My approach to parenting and life in general is this: It could be worse. Say the kid gets a C in math. Well, it's not an F. Or she gets a bit part in the school musical instead of the lead role and comes home bawling her eyes out. Hey, I tell her, she still gets to be onstage, doesn't she? (These are hypothetical situations.)
Or say she eats muffins for breakfast. Compared to, say, eggs or oatmeal, muffins are not exactly the most nutritionally sound food. They're low in protein and often packed with sugar. One could even argue that they're unfrosted cupcakes. But again, I say, it could be worse. She could be eating frosting or Flamin' Hot Cheetos, or both.
The truth is, my girls do eat muffins for breakfast on a regular basis. In fact, every few weeks, I make it a point to bake and freeze a big batch. But I like to think mine are a step up from the store-bought sugary kind, which tend to be the size of an infant's head.
Still, having never run my theory past an expert, and needing some reassurance as any parent full of self-doubt does, I called Keri Gans, a New York–based registered dietitian and author of The Small Change Diet.
"My biggest concern is first and foremost that a child is eating breakfast," says Gans. "I'd even be happy with a high-sugar cereal, to be honest, because I'd rather them eat breakfast than not at all." (Score one for me.)
I explain my muffin strategy, which operates under the same principle as the freezer-friendly Sunday Stash dinner. Making and freezing a bunch of muffins on the weekend is extra work, but having those muffins ready to pop into the toaster oven two at a time during the weekday morning rush makes a big difference.
My rotation includes banana, pumpkin, zucchini, and blueberry muffins. And here's where the healthy (sort of) part comes in. I cut back slightly on the sugar and swap out some of the all-purpose flour with whole-wheat flour. If it's a fruit-based muffin, I'm extra generous with the fruit; ditto zucchini and carrot muffins. I'll add chopped nuts and sprinkle in hemp or flax seeds. Instead of sour cream, which I usually don't have, I'll add plain kefir, which I usually do have.
Baking is still a science, so I fiddle around with a recipe only enough to bump up the nutrition. So far, no one in my house has been the wiser.
There's one more thing. I usually make a quick smoothie to go with my kids' muffins, no measuring, straight into the blender: frozen berries (I'll say it again—the freezer is your friend), half a banana, a spoonful of avocado and nut butter, more hemp seeds, kefir, and milk or juice.
