A Better You: Smoothies perfect for kids

I have sat through hundreds of meetings in the past 15 years at Advanced Sports Performance and the two biggest concerns coming out of parents’ and athletes’ mouths are: “How do I improve myself and what can I do to improve my child?”

The second most consistent, and in my opinion, most critical question is: “How do I correct my child’s eating habits when they are such fussy eaters?”

Children don’t eat this and they don’t eat that, it’s a common trend in households all across South Africa and even the world.

Cue the Chariots of Fire soundtrack and I will give you a fantastic solution: just lie to your children!

It would have been cool if I could have posted the “hand on face screaming emoji”.

I say that tongue-in-cheek and with a grin on my face because children are funny creatures and the minute they have an idea in their heads that they don’t like something even though they have never tried it in their lives before, they will refuse point blank to eat it.

So you as a parent need to disguise what they are eating and optimise their nutritional intake.

Children don’t get enough good nutrition into their developing bodies and if you combine that with a fussy eater then
you have problem.

The smoothie presents a very clever and innovative way of maximising optimal daily nutritional nutrient intake.

Because smoothies are sweet, once their little tongues get a taste and are convinced that it is actually delicious, then you have won a small, but vital battle.

There is so much you can pack into a smoothie and they won’t know the difference.

A word of advice, when your child pulls his or her face in dislike, don’t make a fuss.

Move on to the next smoothie.

The two most popular smoothie brands in SA are Kauai and Boost Juice and what I tell parents is to go and experiment with different small smoothies and find one or more smoothie your child will enjoy and then make it at home.

I am following on from last week’s article about alkaline water and in particular, alkaline green smoothies.

Before you pull your face, it’s not a green smoothie, it’s a “Hulk Smash” smoothie.

Did you see what I did there?

I took a traditional green slimy smoothie and gave it a superpower or reference to a superhero.

If this green smoothie is good enough for Hulk, it will be damn well good enough for you.

Kids love this analogy and it works incredibly well.

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This is how you set up a green health smoothie

Step 1: Choose your Greens                                          Step 2: Choose your fruits
Pick one from:                                                                           Pick two from:
2 cups spinach                                                                           1 cup grapes         1 apple       1 peeled orange
1 cup kale                                                                                    1 cup melon         1/2 cup papaya  1 cup pineapple
1 heart of romaine lettuce                                                       1 cup berries        banana peeled  1 cup mango
¾ cup raw broccoli                                                                  2 stalks celery     1 kiwi peeled   1 carrot
1 small head Boston lettuce                                                    1 cup peaches     1 pear

Step 3:  Choose your protein

Choose one:

1 cup soy milk    1 cup Greek yogurt

1 cup full cream milk      1 cup water

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I have had few parents over the years come back and tell me, my kid won’t try it.

They have always come back and said they don’t like this one but like that one.

That is powerful stuff because we have started to change the process and now we can build on that.

Now I am sure you are wondering “how do I go about this?”

I am glad you asked because you need to make sure your life is simple otherwise this can be a pain in the morning or at midday.

First up, go and buy a good reliable blender.

The better the blender, the better the chopping, cutting and grinding of ingredients will be.

Nothing grosses people out more than sipping on a smoothie and a solid chunk of something lands in their mouth.

Second up, go and shop at your local fruit and veg market and buy things at a discounted rate.

This can become expensive if you are shopping at your local Woolies.

Third up, buy some ziplock bags and then ration off your various concoctions into the bags for freezing and easy use at a later stage.

Spend a good afternoon experimenting with taste and textures with your children.

This will allow you to only freeze the winners.

Each morning, your smoothies will take you no less than five minutes to prepare.

Then you and your children will have no excuses for not having a nutritious start to the day.

Below I am focusing on alkaline smoothies to tie into my alkaline water theme from last week but do yourself a favour and visit my Pinterest website at pinterest.com/ASPSouthAfrica where I have a board called Supreme Smoothies.

There you will find a host of various other delicious smoothies to try out.

Sean van Staden is a sport scientist. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanVStaden or visit advancedsp.co.za.

Last week’s column can be found here.

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