Eggs fried in coconut oil with roast veggies including sweet potato, carrots, potatoes and steamed broccoli, plus a quarter of an avocado and a small scoop of sauerkraut.
It sounds like an up-market cafe breakfast… but it’s actually just a regular morning meal for 13-month-old Grace, the Queensland baby on the paleo diet.
Unlike most parents, Brisbane mother Shan Cooper refuses to feed her daughter mashed peach puree from a packet, Coco Pops or pieces of toast with the crusts cut off.
Little Grace is more likely to have organic chicken and a plate of vegetables in line with the controversial diet associated with celebrity chef Pete Evans.
The diet bans grains and dairy in favour of foods ‘cavemen could scavenge for’, such as meat, fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables – and Ms Cooper’s daughter, who she claims barely falls ill, ‘loves it’.

The paleo diet – which Shan and her daughter adhere to – involves eggs, meat, fish and ample amounts of fruit and vegetables
The mum, who has written a healthy recipe e-book and has an agricultural science degree, says her daughter has only once had a cold during her short life.
It’s a success Ms Cooper attributes to the immune-strengthening properties of her daughter’s fruit-and-veg loaded diet.

‘She spends a lot of time around other kids who are sick all the time – who have snotty noses, coughs, colds – but she just doesn’t pick it up,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘It’s certainly not because I’m shielding her from any of that stuff.
‘I absolutely think a nutrient dense diet is giving her a strong immune system.’
Ms Cooper first discovered the paleo diet after reading a book around five years ago.
She had long struggled with food allergies and had already worked to redesign her diet around them, cutting out dairy, gluten and then finally processed foods.
‘I just got sick of not feeling great,’ she told Daily Mail Australia. ‘That had become my normal and (I decided) that wasn’t going to be normal anymore.’
And when her little girl was born, it was natural to carry that over into child-rearing. Along with the paleo diet, she breastfeeds her daughter twice a day.

Despite the amount of preparation involved in her daughter’s diet, Ms Cooper says she’s laid back about the prospect of her daughter eating sugary and grainy foods.
Especially with the prospect of kids parties with ample supply of cakes and fizzy drinks on the horizon.
‘(What she eats now) is not weird, not anything strange, that normal people wouldn’t eat. She loves it,’ Ms Cooper says.
‘I don’t feed her toast or cereal or anything like that. Again I think, “sure that stuff is not going to kill her”.
‘If she eats a piece of bread I’m not going to have a conniption.

‘I’m not going to not let her go to kids’ parties.
‘She’s going to go to kids’ parties and eat what’s there.
‘I’m never going to go to Grace, “You can’t eat anything at this party – but I packed you some kale, here you go.’
Ms Cooper says she believes kids are intuitive eaters but that adults begin to eat emotionally. She is hoping to teach her children to know what foods make her feel good.
When she goes to parties, Ms Cooper says: ‘She’ll be old enough to know she can choose whatever she wants to eat.
‘She’ll probably come home jacked up on sugar and cake and say, “mum I don’t feel very well”.
‘And next time instead of eating 12 cupcakes she might only eat three.’
‘I don’t want there to be any disordered eating around food.
‘Females particularly have enough problems with eating disorders … I want Grace to eat what makes her feel good.
‘That’s the reason I eat this way. I don’t think eating a piece of bread is going to kill me.
‘When I go out with dinner with friends.. .I’m just going to eat what’s on the menu. I’m not going to be a jerk about it.
‘She’ll also learn what makes her feel good and what doesn’t.

Respected dietitian Dr Rosemary Stanton said she would ‘definitely a sound of caution’ to other mothers considering following Ms Cooper down her path.
‘It’s really not usually a good idea to put a child on such a restricted diet, particularly when there’s no valid grounds for it,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.
Dr Stanton said she hoped Ms Cooper ‘knows an awful lot about nutrition’ and was concerned about the lack of grains and legumes in the diet.
‘Depriving her child of grains and legumes will make it much more difficult to achieve a balanced diet,’ she said.
But she said ‘helps a lot’ that Ms Cooper is breastfeeding her child. That makes up for a lack of dairy and Ms Cooper said she may introduce it down the line.
‘I’d certainly sound a note of caution (to other people considering following her),’ Dr Stanton said, advising parents with concerns to see an accredited dietitian.
Ms Cooper bristles at criticism of her daughter’s healthy diet, asking why people regularly feed their children unhealthy food are not being told to ‘tread lightly’.