Six years ago we had a lovely fall trip to the beach. Yet what I remember most about this trip was the food. Every bit of my youngest daughter’s food for the week needed to be blended in advance and transported on the plane. The four years that I spent tube-feeding were the impetus for me to start Real Food 4 Kids the week after she started Kindergarten.

When this beach trip picture was taken, Claire, at age 2 ½, did not eat or drink on her own; all of her nutrition went into her feeding tube. I started making it all from scratch when she was one, when we realized that it would be a years-long process to teach her to eat and drink. I found the ingredient labels on the canned formulas we were given to be long, difficult to pronounce and identify, and generally overwhelming. I thought that her body could and would do better with the nutrients packed in colorful fruits and veggies, legumes and whole grains, broth, with some dairy and lean protein too. 

Prior to Claire's birth, I had spent the previous three years working with local food systems and farmers. This followed six years of working for a major processed food company, where I learned a great deal about processed and packaged foods. By the time Claire was born, I had found a passion for real, healthy food and was putting it to work both professionally and with her three older siblings. I routinely engaged my kids assistance in the kitchen, at the grocery store, at the farmer’s market, and in the garden. I wanted to teach them from a young age about the benefits of real food and how embracing it as a kid could lead to a lifetime of good eating habits. I recognized that the health benefits of real food, combined with the opportunity to teach some art, math, and science while making food, outweighed the lack of convenience. 

Given my passion and conviction for real food, tube-feeding my daughter real, nutritious food seemed like the best choice. I looked to the medical community for advice on how to create a well-balanced tube-fed diet and was surprised to find that I was on my own. I started making some of the strangest concoctions using some common sense and a lot of research, and jumped all in. Within a short period of time, my husband and I agreed that Claire’s heath began to improve. I created a basic formula for creating tube-feeds in my blender and on a daily basis I developed a unique recipe. I used a lot of single-ingredient whole foods plus a smorgasbord of made-from scratch leftovers in the fridge. It didn’t matter what the food tasted like or looked like - with the exception of tunafish; the smell of blended tunafish is absolutely atrocious and sticks with me to this day - since it was going straight into her stomach. The benefits were remarkable. My husband would joke to people that before to her surgeries, our daughter was the most nutritionally primed toddler on the planet. 

Prior to our beach trip, I distinctly remember spending an evening in the kitchen making a weeks-worth of puréed food in my Vitamix. Claire would go through nearly a half-liter’s worth of food per day and so I remember packing a half dozen one liter bottles of pureed food on dry ice to carry-on the plane. I was nervous about bringing all of that liquid on a plane without a back-up plan, so I had researched all of the TSA rules and going through security was a breeze!

Six years later, Claire is feeding-tube-free and eats like a champ, including veggies! To the small but mighty community of tube feeding parents out there, keep up the good work! It’s not an easy road, but it’s absolutely worth it. My work in the processed food industry and with local food systems gave me an increased appreciation for the benefits of real, nutritious food. 

Successfully tube feeding my daughter was the final push I needed to start Real Food 4 Kids. My business gives me an opportunity to share my passion for real food, by teaching food education classes and kids cooking classes to kids of all ages. Every day, with my own four children and with others, I see firsthand how engaging kids in the process of creating food makes them more willing to try something new. After that first taste of success, they are more likely to try something new again and again, creating a cycle with lifelong benefits. Learning how to prepare food gives kids skills that they can rely on and build upon throughout their entire life.

Today, my youngest and no longer tube-fed daughter is happy to be part of Real Food 4 Kids and she is a big help when it comes to our kids cooking classes: both as an avid recipe taster and all-around kitchen assistant. She will often act out her own baking classes for kids, and has expressed an interest in using her dramatic flair to create her own video tutorials. I find it pretty remarkable that it all started with a feeding tube.