MOU: that's my kid--or: food fanaticism pays off?

Many of my friends, family, and acquaintances think that G and I are just nuts about the way we feed Otter. He gets no juice, except for orange juice every couple of weeks; instead he drinks water and still nurses.

We feed him veggies almost as often as fruit, and give him our table food which is sometimes pretty highly spiced (garlic, curry, ginger, and so on). We give him as much organic food as we can afford, try to avoid trans fats, and try to avoid highly processed foods, most sweetened things (corn syrup especially), and minimize his soy intake. He eats lots of veggie burgers (the kind with more veggies than soy), broccoli and spinach pancakes, sundried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, roasted veggies, steamed veggies, brown rice with dressing or plain, hummus, yogurt, cheese, eggs, crackers (including my favorite seaweed crackers and his favrotie Annie's bunny crackers), cereal (especially all those unsweetened natural whole grrain ones) and so on. He does get occasional cookies, and popsicles (Edy's natural fruit kind).

We're still working out how to handle meat; he gets it so infrequently and experience seems to show that he has trouble digesting it. (Pee-yoo.)

So last night I gave him some bits of oatmeal cookie to appease him while we finished fixing dinner. He protested and pushed them away, as he had his eyes on the veggie burger cooling on the table.

This makes me happy. If we can help him love healthy food early on, and let him have control over how much he eats of the healthy choices we offer, maybe he won't have the food and health struggles I amd many of my friends and family have had.