Does one (or more) of your kids reject glass after glass of the healthy nonfat milk you serve? Here are a few tips for getting calcium into your favorite milk hater:
Change the temperature. Serve the milk very, very cold or warm it up.
- A great way to make milk cold (or keep it cold) is to make milk cubes by freezing the milk in an ice cube tray. Then put the frozen cubes in a glass of milk to get the milk icy cold.
- Or warm a mug of milk for one minute in the microwave, then add a drop of vanilla, a sprinkle of nutmeg, a dash of chocolate powder and/or a cinnamon stir stick.
Make a double milk dish. Here are a few recipes from Feeding the Kids that combines dried nonfat milk with regular milk to double the calcium in every swallow! (Dried milk is available in the baking aisle of most grocery stores.)
- Warm the milk as described above, but stir in a heaping spoonful of dried nonfat milk.
- Create double-milk hot chocolate. Use the recipe for a single cup of hot chocolate on the back of a container of unsweetened cocoa powder (available in the baking section of grocery store). But add only half the sugar called for and replace the missing sugar with with 1/4 cup of dried nonfat milk.
- Freeze a peeled banana, then whirl it in the blender with one cup of milk, 1/3 cup dried milk and a drop of vanilla to make a healthy milkshake.
Skip the milk. Although drinking a glass of milk is the easiest way to get the benefits of dairy, it's not the only way! Serve yogurt. Buy large tubs of vanilla, lemon or strawberry yogurt and mix it with frozen raspberries or canned pineapple. Also, use low-fat or part-skim cheese for a calcium boost on pizzas or in quesadilla. Or added a few spoonfuls of dried milk or nonfat evaporated milk to casseroles, pasta sauces, baked goods, pancakes, cookies and so on.
Keep trying to serve the milk- but don't force the issue. Many kids go through a stage of rejecting milk... and most of them grow out of it if they keep seeing the milk in front of them.
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