A child’s growth, strength, stamina, and immunity have always been a challenge for parents and caregivers. When a child takes normal food without being choosy everything goes fine. Problems arise when they refuse to take regular food and insist on chocolate or junk foods. That’s when the need for supplemental shakes becomes necessary.

Why Supplemental Shakes?

Shakes are formulated to provide some nutritional goals like increased calories and proteins. They are generally fortified with vitamins. Sometimes these supplements are blended with some kind of sweet to improve the taste. You can check out kid-friendly protein shake recipes to find more information.

Points to Ponder While giving supplemental Foods

The first thing you should know while going for any supplemental shakes is that some toddlers may lose weight or gain slowly as they start to walk and burn more calories. This is not something to worry about, and they recover from this stage easily and naturally through outdoor activities. Overuse of such protein powder and commercial protein products may act negatively on their normal growth.

There is another point most parents forget in the hurry of helping their children is consulting a specialist. The web world is teeming with hundreds of sites with various information on how you should select the best supplement food. But they never mention that there is always a generalized form and a person-specific form of selection. And since it’s the question of your precious child’s health, you need to focus on ‘specifically his need’. And to help you with it there are specialists.

You need to go for the next points with the help of them: 

1. Finding out whether your kid is lacking during his growing up and taking part in all aspects of life is the major part of selecting supplemental shakes.
2. Then define your goal. Find out the way you should add the supplemental food with the main meal. It may be directly added to the main meal or served ‘some extra’ another time.
3. You need to select carefully the time your kid should take the supplement shake. You might find it convenient to serve two to three times a day.
4. The ingredients of your proposed supplement should be carefully selected. Good food is not good for all. Some of these shakes may have an allergic impact on your kid.
5. Flavour plays an important role in determining which food your kid would eagerly take and which one they would refuse. That’s why your selected shakes need to have a flavor your kid would like.
6. Serving the supplemental shakes and ensuring your kid is taking them easily is just one part of the program. The main responsibility remains in monitoring how your plan is working and if your kid’s overall physical development is up to your expectation.

Continuing the same supplemental food for a long time, sometimes, backfires. So you need to know when to stop or change it.

Some Components of Shakes

Nuts and their butter

Nuts are one of the excellent food ingredients that most children like, and adding nuts will increase the taste of any shakes or smoothies. Nut butter is also easily available on the market. Remember that it should be used moderately, otherwise, the supplemental food will become high in calories and fats.

Fortified non-Dairy Milk

Whether your kid is a vegan or has allergies to dairy or wants something lactose-free, you can get fortified non-dairy milk for them. There are a number of them:

• Soy Milk.
• Almond Milk
• Coconut Milk
• Oat Milk
• Rice Milk
• Cashew Milk
• Macadamia Milk
• Hemp Milk
• Quinoa Milk

While choosing any of these products you need to minimize the use of sugar. The fortified versions of the milk listed above are rich in vitamin D or B12.

Non-Dairy Yogurt

You will find varieties of non-dairy yogurts in the market, or you can prepare one yourself. The only thing to remember is that it should contain probiotics that can assure your kid’s gut health.

Seeds

Flax, chia, hemp, sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds contain great nutritional values not only for kids but also for adults. Just an ounce (28 gram) of Chia seed, for example, can provide you with:

• Calories: 137
• Protein: 4.4 grams
• Monounsaturated fat: 0.6 grams
• Omega-6 fats: 1.6 grams
• Omega-3 fats: 4.9 grams
• Fibre: 10.6 grams
• Thiamine (vitamin B1): 15% of the RDI
• Manganese: 30% of the RDI
• Magnesium: 30% of the RDI

Dates

Just adding one to two dates can make a big difference in your shake. Besides being the best natural sweetener (also far less harmful than sugar) they have great health benefits like:

• high in polyphenols
• alternative to empty-calorie sweets
• high in fibre
• high in potassium
• can improve bone health
• They also boost digestion and improve constipation

Fruits

There’s hardly any child who doesn’t like fruits. You can easily pick from those to make shakes and other types of supplements. Besides being high in fiber, they are packed with health-boosting antioxidants including flavonoids. Here are some of the healthiest fruits that you can choose for your kid’s supplemental food:

• Plums
• Strawberries
• Grapes
• Peaches
• Apples
• Avocados
• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Grapefruits
• Blackberries
• Black chokeberries
• Tomatoes
• Figs
• Raspberries
• Blood oranges
• Nectarines
• Pomegranates
• Kumquats
• Mangos
• Goji berries
• Cranberries
• Lemons
• Papayas
• Watermelon
• Acai berries

Some of them (like lemons) are especially rich in vitamin C which contributes to the immunity system.

Leafy Greens

The main feature of leafy vegetables is that they are packed with vitamins, minerals, fibres and are low in calories. Kale, Microgreens, Collard Greens, Spinach, Cabbage, Beet Greens, Watercress, Romaine Lettuce, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Endive, Bok Choy, Turnip Greens are some of the leafy greens that can fit in the shakes you are searching for.

Avocados

When you mix them with a chocolate shake or a fruit smoothie they make little change in the flavour and add taste and extra nutrition. Only one hundred grams of avocado (about half of it) can provide the following nutritional values:

• Calories: 160
• Fat: 14.7g
• Sodium: 7 mg
• Carbohydrates: 8.5g
• Fibre: 6.7g
• Sugars: 0.7g
• Protein: 2g
• Magnesium: 29 mg
• Potassium: 485 mg
• Vitamin C: 10 mg
• Vitamin E: 2.1 mg
• Vitamin K: 21 µg

Tofu

To make silky fruit smoothies tofu is ideal because it’s one of the creamiest ingredients. Along with a lot of iron, potassium, manganese, selenium, phosphorus, magnesium, copper, zinc and vitamin B, 3 ounces (about 85 grams) of tofu has the following prizes for you:

• Calories: 78
• Protein: 8.7 grams
• Fat: 4 grams
• Fibre: 0.8 grams
• Carbs: 2 grams
• Sugars: 0.3 grams

Green Peas

If you know about plant protein you must have known that green peas are a great source of it. It contains vitamins C and E, zinc, and other antioxidants that increase your immune system.

Only a ½ cup of green peas has the following nutritional components:

• Calories: 59
• Protein: 4 grams
• Carbohydrates: 12 grams
• Sugars: 4 grams
• Calcium: 21.2 mg
• Iron: 1 mg

How About Increasing Your Kid’s Appetite?

While toiling for healthy shakes you could concentrate on how to coax your child into eating normal food. Two of the major culprits are, perhaps, junk food, and random eating habits.

If you can get your picky kid to eat timely and eat homemade foods there should be a noticeable change in his food preferences. Here are some very helpful tips on how you can do it.

The Shakes

Before going for any recipes you’d better remember that all the promises that meal replacement shakes appeal are not just 100% true. There are several myths that you need to be aware of. Some of them are:

• Most kids need more protein
• Protein shakes help kids get more fruits and vegetables
• Parents can use protein shakes to treat serious nutrition deficiencies
• Kids protein shakes are a healthy meal replacement
• Kids protein shakes are the cheapest and easiest option
• All protein shakes are prepared equally

To find out why these are merely myths you can visit here.

You need to select your kids shakes with the above facts in mind.

Here are some final tips we thought you might need:

1. Blend well: It’s a good idea to mix the powdered shakes using your blender. This makes the consistency even and appetizing to even the pickiest kid.
2. Chill out: serving nutrition shakes chilled or adding some ice into the shake eliminates any strong and objectionable flavour.
3. Milk Substitute: You should consider any form of vegan milk if dairy milk doesn’t suit your kid.

Final Thoughts

There are, of course, risks for taking too much and an unplanned amount of shakes because they contain a considerable amount of sugar that has reports of unhealthy effects on kids. Experts say that such shakes are advisable only if your kid just ‘cannot’ eat adequately and that’s the only palatable option for him.

Whenever you observe unusual weight gain you should stop the course because it can later lead to high blood pressure and diabetes.