How to increase plant based protein intake in your vegan child’s diet (even if they are picky eaters!)

Hey there, it's Gen. And welcome to this week's podcast. This week, we're going to be talking more about protein. So in last week's episode, I talked about the basics of protein for vegans, can you get enough protein from a vegan diet, do you need to worry about combining different types of proteins and things, yes. So if you miss that one, make sure you go back and listen to that one, because it goes through the basics of protein. But the short answer for can vegans get enough protein from their vegan diet is yes, as long as you're actually getting enough calories or energy from your food. 

Today, I want to talk more about what if you have fussy kids, or what if your kids don't actually eat enough or they have a really limited diet, those are times when yes, it could actually be possible for your kids to not be getting enough protein. So today, I'm going to give you some really practical tips and the foods to focus on to make sure that your kids are getting enough protein, especially if they're fussy eaters, or they have a really limited diet. Now before I get started, I just want to talk to you about my brand new recipe book that is coming out in April, which I'm really excited about. So it's going to be super boosted snacks for vegan kids. 

This book is all about making snacks that your kids will love. And they're actually going to eat, but packing them full of protein and iron and zinc and all the nutrients that they need. So rather than trying to make your kids eat a bunch of super healthy foods, you're making the foods that you already know they eat super healthy instead. So yeah, so that book is going to be out in April. I'm working on it now, which is very exciting. And so I've got a form for the waitlist down in the show notes, make sure you sign up for that, because then that will make sure that you get any updates and everything. And you'll know as soon as it's released, so you can grab it, that's going to be really awesome, too. All right. So back to protein. 

Now as the general rule for protein, as I said before, is that as long as your kids or you are eating enough and getting enough energy, or calories. So here in Australia, we call it energy over in the US its calories, but they're interchangeable. As long as your kids are getting enough food, then they're going to be getting enough protein. That's because there is actually a lot of protein in basically all foods. Obviously, some foods have different amounts, but there is so much protein across the board in food, that as long as your kids are actually eating enough, then they're going to be getting enough protein. 

The easiest way to make sure that your kids are getting enough protein is to make sure that they're eating enough, which I know sounds a bit obvious. But the way to do this is to make sure you're feeding your kids food that they actually like and if you need your kids to eat more food, give them more of the fruit that they like. I think that we really have this thing in our heads that we have a set of healthy foods like legumes or whole grains or things like that, that we have to be eating, otherwise the food doesn't count. But because there is protein in just about all foods, then the easiest way to make sure that your kids are getting enough protein is to just give them more of what they like. Now when I'm talking about foods, I'm talking about the majority of foods, obviously ultra processed foods like soft drink, which is basically just water and sugar, or lollies like really sugary lollies or then chips like potato crisps, potato chips. It's hard having I know that there's people from all over the world listening to this. And I know that they're called different things in different places. 

So yeah, the cold chips, not like the hot chips or hot chips actually do have a bit of protein in them. And they have iron too, which I always find funny. So I'm not talking about ultra processed foods, but I'm just talking about other foods that are mostly whole foodie type ingredients that your kids like. Biscuits, cakes, especially if you're making them yourself if you need recipes for that don't forget about my recipe book. It's full of great recipes for cookies and muffins and things. Even hot chips as I said, especially if you're not frying them. They're quite good. So the first step is give your kids more of the fruits they like so what do I mean by this?

My son we had a really stressful time last year. We He had a death in the family and some other family emergencies and stuff and really hard times. And I dropped the ball on the kids food. So both of my kids have autism and are fussy eaters, but in different ways. Keep me on my toes. And I found for a while that my youngest son was really basically living on Oreos, and cake. And I think chips and nuggets, maybe two, but really not the food that you'd expect a nutritionist to be feeding her kids, I have to say, and so he really wasn't getting a lot of nutrition from it. And I ended up stopping and thinking about it and thinking, okay, what kind of foods does he actually like. 

And my son likes things like pancakes, he loves yogurt, he loves sausage rolls and sausages and things like that. And what I did was I actually made up a big batch of pancakes, I have a recipe on my blog, which has got nuts and stuff in it too to help. So I made some pancakes for him that I then froze, and so he could just grab out some of those each morning, I made him some homemade sausage rolls with just some of the mints from the supermarket, the vegan mints, and I put some veggies and stuff in there, too. I grabbed yogurt, so he was having yogurt for snacks. And then he had some fruit with those. And then he'd actually have some dinner and stuff. And it was simply by figuring out what foods he actually liked. 

He suddenly was then eating a lot more, and he was eating a lot more food. That wasn't all the really ultra processed sugary stuff. But I have to say for a minute, I did sit there and think, oh my goodness, what have I done? Like, how am I going to get him from this diet of Oreos, and cake and stuff into actual decent food. Whereas now and one of the great things about getting your kids eating more is that they actually get more of an appetite. And so then they're happy to try new things as well. So he's back now and really happy to try new things now and having a lot more stuff, syrup to fruit veggie smoothies and stuff, too. But yeah, so bit sidetracked. But yeah, the key is to actually use foods that your kids like. And hopefully once you've got them eating more of the foods they like you can start to actually put some extra nutrition into those foods. And they should also start to want to try some newer foods and stuff as they get their appetite back. 

But the first step, as I've said, is really focus on the foods that your kids already like and just give them more of those. Now, the second thing to really focus on when you're trying to get your kids to have more protein, and just overall more energy and stuff in their diet is to shift your focus from fruits and vegetables, to things like nuts and seeds, and then tofu and other things like that. Now, I know that that probably sounds really counterintuitive, because fruits and vegetables are so healthy. But the thing is that vegan kids don't actually need a lot of fruit and vegetables. And they certainly don't need anywhere near as many fruit and vegetables as omnivore kids do. This is because you need fruits and vegetables for vitamins A, C and K. 

But you can actually, your kids can get enough of those from two or three servings of veggies a day. The rest of why omnivore kids need veggies is because they need the fiber that vegetables have and some of the other nutrients as well. Whereas vegan kids are actually getting huge amounts of fiber and all lots of other nutrients from other vegan foods like nuts and seeds and grains and legumes. Whereas omnivore kids have a lot of dairy and a lot of meat in their diets which don't give a lot of the nutrients that vegetables have. The other thing with vegetables especially is that although if you eat high amounts of them, they do have quite a lot of protein and they do have a lot of iron things like kale especially. But if your kids are eating them, they're often not going to be eating really high amounts of them. And so they're not going to be getting a lot of protein and stuff from them. And there are much better sources of protein and other nutrients like iron and zinc than vegetables. 

To give you an example, half a cup of spinach is only giving you half a gram of protein, a leaf of kale is about the same as well, one of those leaves, if you look at broccoli, so if you have three florets of broccoli, that's two grams of protein, which isn't bad. But if in comparison, we look at, say, a handful of pumpkin seeds, you're getting seven and a half grams of protein from that, and you're getting two and a half milligrams of iron as well. Again, you've got cashew nuts are giving you over six grams of protein for a handful. And they're also giving you 1.8 grams of iron too, and even a tablespoon of peanut butter is giving you over five grams of protein. 

Just remembering kids need around 16 to 20 grams of protein a day. So you can quite easily get nearly half of your child's protein needs just by giving them a handful of pumpkin seeds, which, if you mix them in with other things, which I'm going to give you some tips about how to get protein into foods, then that's a much easier thing than say giving your kids a couple of cups of spinach or something or broccoli. Now, I will just repeat that. I am not saying here that your kids don't need fruit and vegetables. Please don't take that from what I'm saying they do still need fruits and vegetables because fruits and vegetables are the only places that vegan kids are going to get vitamin A and C and K from. But they only need about three servings a day, as opposed to the five that omnivore kids need. Obviously, as long as your kids are getting enough of all of the protein and all the other nutrition and everything from their food, they can always have more. But yeah, you do need to make sure that they're getting enough protein, enough energy and all of the other nutrients from other foods before you give them too many fruits and vegetables. 

Otherwise, fruits and vegetables are very low in energy or in calories. And so you can actually end up with vegan kids not getting enough energy or calories from their food, which will then mean that they're not growing properly and they don't have enough energy. So that's just something to watch out for. Okay, so, as I said, really focusing on high protein foods like nuts and seeds. And then tofu and beans are also good as well. But you've got fussy kids, right, I can hear you sitting there going. That's all fun, Jen that those are great foods, but how am I going to get my kids to eat nuts and seeds and tofu and beans, I mean, I have enough trouble getting them to eat anything. Nevermind those. 

Alright, so what I like to do is really take foods that your kids are already eating, and then add the nutrition that they need into those foods, some really easy ways of getting nuts and seeds into kids food. Now remember, you don't need a huge amount, they only need like 90 grams for the whole day would give them all of their protein needs. So you're not needing huge amounts of nuts and seeds here. So one thing that I always do is actually replace any vegan butter that I have in cooking. I replaced that with nut or seed butter. So if I'm at home, I really like using cashew nut butter. If I'm doing nut free stuff for school, then I often use pumpkin seed butter or sunflower seed butter as well. So I make those myself. 

And you can replace some or all of the butter in cookies and muffins and stuff that you make with those nut and seed butters. So that is a great way to increase the protein content and a really easy swap that you can make. Another thing that I do is I blend cashews into basically anything vaguely creamy but I'm making cashews are really good because you don't need to soak them and they're really creamy and they're slightly sweet. Kids tend to like them. I will put them in when I'm making any curries that I'm making. If my kids like a really mild curry, then I will use cashew milk soy just blend it up cashews and water in place of some of the coconut milk in there. 

I also have used them as a milk in any baking that I'm doing or pancakes or anything like that. Also, you can just blend cashews straight into a milk that you're making as well. If your kids are drinking milk, orange smoothies, anything like that, as I said cashews are really good so any other nuts that you do you will generally need to soak them first before you blend them in. Whereas cashews will blend in without needing to be soaked. 

If you don't have a high powered blender, and your kids, if they're funny about textures, and they need it to be super smooth, then you can actually boil some water and sit the cashews in boiled water for sort of 10 to 15 minutes, and then drain them out and then use them and then that will help them be really smooth in whatever you're blending them into. Another thing also is using soy milk over almond or oat milk is a really good way to make sure your kids are getting enough protein. So soy milk has just over eight grams of protein per cup, whereas oat milk only has 3.8 grams. And almond milk only has 1.5 grams. If your kids don't like soy milk, then you can do the whole blending the cashews into say oat milk, or almond milk, when you give it to them will help to increase the protein levels of those milks. 

You can also use instead of cashews, you could actually blend in cashew butter too. So if you need something smoother. And if it's a whole new thing, and you have kids who really don't like different things, as I said, I have two kids with autism, I know what it can be like with trying to get new things in few kids, just start with a really small amount and increase it gradually over time so that they're not noticing the change, you don't have to go and put a whole quarter of a cup in the first guard. 

Also really use sort of nut butters in on spread on toast, you can put them on crackers, anything like that. Not butter as add is things like peanut butter, cashew butter, almond butter, seed butters tend to be quite bitter. So kids don't tend to like them as much. I don't like them. So I don't really blame them. But yeah, nut butter is a really good and just remember that a tablespoon of peanut butter is five grams of protein. So just adding that in on its own is up to a quarter of your kid's protein needs for the day. So you don't need to be having heaps and heaps of stuff. 

Now obviously, if you need more help with coming up with a sort of recipes, then as I said, grab the recipe book, when it comes out, make sure you sign up for the waitlist, because the recipes are going to be packed full of protein, and you'll be able to just grab one or two of those, and there'll be easy. So they have been designed by me and nutritionist to be super packed full of nutrition. So if you need any help and make sure you grab that. Alright. 

Now, another question that I see a lot is should you use a protein powder or protein bars or things like that for your kids? Now short answer is no. The problem with protein bars and protein smoothies and powders and things like that is that they use isolated proteins rather than whole foods, which are really tough on your kids kidneys. So kids kidneys really aren't up to having to process that much protein. So it's really not a good idea, unless there's a medical reason for it for your kids to be having protein shakes protein, anything really. 

I know that there are some on the market that are designed for kids. But again, as I've said, you only need 15 grams of protein. And you can make that up with a peanut butter sandwich on white bread with a cup of soy milk. So it really isn't that hard to get enough protein into your kids. And they can be quite dangerous, really for your kids as well. And other thing also is I have a Facebook group, which is free to join, I put the link in down in the show notes as well. You can ask me if you need any help, you can come into the Facebook group. And you can basically just say, Jen, my kid only likes chocolate. What do I do for protein? How do I make sure my kids are getting them. And I can give you a couple of ideas. And there are other people in there too, who can give you some ideas as well. So make sure you come and join the Facebook group as well if you want any help, or even just to come and chat and hang out with some other vegan parents as well.

All right, so that's everything for this week. Just a recap. Remember, the rule for protein is as long as your kids are eating enough food, they are getting enough protein. If you need your kids to be eating more food, and they don't seem to be eating a lot. Then really focus on foods that you know that they like and come up with a menu of food that you know that they like the food and so you're going to be a lot more confident that they're going to eat it. 

Also, as kids eat more than their appetite will actually increase and then they'll keep eating more as well, which is really good. In order to increase their protein, make sure that you're focusing on things like nuts and seeds over huge amounts of fruits and vegetables. So about three servings of veggies a day, and then shift your focus to higher protein foods like nuts and seeds, tofu, and legumes and whole grains as well. And finally, don't use protein powders or bars or anything like that unless you've been medically advised to do so. Because they can be quite hard on your kids kidneys. Alright, that's all for this week, and I'll be back next week. I'll be talking about iron next week. So I'll talk to you then.