbox and the veggie compartment was completely untouched. I yelled out from the kitchen, because by then I think I was emptying the lunchbox. It was about eight o 'clock at night. And I said, buddy, do you think you could eat veggies? And I don't even know if you heard me, but what I heard was silence. So, you know,

He could have heard me and Josie not to respond, or maybe he just didn't hear me. But it's really hit and miss with how many vegetables come back in the lunchbox each day. I try, I put them in. Often they'll get touched, not always completely gone. That's a minority of days when I open the lunchbox and it's completely empty, but it's a work in progress. Okay. They'll get there.

Now you might be thinking, yeah, but clearly your kids probably eat way better than mine. You're a pediatric dietician, you probably spend all this time preparing good food for your kids and they probably eat really well. And look, some days they may, but I'm pretty sure some days they don't. And there would be some days where they eat potentially worse than your kids. So I guess the million dollar question here is, do kids need vegetables?

Understanding the Importance of Vegetables in Children's Health (05:09.454)
Are they actually going to be okay if they don't eat vegetables? Are they going to survive? Are they going to miss out on anything? Are they going to be nutrient deplete or lacking in fibre if they don't eat any vegetables? Because some families that I work with, not one single vegetable will touch the child's lips. And so in that situation, can they get by? How much pressure do we need to place on vegetables?

I guess my answer to that is it depends. And I'll go deeper with that in a minute. But I want to start with looking at what vegetables actually contain in terms of nutrients. And that way we can work out what our kids may be potentially missing out on. So vegetables contain these nutrients. Number one, vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K and folate. So A tends to be more in the reds and oranges.

Bowl eight tends to be more on the leafy greens. So we've got vitamins. Number two, we've got minerals such as iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus. Again, higher and lower amounts of minerals depending on the vegetables, but they do contain some minerals. Number three, carbohydrate. Now this really relates to the starchy vegetables. So things like potato, sweet potato and corn. They're really the only ones that I truly count from a carbohydrate perspective.

Number four, we have fibre. Fibre is rich in vegetables and very good for gut health. Number five, we have these other nutrients called phytochemicals. Now you may or may not have heard about phytochemicals before, but basically what they are is that they are a part of a plant's immune system and they help protect the plant from viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites. And phytochemicals can

offer humans some of that same protection. So that natural immune response, that natural immune protection, those phytochemicals can do the same thing in humans. It's amazing. It's nature's amazing, you know, it's phenomenal how plants and nature and humans, we're all interconnected and it's phenomenal how we...

Plant-Based Dietary Phytochemicals (07:32.942)
We eat these plant foods and they protect us the way they protect themselves. It's, it's, I find it mind blowing. So these phytochemicals have been identified. There's over 5 ,000 individual dietary phytochemicals in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts. And a large percentage of them still remain unknown. At the end of the day, what we currently know is that these phytochemicals are beneficial to humans.

They improve our health and they reduce our risk of disease, such as diabetes, heart disease, and possibly cancer. Okay. So we've identified these five groups of nutrients that are in vegetables. We've got the vitamins, we've got minerals, we've got carbohydrates in some, fibre, and then phytochemicals. So now let's work through this list of five and see if we can find them in any other foods.

That way you can worry less about what your child eats and their lack of vegetables and focus on the things that they do eat. So let's start with number one, vitamins. So as I identified, we've got vitamins A, C, K, folate in vegetables. Now, can we get these vitamins from other foods? Absolutely. So these vitamins and nutrients are all found in

fruits, and I recommend a variety of coloured fruits to meet those different nutrients. So yeah, as I said, those red and orange are going to be higher in vitamin A, and some are going to be higher in vitamin C. And I talk about vitamin C in another podcast and we're in relation to iron. But these fruits will offer these vitamins that you can get from vegetables. So try to have a variety of the colours, as I said.

But don't stress, they're going to be getting the vitamins from the fruits if they're not getting them from the vegetables. Now, if you're thinking right now, yeah, but my child eats no fruit and no vegetables, then you need to talk to me. And then we need to get craftier. And look, I've certainly got patients like this. I've got the same families recently with little ones like this. Plenty we can do to keep your little one nutritionally covered, but you need to seek professional help there. So that's where I say join my membership. It's all in there.

Nutritional Needs of Children (09:58.702)
You've got me also as professional help. So if your child really is lacking in vegetables and fruit, then you need to seek extra help because then there is a risk of nutritional deficiency, especially vitamin C. Okay. The second group we talked about is minerals such as iron, magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus. Now these nutrients are all found in foods such as grains, whole grains, oats, legumes. So things like

baked beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, hummus, nuts and seeds, breads, cereals, wheat mix, old tarnabran, almonds, cashews. So all of these foods will cover the minerals such as iron, magnesium, calcium, phosphorus. Calcium is also found in rich amounts in dairy products and also in non -dairy milks such as almond milk that's been calcium fortified or oat milk.

Or in foods such as almonds, sesame, tahini, chia, dried figs and salmon and tuna with the bone. You can get calcium from all of those sources as well. Not as in tomato sauce, all of those food sources. Okay. The third group that you do find in some vegetables. And again, this is probably not as much of an issue because really it's only the starchy veggies that contain carbohydrates. But look, our kids get plenty of carbohydrates.

They eat carbohydrate all day long usually, so there's generally no shortage of carbohydrates for kids because they love them. And it's found in plentiful supply in breads, cereals, fruits, not to mention all the crackers and the chips and the sweet foods and biscuits that they like to eat. So there's no shortage there, not worried about carbs. Number four, fibre. Now, veggies do provide good amounts of fibre, both insoluble and soluble fibre.

And insoluble fibre tends to be the more bran type foods and insoluble fibre acts to provide bulk in the stool and help your poo be I guess more bulky and solid and not watery. And soluble fibre helps to keep poo soft, keep your bowels soft. So a soluble fibre acts to hold water and retain water in the poo to keep it soft. So you've got insoluble fibre that helps provide some sort of bulk and then the soluble fibre.

Gut Health Importance and Fiber (12:20.078)
which helps keep it soft. So you want a soft sausage, right? So this insoluble fibre helps make the consistency of the sausage. The soluble fibre helps keep it a soft sausage. I told you I'm a gut geek, so you're going to get these little gems of gut health woven into every podcast. Well, not every, but a lot of them. What fibre does is it is actually food for your gut bugs, as well as helping your poos be a soft sausage.

Fiber is actually super important to keep your bowel healthy on the inside. Fiber feeds your gut bugs. It feeds the good gut bugs. It helps the microbiota, the microbiome in your gut be in good balance of good bugs and bad bugs. So it feeds the good bugs and keeps them in good population, good communities in your gut. And that means that your immune system stays strong. If you're not...

feeding your gut, breakfast, lunch and dinner, with fibre, the gut bugs need food. So they turn on your own gut lining to get the food. And you don't want that. You don't want your own gut bugs turning on your own gut lining to eat because you're not providing it with fibre, because what that does is it creates a leaky gut and then that creates immune issues and gut problems. So you want to be feeding

your gut fibre so that it's got breakfast, lunch and dinner, those good bugs have breakfast, lunch and dinner and supper, so that they're not eating your own gut lining and making it leaky. And that's why we want fibre. But the question is, if we're not eating the vegetables or our children aren't eating the vegetables and getting the fibre from the vegetables, can they get fibre from other food sources? Well, the answer to that is yes. So firstly, we have whole grains.

So things like whole grain bread, wholemeal bread, oats, muesli, wheatbix, popcorn, saltatna bran, we've got chia, lots of whole grains and also seeds contain fibre. So seeds, and by seeds I mean pepitas, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds, they all provide fibre. So with seeds and grains, you've got the outside of the seed or the grain, which is the...

Providing Children with Fibre and Phytochemicals (14:42.606)
husk, that's fibre, then you've got the middle part which is the starch and then you've got the inside which is the more, the germ, the more fatty part, but a good fat of course. But that outside part provides a lot of fibre, so seeds are really rich in fibre, nuts, so almonds, cashews, peanut butter, really good sources of fibre. Then you've got things like legumes, so baked beans, edamame, kidney beans, chickpeas, hummus, good sources of fibre.

So all of these foods will provide fibre for your child. So if they're not eating vegetables, but they're eating some of those foods instead, then your children will still be getting some fibre. Okay, number five, phytochemicals. Because phytochemicals are found in plants, it's not only vegetables that you find phytochemicals. So if they're not eating any vegetables, they will still get phytochemicals from other plant foods.

Phytochemicals are found in all different plant foods, including fruits, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes, even extra -virgin olive oil has phytochemicals. So I think you're starting to get my drift that if they're not eating any vegetables, but they're eating a lot of those other whole foods, as I've mentioned, then you can still meet your nutrient requirements, those five groups that are found in vegetables that would be missing if you didn't have them.

So those five were again vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, fibre and phytochemicals. So if your child has a very poor or non -existent intake of vegetables, then I would encourage you to write down firstly, everything that your child does eat. So literally get a piece of paper, write it all out. So write out everything that your child does actually eat.

And then I want you to press pause, press rewind, going back to the beginning of this podcast and start to tick off the foods that would be substitutes for vegetables. And as I go through the different groups, so the vitamins, the minerals, the carbohydrate, the fibre, the phytochemicals, you can start to look at all the different ways that your children are getting those nutrients.

Nutritional Guidance for Kids (17:11.694)
even if they're not getting them from vegetables. Chances are that they are covered for most, if not all of the nutrients. But if you're really worried, then reach out to me or simply join the Nourishing Kids membership because then all your worries will be dissolved because you've got me to help guide you, give you the professional advice, talk to you about what your child eats. We even have some sessions where we actually look at children's food diaries and look at whether they're, you know,

deficient or at risk of being deficient in any nutrients. So you've got all of that support for a very low cost. So check out the link in the show notes or head to nourishwithKarina .com forward slash membership. And that way you'll be able to find out all of the information and join today to get the help that you need and to stop worrying about your child's nutrition and whether they're getting enough.

We'll also put all the information into the show notes so you can head to the show notes to find a link as well. So there we have it. Whilst it isn't ideal, kids can actually live without vegetables. The thing is there is every chance at some point that they will start to eat vegetables and they will bring in at least one vegetable into their repertoire. It just takes time. But the point of this podcast is to...

alleviate parents' stress and concern to hopefully help the mealtime environment so that we're not putting pressure on dinnertime to get all the veggies in. A, think about snacks as providing a significant contribution of vegetables or nutrients. So try and make the most of snacks rather than putting all the pressure on dinner to get the veggies intake. And even if they're not eating any vegetables, then feel

comfort or seek comfort in the fact that there's every chance that they're probably meeting most of the nutrients from other foods that they would have been getting from vegetables and know that your child will start to eat vegetables at some point. Now most parents are able to sneak vegetables in whether it's in like a black bean brownie or whether it's into like a bolognese sauce or even had one. Dad recently told me super super chef he was crumming

Parenting Tips for Vegetable Intake (19:35.822)
chicken schnitzels and he was dipping the chicken with nuggets in, he would do flour and then instead of doing egg breadcrumbs, he pureed up zucchini, two zucchinis and would do flour, pureed zucchini breadcrumbs to get zucchini into his daughter. So the length that some parents go to is phenomenal and there's a lot of hacks and look, I've got those hacks as well in my membership. I've got sneaking veggies into kids and ways to make veggies fun. So I've got all of these.

tips on how to get your child to like veggies. And of course, the dinnertime environment is absolutely key, which is what my three -week feeding kids reset focuses on is setting up an effective feeding environment and plan to actually encourage your child to start to eat these vegetables and other healthy foods over the months and the years. I always say it's a journey. We need to lower our expectations and celebrate the small wins.

So wrapping things up, now, as I said, if you're really concerned about your child's intake, please connect with me. Send me a message on Instagram, Nourish with Karina, email me. There's plenty of ways that we can connect or just join the membership. I'm here to help. I'm here to help reduce your stress and worry and improve your child's nutrition and their vegetable intake. So thank you so much for being here. If you like what you hear, make sure you subscribe to this podcast.

And please leave me a review so that we can get this podcast out to more mums and parents out there. Bye for now.