Menu Ideas
I LOVE meal planning! Meal planning is the best way to ensure your family is eating healthier meals, without going broke!
How do you keep meal planning simple and quick?
I have two methods of meal planning.
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First is I make a list of 30 meals I know my kids will eat, and then modify the recipe to a healthier version. Generally, most families will eat the same 30 meals over and over. My kids helped with making the list, as should yours. Make this list personal to your family. Once you have your list, simply assign them a day during the month. The next month, mix it up.
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The other way is to get ONE cookbook, or one website, and plan all your meals from that book. That way, you aren’t overwhelmed by the options of 20 cookbooks on your table. Plus when you go to make the meal, you will remember where you saw the recipe!
Why do you plan a salad or other fruits and vegetables at every meal? 50% of our diet (kids included) should come from fruits and vegetables! A plant based diet not only ensures your kids are getting the proper nutrients necessary to grow, but also contributes to
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disease prevention,
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better behavior,
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more energy,
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better skin,
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better academic performance, and
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HAPPIER CHILDREN! The younger you teach this to your kids, the more likely they will adopt these behaviors for LIFE.
RESOURCES
- For a tool to remind you and your kids to add more fruits and vegetables to your meals, use the Healthy habits plate.
- Visit the Recipe Page for help with making your list of favorite meals.
- Visit the Free Meal Plan Archives to see one’s our family has made.
Here is a template for meal planning: But.. (Go Here for More ideas)
| Breakfast | Lunch | Snack | Dinner | |
| Monday | Smoothies | Sandwiches | Fruit | Mexican |
| Tuesday | Oatmeal | Green salads | Nuts and dried fruit | Italian |
| Wednesday | Eggs | Wraps | Vegetables | Chinese |
| Thursday | Pancakes/ waffles | Pasta | Grains | American |
| Friday | Muffins/ fruit salad | Soup | Fruits or veggies | Vegetarian |
Comments
Comment from Sweet Pea Chef
Time October 12, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I heart menu planning. Such a great way to get things together ahead of time and do things efficiently and healthy!
BTW, I am doing a speech in two weeks to a group (about 40-50) of moms about healthy eating. I am going to put a “shout out” in my speech about your website, okay?
Pingback from Easy menu planning | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time March 26, 2009 at 5:20 am
[...] Menu planning can be one of those tasks we know we need to do, but never have time to do it. If planning a weeks worth of meals took you less than a minute, would you reconsider? This is how we do it SUPER FAST!! [...]
Pingback from Planning Day | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time May 24, 2009 at 5:48 pm
[...] simple menu planning (of eating the same 30 meals each month) needed a little shaking up. Today I chose 2 cookbooks (I used a Vegetarian Crockpot cookbook I [...]
Comment from Brianna Parisi
Time February 25, 2010 at 11:03 am
Speaking of meal planning….how about meal planning for kids? AND letting them chose it all so they can learn and be independent when it comes to the importance of living a healthy lifestyle! We all know with problems of child obesity today, and the dangerous chemicals in food, that eating healthy is a MUST!
Try this website…zisboombah.com…I am an Intern in Boulder, Colorado for this new, fun, and interactive meal-planning website. It’s sooo cool! It teaches the kids about nutrition, and lets them chose what’s for dinner so that they can learn and make healthy decisions themeselves from a young age. When they register (for free), they put their parents email address in so you have full access to their account. When they go on “PickChow!”, and create their own meal, when they are done they click send and an email is sent to the parent email account with the meal that they have created. Along with it are healthy recipes, a grocery list, coupons, and the nutritional contents of everything they chose.
The meals are measured by stars and meters along the side of the page, so that they can see what exactly each food has. There is a green zone they must stay in- in order to insure balanced, and healthy meals!
Kids absolutely love this website! It truly makes them love healthy eating because they have the choice to pick what they want, and it’s almost like a game! It also makes parents lives so much easier. Working parents can get the emails of what their kids want on their phones and computers on their way home from work! That way, they don’t have to worry about what’s for dinner!
Comment from debbie
Time March 7, 2010 at 7:53 am
This all looks and sounds great, but my kids would never eat the food on the plates in these photos!! How do I get them to eat what I make??
Comment from Amy
Time March 7, 2010 at 8:01 am
Funny thing.. I just barely responded to another frustrated mom like ten minutes ago with the same question (although her question was specifically about vegetables). When I started this blog, my kids wouldn’t eat anything different! But over 2 1/2 years of me being persistent, they are coming around! They of course are getting older, so that helps, but I think in never giving up, they have started to come around. But this is what I wrote the last mom:
I know how frustrating it is when your kids are stubborn about certain foods. I’ve read a million and one ways to get your kids to try new foods, and in my experience, sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. Kids are just unpredictable.
With that said, the only real solution I have seen to work in our family is being consistent, and to not make it an issue.
Providing vegetables at least at two meals a day EVERY DAY! And for awhile, letting it be the same vegetable, until they get used to it. I once posted a success in my son saying he liked the salad I made. It took NINE YEARS!!! Nine years of offering salad and he finally liked it J. Diligence and consistency.
Not making it an issue: And not getting upset with your kids. For most kids the bitter taste of vegetables is not preferable (as with other new or healthy foods). Their taste buds are more sensitive than ours, and so many times the vegetables really won’t taste that good, until their palates evolve. So, learn how to make the vegetables taste good (with a little butter, a little salt, some dip, cooking it properly, etc. It all goes back to, you decide what they eat, they decide how much. Period. No more fighting. They decide how much.
Pingback from Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids » Let’s Get Wild!
Time March 9, 2010 at 5:23 pm
[...] AboutMenu Planning tips Mom in [...]
Comment from CJ
Time March 18, 2010 at 8:50 pm
We work on our children’s eating habits by having a “no thank you” bite with everything on the table every time we have it. It eventually works with quite a few things!
Comment from Elaine
Time March 30, 2010 at 10:28 am
These ideas sound great! But I feel i’ll have to be sneaky getting my kids to eat such healthy foods. But ladies, I just found a great organization for healthy kids. It’s called Accept the Challenge, and it’s all about preventing childhood obesity. (http://bit.ly/aG0jow) If you’re a fan of this blog, you should be a fan of this page!
Comment from Michelle G
Time April 1, 2010 at 10:15 am
I love this idea, sounds like you have a “Family Menu” for your kitchen. Healthy meal plans really can make all the difference. Thanks for sharing your menu!
Comment from louise
Time June 20, 2010 at 3:33 am
i just feed my kids burger and chips every day thats healthy isnt it ???
Comment from just a kid
Time July 17, 2010 at 3:06 am
hey, where can i get more menus?
Pingback from Healthy Meals and food for Healthy Kids » Meal Plan- Gluten Free
Time July 17, 2010 at 3:15 pm
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Comment from Janelle
Time August 2, 2010 at 12:47 pm
New to your website and LOVE it. What are your favorite kid (or adult) cookbooks? I have been looking for ones with pictures to get my 3 year old to help me create the meals for the week.
Comment from Amy
Time August 3, 2010 at 4:23 am
That’s a great question Janelle! I don’t have any great cookbooks with pictures for kids! I wish I did- and I should with as many cookbooks as I have! When my kids cook, we use the big Taste of Home Cookbook, and the Betty Crocker cookbook and I teach them about substituting with healthy ingredients when it’s appropriate.
But my daughter however is making a collection of her favorite recipes and making her own cookbook. She has a binder. We buy old cookbooks from the thrift store that we tear out recipes from. We print recipes online, and we copy recipes from library books (the children’s section has some fun recipe books for kids- like the American Girl Doll cookbooks), and she has her own “cookbook” in a binder as we collect them.
Good luck, and thanks for reading!!
Pingback from Healthy Menu Planning | Healthy Food Ideas for Super Healthy Kids
Time October 9, 2008 at 4:07 am
[...] is easy. I can just sort them onto a calendar. The hard part is getting a list together. This is ours. It’s not complete yet, but we will keep adding to it. I like to keep one open day a week [...]