Child nutrition... touchy subject

Over the past few weeks I have been reading up and researching a bit more on child nutrition, purely for personal reasons, I have 2 kids, aged 13 and 10. My 10 year old is a very fussy eater and I always joke, he eats so many chicken nuggets he will eventually turn into one. He is very active, plays football, athletics and generally just can't ever sit still or walk anywhere. It bothers me that he doesn't get the right nutrition for his body to allow it to grown and become stronger as he ages, but as a single mum what can I do to make it better??
My 13 year old son is not so bad, he has a better palate and will try new things, he will eat fruit and meats, eggs etc... BUT he is a teenager, it's not COOL to go to school with a packed lunch, so he gets money, every day I battle with the fact he buys fizzy juice, donuts, chocolate, sweets and crisps and his normal lunch would be cheesy chips... a serious lack of nutrition. I brought both the boys up with having a treat once per week, so one night per week, normally a Friday they would get a sweet and we would have DVD night. Fizzy juice was banned from my house, so this was never an option.

So where did it all go wrong?

The problem I find is that you are battling against huge supermarket chains and even smaller corner shops with all the bad stuff, in fact there is a small local run shop close to me that only has 2 variations of fruit, you can guarantee there is a lot more variety of sweets, chocolates and crisps right?

It has become easier to buy and consume "junk food" than it is to buy and consume natural foods.

The human body is actually pretty basic, it's just that as we have evolved we have complicated it. The human body is not designed to consume artificial foods, processed foods or foods so high in sugars. The human body is designed to consume food in it's most natural form, "untouched" if you like.

So... having spoken with my son (the 13 year old one) in great detail about processed foods, artificial ingredients etc we have both decided to put ourselves through a challenge. The challenge is all about whole foods. The challenge will measure a couple things

1. For me I will measure body composition using the Tanita scales.

2. For Aiden we will measure and discuss his feelings, moods, concentration levels

3. For the home I will measure cost for whole foods against "easy to buy" processed/junk foods etc.

The argument is that it's much more cost effective buying ready made meals, crisps, sweets etc rather than fruit, veg and whole foods.

I won't go into too much detail about the kind of things we are going to eat but I will share at the end of the challenge.

Results dependent I will open this challenge up to members of the public also.

Keep an eye on our blog for all up to date info... feel free to comment your thoughts on child nutrition. I would be keen to know how other mums and dads find feeding their kids and what their thoughts are on the foods that they eat.

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