Sunshine and Rainbows

Summer foods provide an abundance of nutrients for our brains, bones, and muscles.

Half of our brain tissue is composed of fats, making omega-3 fatty acids from foods, such as fresh salmon, lake trout, and whitefish, essential for brain development. Plant-sourced fats in chia and flaxseeds can provide similar benefit. Choline from devilled eggs and edamame salads boosts neurotransmitter production, while summer-kissed peaches and peppers provide vitamin C to protect the brain.

As they play, children’s muscles pull on bones, prompting bone formation at these sites. Further aiding bone strength are cooling yogurt or soy-based berry smoothies that provide antioxidants, calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin K (if you can sneak in some leafy greens). If you get busted on the hidden spinach, sugar snap peas fuel bone growth with vitamin K, magnesium, protein, and calcium.

Amino acids, the building blocks of protein, are required for muscle building and repair. Nine of the 20 amino acids are “essential” as they cannot be made by the body. Summer barbecue staples like salmon, grass-fed beef, and quinoa or buckwheat are “complete” proteins that include all nine essential amino acids. Beans, chickpeas, and grains all lack some essential amino acids, but you can fill these gaps by combining different foods.

Reality check

While this dietary portrait is idyllic, parents reading this article are surely shaking their heads. Abundant summer foods may satisfy nutritional requirements very nicely, but the food must enter the child to do so.

Pickiness―a childhood rite of passage?

Many kids are labelled as “picky” at some point in their childhood. Several factors explain the negative responses that kids may have to parent-curated menus.

Infants are born with about 10,000 taste buds, while adults have as few as 2,000. Flavours that are mild to adults may send a younger palate into overdrive. The human instinct associates bitterness with poison and danger, while a developmental preference for sweet flavours encourages nursing. The humble kale leaf doesn’t stand a chance against biology!

Holistic nutritionist Jessica Thibault, a reformed picky eater herself, advises parents to keep serving a new food. Children may need to encounter a food 15 times before trying it. Repeated interactions with foods can be playful and don’t have to occur at the dinner table. See the sidebar “DO play with your food!”

Thibault recommends presenting foods in different forms and textures. If a cauliflower soup is too fragrant for young noses, try raw cauliflower, cauliflower wings, or oven-roasted florets. She advocates serving familiar foods alongside new ones, supporting safe, pressure-free exploration.

What’s your superpower?

Kids may be inspired by the concept of superfoods. This moniker is given to foods with particularly impressive nutritional profiles. Kid-friendly summer fruits like berries, cherries, peaches, and watermelon often bear this honour, owing to their high antioxidant and vitamin content. Vegetables with lower sugar contents may be a harder sell, but the superfood tag might pique some curiosity.

Teaching children about their bodies and how to support them may encourage ventures beyond their culinary comfort zone. Thibault gently advises parents not to shame food rejection, reframing it as an assertion of independence and choice. Age-appropriate information about immune function, infections, brain health, and mood may increase the appeal of food that might otherwise be met with a “yuck!”

Pictures can also guide kids’ awareness of the foods that are best for their bodies. The concept of “eating the rainbow” first appeared in Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating in 1992, but it remains an accessible tool promoting diversity in the diet. The “healthy plate” approach promoted Canada’s current Food Guide can help kids to visualize ideal proportions of foods in their diet.

Finally, pre-empting obstacles to food experimentation may encourage kids to choose these superfoods for themselves. Objectionable bitter flavours may be muted by the addition of salty tastes and yeast extracts. Topping kale chips or roasted Brussels sprouts with nutritional yeast can make these foods more kid-friendly.

Getting enough: calcium, vitamin D, and multivitamins

Should children take supplements? Children and adults in Canada are advised to supplement with vitamin D if not consuming it in their food. As there are limited dietary sources of the sunshine vitamin, supplementation is often recommended for kids.

Children eating only a narrow range of foods may be candidates for supplementation with an age-appropriate multivitamin. Given the lifetime impacts of bone growth in childhood, calcium supplementation could be considered for lactose or dairy intolerant kids, or in those with disordered eating patterns.

While kids may not share an adult’s excitement over the summer harvest, creative and gentle exposure to new foods in a supportive environment may eventually lead them to befriending these nutritional superheroes.

This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of alive magazine.