One super duper late night (or probably very early dawn) last week, my workmate and I had an online chit-chat (we were still up that time due to some tasks) about our home’s daily food. It actually started as simple “kamustahan” until I asked her about their daily meal. I was exhausted and stressed that time (and until now) from fixing the the issue I had with our client’s data ( it still haunts me :(), doing the household chores including the meal preparations and taking care of my two daughters. I was wishing that I could get from her some ideas about meals that are easy and quick to prepare.
To make the long story short, I learned from our small talk that her children’s diet does not include much sugar. Her daughters’ milk is the sucrose-free kind of milk, their pancakes has no sugar, no candies and chocolates and no juice and soda. Her kids do not also munch on processed meats like hotdogs and canned-goods are no no. Her kids’ diet rotates on rice, pork, veggies, cereal, oatmeal and sucrose-free milk. Exactly opposite of my daughters’ diet and I felt so guilty.
As a busy work-at-home-mother, I often opt for the easy and quick meals especially when under pressure with my day time job. And when I say easy and quick to prepare meals, I mean processed meats like hotdogs and ham, canned goods, instant noodles and of course egg. I cook dishes for our supper and usually it is a veggie dish. We will only have fish or chicken (very seldom pork) when the vegetables I bought the previous Saturday were all consumed. Within the day, my daughters often munch on biscuits, sweet breads, jellies, candies and peanuts alternately. But I always see to it that I have something to offer them quick when they want to eat. I know that they are not healthy but nonetheless, it will satisfy them for the time-being. I also buy them fruits and juices. Once in a while they indulged in ice cream, pizzas, and sodas. After the chit-chat with my officemate, I calculate mentally the sugar intakes of my daughters and sad to say, I am leading them to early health problems.
I decided to cut the sugar intake of my daughters. My last trip to the grocery store, I refrained from buying biscuits and other packed bread. I just also passed by the jellies and candies shelves. I still bought them juice but I looked for the the less-sugar one. I ended up buying Mott’s. It is cheaper than Welch. Instead of the usually snack, I bought them fruits enough for the week.
My toddler is bugging me the whole week for biscuits, jelly bees and candies. But since I don’t have those junk foods , she settled for apples, oranges and grapes. And if she does not like them anymore, she’ll just say “Dede na lang mommy, ha.”