9.24.2009

What, If Any, Dietary Supplements Do You Give Your Kids?

I think we should all endeavor to get whatever vitamins and minerals we need from natural sources in our diet.  To that end, I consistently put healthy, well-balanced meals and snacks in front of my kids.  Without fail, even on birthdays (I know, I'm such a meanie), and they don't get dessert unless they do a decent job with "the good stuff."

But we all know you can't make a small child eat anything.  Despite efforts to hide the vegetables (in tomato sauce, grilled cheese sandwiches, mac and cheese, smoothies, muffins, etc.), they don't always eat everything on their plate, so I know they don't always get everything they need in order to maintain their health.  Last night I even tried to hide baby spinach on my kids' pizza by pureeing and sprinkling it under the cheese.  When my older son asked about it I told him it was "just spices" - but he was too smart for that ploy.

So, I'm a believer in dietary supplements for my kids.  Here is what I give mine:
  1. If you've followed this blog since its inception, you know I'm a big proponent of probiotics in our diet.  I've been giving my kids Country Life's Maxi Baby-Dophilus, a powdered probiotic that I put in their morning juice.  
  2. I also give them Gummy Vites Multi-Vitamins and Gummy Calciums - these look exactly like gummy bears and my kids love them.
  3. Lastly, I recently started giving my kids a liquid vitamin D3 supplement in their morning juice, after reading about how D3 deficiency makes a person more susceptible to swine flu.  In the age of sunscreen (my kids wear it frequently), unless they're getting enough D3 in their diet, they're not getting enough of it.  Since I'm leaning toward opting out of the H1N1 vaccine for my family (given all of the concern about what the vaccine itself might do to harm our health) I want to be sure we're doing what we can to help our bodies combat it.
Do you think I'm missing anything here?  What supplements, if any, do you give your kids?

No comments:

Web Analytics [Valid Atom 1.0] Free Page Rank Tool