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Probiotic intake is one of the cornerstones of traditional foods, but many kids balk at the zip and tang most probiotics have. As a mom, I’ve found many creative ways to get large and small amounts of probiotics into my kids. This was critical while we were all going through gut healing and we continue with consuming probiotics daily now that we have healed. While some of these ideas don’t represent a large amount of probiotics at one time, little bits here and there definitely add up. Here are some easy ways to get probiotics into kids while disguising the zing.
Smoothies
You can hide yogurt, water kefir, apple kefir, dairy kefir and whey in smoothies. You can even put in a small amount of cultured cream. To see our smoothie recipe, check our Often Used Recipes eBook.
Dips
Make a cream cheese substitute out of dairy kefir or dairy/coconut yogurt that you have drained until it is thick. Place the kefir or yogurt in a coffee filter or tea towel-lined strainer and refrigerate. Allow it to drain for 48 hours or until thick. Use this as a substitute for cream cheese in any unheated dip recipes. The leftover liquid is whey.
Whey in Drinks
You can easily hide a couple of tablespoons of whey in watered-down juice if you haven’t weaned your kids off of the juice habit yet. You can get whey from kefir or dairy/coconut yogurt as described above.
Summer Salads
Add a bit of chopped up LF pickles into your egg salad, tuna salad, potato salad or deviled eggs. Or chop up a tablespoon or two of LF carrots, stir in just enough salad dressing to coat and sprinkle into a green salad, making sure to distribute it evenly.
What are your favorite sneaky ways to get probiotics into your kids?
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Great post! Maybe this will help me sneak more into my hubbys diet too 🙂
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Hi, just wondering if you have a great cream cheese dip recipe that I could try on my kids? I am having a very hard time getting them weaned off of sugar :/
I need to hide them from me too, as the only ferment I like is yogurt.
Bhe GAPS book gave me the answer… basically, on intro stage 1, you add a tsp of sauerkraut juice to your slightly cooled bowl of soup. I don’t see how I am even going to taste that.
And increasing gradually from there, it seems I will be able to very gradually add ferments I’ve done badly with before, like kefir and kvass.
I also think doing either the Pickl-it or Fido jars might make my ferments more palatable than they have been historically also.
There is a huge difference in flavor and crunch when using a truly anaerobic environment. My kids won’t eat a ferment out of a mason jar, but they inhale the Pickl-It and Harsch ferments.
I get my kids to drink whey every morning. At the moment that’s the closest I can get them to eating LF foods. I do like the carrot idea though. I have made a healthy style ranch dressing and they like that. So that over LF carrots would probably work. I had been wondering if whey counted as a probiotic. And if drinking whey was as good as eating the LF foods. Sounds like it is a probiotic by itself.
Joelle, whey drained from yogurt has about as much probiotics in it as the yogurt itself. It’s a low-level probiotic option.