Main Meals for Kids

I find my biggest challenge is providing a balanced week day menu for my children after school. Their school will not provide them with a hot lunch, so I make up a cold lunch daily for them both. Their older brother is "only" gluten free which is slightly easier, and his High School provide him with a nutritious hot meal every day which is a MASSIVE help to me.

Like many other children with food allergies, my twins have some swallowing issues. Reflux alone usually means "sticky" food is harder to swallow, and really dry food can stick at the back of the throat. This is because reflux often desensitises that area making the swallow reflex slightly delayed - usually not much of an issue but in persistent reflux it can become a problem.

Our daughter suffers particularly with this and has to sit upright, pace herself and is very good now (at age 8) in knowing what she can and cannot manage to eat without risking choking.

And, like almost ALL children, those with allergies will still have likes and dislikes, favourites and food they wouldn't touch with the proverbial bargepole. Lastly, children with food related disorders and health conditions almost always have an overly strong emotional relationship with food. It *really* matters to them, it is often a bigger focus than maybe it should be, and they care deeply about what they can and will eat. (And what they can't!) So catering for this group can be akin to stumbling blindly through a minefield!

It's therefore even less acceptable to fob them off with the same meal several days a week (unless there are other reasons for doing so, we did it when weaning our son from tube feeds so I would never condemn anyone!) and given their dietary restrictions, nutritional content is absolutely KEY. I recently wrote about the Free From Food industry and whilst it is fine to use ready meals occasionally, most are high in salt and sugar to add flavour. You simply cannot beat cooking from scratch -and it really isn't difficult.

So here is a sample week-day meal planner for primary aged children, which you can rotate as necessary. It relies on several staples which you can easily keep in your freezer and a couple of half days (or evenings) of batch cooking. I've tried to exclude recipes which have the main allergens in, and the majority are meals you can cook in advance and freeze if desired.

An explanation of Food Allergies for Children

Healthy Eating - What it means for us

Dorothy's friends Katherine and Alfie are eight years old. They suffer from food allergies, in their case “gut allergies” called non IgE allergies which you can’t test for.

IgE allergies are the ones which bring an instant reaction, and extreme forms can cause anaphylaxis.
Do you know anyone who carries an Epipen? They contain medicine for that sort of allergy. You can test for those - which makes identifying your trigger foods a little easier, although food allergies are never easy!

"There are different types of food allergies. We have Eosinophilic Disease, when the body gets confused and thinks some foods are like germs and need attacking. The problem is this attack can end up hurting your body too! Eating those foods make your throat, tummy or bowel red and sore and stops them working properly. If you are not careful then things we all take for granted like eating, swallowing and digesting food don’t happen properly. Going to the toilet can be painful, take a long time and be really difficult. Like any other food allergy you must stop eating the food your body is reacting to.

Some people react in a quick, dangerous way to foods. This can be life threatening. Others react more slowly but the long term effect can be very serious. All our bodies like to be cared for, letting them get red, sore and swollen for long periods of time can damage them. Our bodies work best when they are properly cared for. We all try and look after our teeth by not eating too many sweets! If you have a food allergy you look after your body by avoiding those foods your body reacts to.

Sometimes that means you cannot eat foods which have important things in them for growing. That can mean you need to find those important things in other foods, or in a special formula drink, and take medicines to keep healthy."

Food still needs to be fun though - Katherine and Alfie do lots of baking and cooking with their mum. You can substitute most foods to make delicious recipes.

Katherine says "Getting enough energy is really important - we use a lot of it in school! So sometimes food you might think is less healthy is just right for us! Healthy Eating is really important. It is about looking after your body. But most of all it is about eating in a way to take care of your own body in the best way possible for you."

Want more information on food allergies? 
For “classic” IgE food allergies Our Allergy Adventures is a great site for kids. Lots of activities and useful child-friendly information.
For general info on allergies for kids www.allergykids.co.uk/
Or if your parents want to read more about allergies and intolerances, or more specifically Gut Allergies.

Packed lunches

I've been really struggling to make interesting MEWS free packed lunches for my twins. Few egg free breads are palatable if they cannot be freshened up in the microwave which is obviously not possible at nursery/school. My two (currently!) seem to like Falafel, which is quick and easy to make. The Orgran one is OK, the Hale and Hearty mix is less crunchy (smoother consistency) but sloppier if mixed as instructed and more difficult to make round balls to fry. These also seemed to dry out faster in the fridge. Our favourite is the one our Co-Op sells, the "Just" range.
(If you are ok with corn Barkat make one with few ingredients but I have not tried this mix myself.)

So, today's cooking session was devoted to making Falafel and finding something to add with it. I have some tiny tupperware boxes I put sauces and dips in, so one twin has mayonnaise and the other ketchup to dunk these in tomorrow.

Given the bread problem mentioned above, I have been taking the advice on a friend on how to perfect rolls made with the Juvela Harvest White bread mix. I had no END of trouble getting the correct mix prescribed, this is the only one Suffolk PCT will sanction for those who are gluten free which is also dairy and soya free. DO read labels and check any bread mixes if you are lucky enough to receive gluten free prescription food. Mixes frequently contain other foods many children are excluding as they tend to cater for the gluten free category only.

This bread mix works particularly well as rolls, and you can now buy dairy AND soya free cheese from a couple of sources. I used this to create a cheezy topping on some rolls today, you could make cheese twists or even add some to the mix and make cheese rolls! I am indebted to Rebecca for these fabulous tried and tested suggestions.

Holland and Barrett on the high street stock Redwood Cheezly Soy free  which is easy to source, but our favourite is the Vegusto cheese!  BE WARNED though, their cheese contain nut protein, and NOT ALL their products are free from major allergens. They are intended as Vegan cheese products. The Melty is fab, often out of stock...... and the hard cheese we like is the No Moo Aromatic Cheddar. Strong tasting, but my daughter likes strong flavours! Her twin won't touch ANY cheese substitutes :S

So here we have some with and some without cheese. I have eaten these too, they are very palatable but do take some practice getting the method just right.

Please do email me any of your lunch box ideas to help others!

Healthy Eating?

This was published as a Blog post here and on my personal Blog, but it's such a hot topic I have made it a permanent page - at least for now!

Today K and A's school included in their weekly "newspaper" an editorial on "Healthy Eating", asking parents to support the school's two week drive to improve on an already ongoing campaign.

But just what IS Healthy Eating? The school in question have twice termly cake sales, and hands out sweets in birthday assembly, which hardly fits the "Healthy Eating" criteria that the school is so keen to promote? But actually I have more support for cake sales than you might think. The key to good health is usually a balance in all things, cakes have their place in our children's diets as much as fruit, more so if you speak to a dentist - many of whom deplore the plethora of dried fruit snacks which are the biggest culprits for causing cavities in young children today. On the subject of fruit generally the message is the same, balance is key:-

"It might seem counter intuitive to think that a food with lots of sugar is good for your teeth, but fresh fruit is good for your teeth when consumed as part of a balanced diet."

However frequency also matters, and the modern craze for snacking does no one's teeth, blood sugar or appetite any favours.

Given that my younger two are on such restricted diets their school's two snacks a day (which has to be fruit or cheese) means we probably hit 5-a-day by lunch time, so I am not going to lose any sleep about the odd free-from cake which their school very thoughtfully provides for those unable to buy the regular cakes at their charity sales.  My bigger concern is the drive for low fat-high sugar foods, the demonising of animal fats and the rising importance of carbohydrates in society- and initiative endorsed by successive governments over the past couple of decades. The NHS' "Eatwell Plate" demonstrates clearly this change in focus, and the obesity surge and diabetes time bomb are evidence of how badly wrong politicians and health experts have been. The comments at the bottom of this NHS page do a far, far better job than I could of explaining how skewed our thinking has become about fats and carbohydrates. The processed food industry has been key in promoting grains and sugars, particularly fructose and sucrose with government support but many people are cottoning on slowly, with a surge in online writings trying to expose the myth that vegetable oils are good and animal fats are bad. Even schools are caught up in the effort to increase carbs and fruit and this frustrates me considerably.

My biggest issue with the "Healthy Eating" campaign though, be it at their school or elsewhere, is that I would really prefer my kids to eat for fuel and pleasure - social, sensory, satiety pleasures - and not think too much about it. I resent having to read every label, cook everything from scratch all the time and stress over their daily intake as it is, I try hard (and it IS hard) to ensure their lives are as normal as possible, that they don't feel too different and they don't miss out. But most of all, I would like for food and eating to be necessity not a focus, to take a back seat in life and just be something I as their mother need to consider. If we get through a day where the children have eaten when hungry, had their fill and run off back to more interesting activities then I have succeeded. A day spent thinking about every bite, each ingredient, its impact and value is a day wasted for a child, it is the responsibility of adults to feed their children appropriately and make it as mundane a process most of the time as filling the car with petrol. Of course food is to be enjoyed, but to make it a major or even the sole focus of a child's life for even a short period of time is as bad as ignoring natural appetite.

I have to say, I write none of this whilst wearing an imaginary halo, I fail miserably at this ideal many days and the children's extremely restricted diet makes it very, very difficult to achieve even our own version of normality. But my heart sank reading that newsletter column tonight, because all my efforts made on a daily basis will be shot down in flames in a misguided fortnight of demonising fats, pushing carbs, vegetable oils and fruit - but most of all in drawing attention to something which I would prefer my children not to have to think about. Add to that the fact that they will most likely be discrediting foods my twins rely on to keep them well and it's not going to be a positive experience I fear. I hope I'm wrong.