Real Mom Nutrition
A no-judgments zone about feeding a family.
Answers to your top questions about food and nutrition.
Looking for a healthy snack idea for kids? Meet the Snack Platter: easy, fun, and full of nutritious stuff. Thank you to Wish Farms for sponsoring this post. They’re a 4th generation family farm that produces berries including Pink-a-Boo® Pineberries, the new blush-pink berries on the plate above. As a dietitian, I get a lot …
Got the game but need munchies to go with it? Here are some healthy snacks for game night that your family will love. I admit it: My family can fall into an after-dinner rut of parking in front of the TV for Netflix–or worse, staring zombie-like into our own devices. But on the nights when …
Have a loved one who had a new baby or surgery or experienced a loss? Here are 30+ ways to deliver comfort and nourishment to family and friends in need. Bringing a meal to friends in need sounds so nice. Until you promise to do it–and then the over-thinking begins! What if they don’t like …
Spending too much money on packaged snacks every week? Here’s a round-up of cheap healthy snacks for kids. Does it feel like you spend half your weekly food budget on snacks? And if your house is like mine, all the packaged snacks–the expensive stuff you were hoping to slowly dole out–are gone within hours, leaving …
Need some healthy breakfast ideas for teens? Here are 40-plus meals for inspiration, including lots of make-ahead options! Breakfast may not be your teen’s favorite meal of the day, especially when they’re bleary-eyed and crabby at 6:30am on a school day. But your teenager needs to fuel their morning, not to mention all the enormous …
Here’s what you should know about “ultra-processed foods”–how they affect your health and what that means for your family. I wrote a shorter version of this post for my column on WebMD’s Food and Fitness Blog. Talk about “processed food” can make me twitchy. That’s because so much of it smacks of privilege, particularly the …
Are food dyes harmful to kids? Does artificial coloring make kids hyperactive? Here are the facts you need to know! Has your kid ever had a blue-stained tongue from a lollipop or pink frosting-smeared lips? And have you ever felt a twinge of worry, wondering whether those bright, colorful dyes are harmless or harmful–especially after …
Need healthy lunches for teens? Here are several quick lunch ideas that your teen will get excited about. More than once at lunchtime, I found my teenagers elbow-deep in a bag of pretzels or absentmindedly nibbling granola bars. And I realized that in the transition to giving my kids more independence around some meals, they’d …
It’s up to ALL of us to keep kids safe. Here are six important things all parents should know about food allergies. A few summers ago we were on a family vacation, sharing our first dinner in a rented beach house, when something went terribly wrong. A teenage family member had recently been diagnosed with …
Feeding teenagers can be tough! Here are some snack and meal ideas for teens, plus strategies to keep them well-nourished. My teenager was wandering the kitchen recently, opening the refrigerator, freezer, and cupboard doors, when he said something that drove home what teen hunger feels like: “What happens is that I’m hungry, so I eat …
Should kids drink Gatorade and other sports drinks? Find out the facts! I walked out of the grocery store the other day holding something unexpected on my shoulder: A case of brightly colored bottles of Gatorade. Why unexpected? For years, I lobbied to replace sports drinks with water on our local pee-wee soccer fields and …
Frustrated because your kid won’t eat dinner? Here’s a simple solution to help ease your stress–it worked for us! Got a child who just doesn’t want dinner? I did. When my younger son was a toddler, he went on a dinner strike that just about did me in. Though the situation eventually improved, dinner was …
