Parents have always had the struggle of trying to get children to eat healthy food. Kids are surrounded by unhealthy options at grocery stores, through their friends and through ads on TV. It is a difficult task for parents to try to convince the child they must eat a healthier option, especially when you have a picky child.
It's even trickier for parents to get their kids eating a healthy dessert. Dessert is meant to be delicious and a treat after a healthy meal, so how do you also make the splurge part of the meal a little healthier?
The key is to find your child's favorite sweet treats and change the ingredients to make them a little less bad for your kids without them realizing it. Here are some of the best recipes for a healthy dessert for kids.
Chocolate Lovers
If you child is a chocolate lover, they would love a brownie sundae. It seems like an innocent dessert that could not possibly be healthy. This recipe can be made healthy by making your own brown recipe and choosing a lower sugar ice cream and toppings.
If you prepare the dish yourself, your child won't realize you chose a sugar free caramel sauce or a fat free whipped cream. Try a healthier brownie recipe, top it with a lower sugar ice cream and toppings, and serve it in a beautiful bowl. Your child won't notice the healthier ingredients in one of their favorite desserts.
One great healthy brownie recipe is a Fudgy Cherry Brownie, which is made with mashed avocado rather than using vegetable oil. The ingredients include:
Avocado
Egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup cola
3/4 cup baking cocoa
2/3 cup of dried cherries
2 oz of organic dark chocolate
As you can see, the ingredients are much healthier and still come up with a delicious chocolate result.
Fruit Desserts
If your child is a fruit lover, or even if your child doesn't care for fruits, making a fruit dessert is a great way to get your child eating healthier. Fruit is great for kids and naturally contains sugar. Some fruit dessert ideas include Stuffed Fruit or Pop Up Bananas.
A Stuffed Fruit is where you simply choose a fruit, normally an apple or pear, and empty part of the center out. In the middle, you can add marshmallows or other delicious sweet stuffing options.
Pop Up Bananas are simply a peeled banana dipped in melted chocolate or other favorite dip and then frozen. Put them on a Popsicle stick before freezing so your child can eat it like a Popsicle.
Another fruit idea is to make a Confetti Yogurt Fruit Dip. Choose any fruit and cut it up. Add sprinkles into vanilla Greek yogurt. Then, your child can dip their fruit into the yogurt.
Pies
Most people love pies. Pies are great because you can much so many different flavors. This is another great way to get your kids eating fruit, by making a healthy apple or strawberry pie recipe. If you go with a chocolate or vanilla flavored pie, also use this opportunity to substitute healthier ingredients your child won't notice with the strong flavor of the sweet topping
Candy Lovers
Do your kids love Sour Patch Kids candy? Try making Frosted Grapes and your kids won't be able to tell the difference. The recipe is to take Jello mix and grapes and shake them together in a Ziploc bag. Put them in the freezer and the result is grapes that taste like candy.
Another thing to keep in mind is if your child helps you prepare these meals, they will have more fun with it. Show them how to make their own snacks (using your healthy ingredients) and they'll start to learn how to follow a recipe.
There are plenty of ways to get your kids eating healthy desserts without realizing it's healthy. They'll love the taste and they'll be getting something healthy that's mom-approved.
What I am going to tell you is eye-opening. A must-read, if you are one of the millions who purchase Vitamin C supplements expecting they'll help keep you and your loved ones healthy.
Because they won't.
Because Vitamin C supplements do not contain Vitamin C.
To understand why the supplement you are buying is not a vitamin let's look at what constitutes a vitamin. Vitamins are not individual molecular compounds. Vitamins are biological complexes-- biochemical interactions that can only activate when all the components of the vitamin complex are present and working together.
When you purchase a Vitamin C supplement you are purchasing ascorbic acid, the primary ingredient in all synthetic Vitamin C supplements. Ascorbic acid is only one component in a complex chain required to make up Vitamin C.
It is not a vitamin, and it is irresponsible for vitamin companies to label it as such.
But they do.
Why is this important for you to know? Because Vitamin C is the biggest selling vitamin in the US with annual sales reaching $250 million. Millions of people take them believing they ward off colds, kill off cancer cells, and prevent any number of illnesses and diseases.
And that's not true.
Shocking, don't you think? But not really a surprise when you realize that 95% of health practitioners, including such prestigious organizations as the National Institute of Health and influential, celebrity doctors like Dr. Andrew Weil state in their literature that ascorbic acid and vitamin C are one and the same.
That's not true. They're not. Not at all.
What is true is that Vitamin C is critical to your health and of immense benefit to your body. IF it's the real deal.
True Vitamin C is found in potatoes, peppers, dark leafy greens, broccoli, papaya, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, pineapple, kiwi fruit, oranges, mangos, and other fruits and vegetables.
For Vitamin C to be Vitamin C it must contain, in addition to ascorbic acid, rutin, bioflavonoids, Factor K, Factor J, Factor P, ascorbinogen, ascorbinogen bioflavonoids, and tyrosinase. Additionally, mineral co-factors must be present and in proper amounts. If any of those components are missing, there is no vitamin C-- no vitamin activity.
Over 90% of vitamin companies in the US purchase ascorbic acid from the same facility-- DSM Nutritional, originally Hoffman-LaRoche, one of the world's largest drug manufacturers.
Each company uses its arsenal of marketing tactics to compete in a competitive marketplace. Each claims its formulation is superior, even though there are no differences. Ascorbic acid is ... ascorbic acid.
Since by definition, a vitamin is a biochemical complex and vitamin activity is the actual biological and cellular change that takes place within the vitamin complex, the ascorbic acid you buy is merely a fragment of the complex that makes up Vitamin C.
Ascorbic acid, a derivative of cornstarch and sulfuric acid, is the antioxidant wrapper that protects the vitamin from rapid oxidation or breakdown.
Another falsehood peddled by the vitamin companies is that it's good to take a lot of Vitamin C. Actually, vitamin consumption is only necessary, and effective, in minute quantities.
The body can not make most vitamins. They must be ingested as food. Whole, natural foods are rich in vitamins. Or used to be. But soils have been so disastrously depleted and deluged with pesticides, pollution, and erosion that foods grown today in American soil contain only a fraction of the nutritional value they had fifty years ago.
Make no mistake, the manufacturers of synthetic Vitamin C have one motive-- profit. And so millions of unsuspecting consumers, eager to maintain their health, spend hard earned money on Vitamin C supplements that are useless and can be harmful.
As a dead, purified chemical, synthetic Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) stresses the immune system as it tries to break down and remove from the body what it identifies as a foreign chemical.
So is there a Vitamin C vitamin? Yes. Whole food Vitamin C, which is a whole, natural food complex that is alive. Man-made synthetic Vitamin C is dead. And not good for your body.
There are over a hundred companies in America alone that sell what they claim is Vitamin C. Less than 5% sell whole food Vitamin C.
Why so few? Well, follow the money. Whole food vitamins are expensive to produce. They're made by taking a vitamin-rich plant and in a cold vacuum process removing the water and fiber and freeing it from chemicals thus capturing intact the biological complex and retaining its functional and nutritional integrity.
When you ingest whole food Vitamin C your body does not have to draw on its own reserves in order to complete any missing elements from the vitamin complex. As is the case with synthetic Vitamin C.
One way to know you are not getting Vitamin C but a synthetic is by reading the recommended dosage. Synthetic vitamins are refined, high potency chemicals. They're measured in milligrams, just like drugs. Those measurements have nothing to do with vitamin activity or nutrition. Our bodies can only absorb about 200mg of vitamin C at a time. Higher doses just flush out of our system.
Drug companies and food manufacturers want us to believe we are well informed so they can continue to misinform us. They are hell-bent on dumbing us down without our realizing they are doing so.
So what do you do? Well, now that you know your Vitamin C supplement is bogus throw it away. Replace it with whole food Vitamin C.
When you look for Vitamin C, look at the ingredients. If it says ascorbic acid, it's not Vitamin C. If it says whole food Vitamin C, it's Vitamin C.
Fruit Desserts
