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playfelt
10-28-2013, 12:25 PM
This is sort of a question for parents since most of us also have our own little ones. If you don't serve juice to the children how do you assure yourself that they are getting enough vitamin C? Since a glass of juice has a day's supply and if you water it down that is now only half a day's supply if that and if you don't serve juice at all then what. Since most toddlers won't eat an entire orange just how much broccoli or strawberries or other vitamin C sources do you have to try to get into them.

I am really noticing that my families that serve juice have kids that don't get colds as often and when they do seem to fend them off better. In the past I always served juice for morning snack that was half orange juice and half some other kind of juice just so I knew they had their daily vitamin C.

With winter coming on quickly I would like some suggestions to keep the kids as healthy as possible. Even now we are heading into another round of colds with at least a couple of them. For one child this will be her third since September - my poorest eater and sleeper I might add and both things we know are the best way to fend off illness.

torontokids
10-28-2013, 12:29 PM
Interesting question. My own kids don't have much juice (1/4 juice to water at breakfast). They don't tend to get sick really though.

mickyc
10-28-2013, 12:30 PM
My daughter has a vitamin gummy bear every morning. It is 100% of her daily vitamin C. She isn't a big juice drinker and I really don't serve it much.

5 Little Monkeys
10-28-2013, 01:09 PM
I serve juice but water it down so that it is really just more like flavoured water. I don't serve it often and a 1L of juice will last a month or longer here. In the winter, I serve OJ only (when it's a juice choice) but I don't water it down as much. I know all my dck's get juice at home and at every centre I have worked in they got juice so I have never really been an "anti-juice" person anyways. The only reason I don't serve it often is because I think milk is a better choice and water is cheaper lol.

My dck's have always loved oranges, especially Christmas oranges. Other foods that are high in vitamin C that I use are peppers,broccoli(but I boil it so it probably looses some?),kiwi and strawberries.

Artsand crafts
10-28-2013, 01:34 PM
I don't serve juice here, only water and milk. I serve different kinds of fruits 2 times per day (during morning and afternoon snacks) and veggies during lunch time every day. They get vitamins from there (including C). When kids got colds it usually it is not that bad. I found that usually the ones that get ear infections and worst colds are the kids that eat the least amount of fruits when they are infants. The older they get the colds aren't as bad, even if they are not eating that much fruit.

5 Little Monkeys
10-28-2013, 01:47 PM
Arts and Crafts...that's an interesting observation. I started to think about my group of kids and the 2 boys that I had last year who were prone to ear infections and had them a lot were the 2 best fruit eaters! One of the children was even advised by the doctor to cut back on fruit as he was a bigger boy and was getting too much sugar from the fruit. (His mom also gave a lot of pasta which didn't help lol)

AmandaKDT
10-28-2013, 01:58 PM
Chech this website out, it has very useful info. The amount of vitamin c that a young child needs is actually very little.

http://www.babycenter.com/0_vitamin-c-in-your-childs-diet_10324695.bc

mom-in-alberta
10-28-2013, 03:33 PM
Huh.... Interesting. I have stopped serving juice in my daycare for 2 reasons; a) I have had to streamline the daycare budget for food. I felt that putting my money toward the fresh fruits and veggies was a better option and b) juice seems to have been vilified the last few years, and most parents are moving towards the "no juice for Jr" rule, so I didn't think it was fair to have some kids that can have a certain drink and some that can't.
I know when I was a kid, and when my first 2 kids were small, juice was not our enemy. LoL
Is it possible that we are lumping all "juice" into one category? Clearly, 100% OJ is not the same as that red SunnyD you can buy. (which is fine, if YOU choose to, it's just an example)
Personally, I don't really buy into any dietary hype. It's all about moderation, if you ask me. :)

daycaremom9
10-28-2013, 03:50 PM
When my kids were young I would buy cases of Apple juice thinking that it was a great thing. Should have bought cases of apples!lol

Artsand crafts
10-28-2013, 07:15 PM
Arts and Crafts...that's an interesting observation. I started to think about my group of kids and the 2 boys that I had last year who were prone to ear infections and had them a lot were the 2 best fruit eaters! One of the children was even advised by the doctor to cut back on fruit as he was a bigger boy and was getting too much sugar from the fruit. (His mom also gave a lot of pasta which didn't help lol)

I also had a dcg that loved and ate a lot of fruits (and everything else) and she got an ear infection. The doctor gave the mom the option of giving her antibiotics or just wait and see if it would go away by itself. Since it was a mild infection mom decided to wait. I google more about it and see how else I could help her naturally. I found several recommendations to prevent and help with ear infections and one that was very common was eating raw vegetables and fruits. So mom and I gave the girl more fruits and raw veggies than usual. The ear infection went away by itself.

During morning snack I gave them different kinds of fruits every day and milk almost right after they arrive at 8:30. Since these are the only options in the morning most of them eat a loooot of fruits and usually they decide to drink only some sips of milk. Some new kids that are not used to fruits at home during the first days drink more milk and little or not fruit, but almost every body has catch up.

On the other hand my hubby had condition and was refereed to a nutritionist. She gave us a course and then we had some 1:1 appointments to customize our meals and make them healthy. She told us that we better should be eating whole fruits. She said that when we drink the juice we are drinking the sugar of the fruits mainly. My hubby go better by the way just from changing our eating habits after he was told by the doctor he could have a heart attack anytime.

bright sparks
10-28-2013, 08:25 PM
Did you know out of the top ten foods with the highest content of vitamin C, 50% are vegetables. Also, did you know out of that top ten, Oranges and citrus fruits are number 9? Kiwi for example, number 7, delivers 273% DV per cup...that's it, just 1cup of kiwi is nearly 3 times the daily recommended value of vitamin C.Yellow peppers are number 3 with a DV of 569% per pepper.

I feel like majority of the public are very poorly educated when it comes to nutrition which is overall not our fault. We are not properly educated when growing up with the real facts, simply have media ramming down our throats, no pun intended, that we should drink the orange juice, blah blah blah. Quite honestly, a person would probably be healthier not drinking the orange juice even if it was their only source of vitamin c, because they would prevent a whole heap of crap from entering their bodies. High sugar and from concentrate juice is absolutely unnecessary in anyone's diet, and quite frankly does more damage than good.

I buy organic, not from concentrate, EVER, Apple juice for my 10 year old son. He loves it and he has about 1 cup of it a day simply because he enjoys it. I'm not about never indulging in treats which are nearly always bad for us I so me shape or form, but if what you are putting in your mouth is a choice made primarily for health benefits, you better be dammed sure you did your research rather than buying into what the label tells you that it's good for you, which is most likely BS!

5 Little Monkeys
10-28-2013, 08:29 PM
Yes obviously whole real fruit is better than juice :)

However, in my experience, the children who got the most ear infections were the best fruit eaters. It's interesting though to read about others experiences!

We eat fruit 2-3x a day here so I try to switch it up a lot to keep the kids eating it. I will have to google which fruits have the most vitamin C in them though and keep that in mind when choosing the fruits for the week.

Artsand crafts
10-28-2013, 09:13 PM
These are the fruits and veggies I gave dck during last week:
Banana
Honey melon
Apple
Dried cherries
Grapes
tangerines
Kiwi
Pear
Dried cranberries
prunes
plums
raisins
Sweet potato fries
Baby carrots
Grape tomatoes
Corn
Raw sweet peppers
Veggies mixed with pasta
Sweet potato in their grilled cheese
Spinach in their breaded tofu

By the way, I don't serve juice during daycare hours, but we drink orange or cranberry juice sometimes during dinner as a treat. I think we eat healthy most of the time, but we occasionally have treats like ice cream, cake, etc. and I ashamed to say that I eat my share of junk food late at night:o