Quote Originally Posted by mickyc View Post
I am curious - do you know for sure that your families all eat only organic foods at home?

Here is my thoughts - when I first started my daycare I tried the healthy foods, followed the Canada food guide etc. what a crock!! Kids don't eat that much (my kids anyways). I was wasting so much food and half the time all the kids were fed at home was KD and hot dogs anyways!! (ok not really but you get what I am saying). I decided I wasn't going to stress so much over it anymore. We eat fruit/vegies for morning snack, sometimes yogurt. We eat basics like Noodles/cheese or meat sauce, grilled cheese, KD, hot dogs, hamburgers, pancakes, different sandwiches, pizza, sausage/hashbrowns, chicken fingers/fries etc. Sometimes I throw some vegies on their plates, sometimes I don't. Afternoon snacks are usually cookies, granola bar, pudding, rice cakes, popsicles (now that we can eat snack outside). Some days we have milk but most days it is just water. Heck today we had corn dogs for lunch (kids love them by the way!). I personally don't know how you have the time/energy to cook from scratch and in all honesty I am not a great cook to start with. I feed my family a great deal of produce (we juice and do a lot of smoothies). I try to make things homemade when I can but don't beat myself up when I don't. I have yet had any parent complain about what their child eats here and I don't have to fight with kids to eat what I serve for the most part. I actually never have any parents ask what we have eaten nor do I post it for them to see.

I just wonder if your families are taking advantage of the fact that you feed organic knowing the costs or do they actually buy it for themselves?
I'm sure you don't get any protesting when they are fed such high sugar, salt and fat foods but honestly while this is my opinion I don't hold it against anyone. I used to eat like that and it didn't make me a bad person, just not very healthy. I have never had a fussy eater in my daycare unless it is because a parent has fed junk food and the child has protested when in my care. That doesn't last long as healthy food and fresh food tastes so much better than processed foods. The Canada food guide is unhealthy and wrong, period, so if anyone follows that it is a disservice to the children. Get educated people, seriously!! I also don't feed the kids healthy food to please the parents I do it because it is undeniably what is best for the kids. I don't cook daily. I cook once every 9 weeks. I have a 3 week menu and with the quantity I cook per recipe it makes enough for each meal three times for a group of 5 good eaters. I tray everything up cook it, cool it and then freeze everything. Food comes out the freezer the night before and is reheated in the oven during the day for lunch. I am sure cutting out the organic and moving to conventional but still unprocessed will make a difference in my pocket but I pride myself on not serving processed foods and with just a little bit of time and research, cooking healthy CAN be affordable. It's all about priorities and personal preference. While others don't think it matters to eat healthy whole foods, I know it does.