Quick and Easy Nutrition boosting Tips for Toddlers – Blackstrap Molasses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve become a blackstrap molasses loving household and I highly recommend it. Vitamins, minerals and trace elements galore (iron, potassium, calcium and magnesium), wrapped up in one flavorful, flexible and easy to serve bottle. Please read on.

If you’re a nutrient counter like me, tallying up everything your child consumes to be sure he or she has reached the recommended daily intake (in a nearly neurotic fashion); then, like me, you must also be ever so pleased when your child enjoys something packed full of nutrients that takes  little or no time to prepare. I’ve found some of the trickier essential nutrients to be: protein, calcium, DHA and iron. The only reason I consider these to be trickier is that my son will eat as much fruit as he’s given. Everything else needs to be served to him at just the right time, when he’s hungry enough not to be picky (because if he could eat just fruit, he would) and when the goings on of my day allow me enough time to prepare it. For instance, he needs more protein than ready to serve items like milk, cheese or yogurt can offer; so its important that he have a piece of fish, a good serving of legumes or some red meat at some point throughout the day and these aren’t things I can just grab from the fridge and serve (although I have some solutions to offer for proteins as well).

Blackstrap gives that needed boost in a significant concentration of easy to absorb calcium and iron. I’ve been testing the discovery of blackstrap for few months now with great success. Its become such a  commonly used kitchen item that I keep a bottle handy on my counter now to add to yogurt and breakfast cereal, both  daily staples for us. Not only is my son getting an extra boost of vitamins and minerals in his foods, he loves the flavor. Its a very pungent kind of sweet, with almost a burnt flavor.

Molasses is a byproduct of  sugar production, what remains of the sugar cane after it has been processed. This byproduct maintains all of the nutrients that processed sugar has lost–and in high concentration. For the sake of nutrition, its important to use blackstrap and not regular molasses. Blackstrap is the final and most dense byproduct. All blackstrap has nutritional value; though I have found the Tree of Life brand to have the most.