Brain boosters food

This morning, I received an SMS from my FIL to turn to Page 10 of today's Mind Your Body section under The Straits Times on the list of 8 brain boosters food.

I was curious indeed to see how many of the food items that I regularly give to Faith would make it to the list. So, here we go.

#1 - Fish
Checked! Faith eats fish on a daily basis. Another favourite of hers that we introduced about a couple of months back was cod liver emulsion oil. Remember that icky yucky smelly emulsion that kids were forced to eat in our youth and which I bet most of us hated it? Its something that my daughter llooks forward to after her bath every day and actually asks me for more.

#2 - Eggs
Checked! I try to give her steamed egg custard (chawan mushi) either for her breakfast or to accompany one of her meals between 1-3 times a week. The article said soft boiled is better than frying or hard boiled and I figured steamed egg custard qualifies as soft boil. Don't dare to give her half boiled eggs becos of salmonella.

#3 - Nuts
Nope... they are currently too scary to give it to her whole unless I grind it. However, I'm afraid that grounded seeds would have a tendency to run rancid if I don't consume them quick enough. Just a couple of days ago, I've given her some home-roasted sunflower seeds which she seems to like. Perhaps I should start giving them to her more regularly.

#4 - Colourful vegetables
Checked! Apart from green leafy vegetables like chye sim, xiao bai cai and baby spinach, Faith also consumes lots of carrots, broccoli, zucchini, red bell peppers etc. For the bell peppers, I usually put them in the toaster to roast and char the skin off, before dicing them and adding them to her porridge. Roasted bell peppers are really nice and yummy.

I am tempted to introduce aubergines too, but each time I suggested that to my mom, she gives me a weird look and said that no Singaporean babies ever eat aubergines at this age. She said the same thing when I gave Faith zucchinis and bell peppers too ;)

#5 - Wholegrains
Checked! Porridge are her daily staples still (I'm planning to start her on rice soon) and she eats porridge cooked from brown and red rice at home. In fact, I've been using a combination of white, red and brown rice for the adults at home for quite some time now and have recently switched to brown rice becos Louis and I like the nutty taste.

Once in a while, Faith also gets oats for breakfast too.

#6 - Berries
Doubled checked especially since I just posted a blog about her being a blueberry queen. Along with the weekly pack or two of blueberries, I also try to add raspberries or blackberries into her daily post-breakfast fruit servings.

Since the opening of NTUC Finest at Thomson Plaza, I've been a frequent buyer of organic berries from there becos there's usually a particular organic berry that is having a special price for the week. Sometimes, the prices of these organic berries are about the same price as non-organic ones. Other regular-priced organic berries are also much cheaper than if I had bought them at supermarkets like Cold Storage, Marketplace etc.

#7 - Beans
Errr.... I've tried to add them in her diet months back. Unfortunately, she hasn't developed her molars yet and they cause her to gag. Now that some of her molars are out, I should look into re-introducing them back into her diet.

Hmmm... does tofu count though?

#8 - Yoghurt
Errr.... when she was younger, she didn't like the taste of the unsweetened yoghurt becos they were too tart. She seems to be more amenable to unsweetened yoghurt these days though, so maybe I should give her more regularly.

However, she's been taking probiotics in droplets and capsules forms daily for a long time now. I gave it to her mainly to boost her immune system.

The Tally
5 out of 8. I consider it not bad.

I also took the opportunity to show the man of the house the newspaper article and bragged about my little achievement. After all, these little things add up to justify my existence as a SAHM and reinforce our convictions about the benefits of me being one ;)

The follow blog has a post reproducing the Straits Times Mind Your Body article in its entirely. To read the article, click here.