How To Promote Positive Nutritional Habits In Children
Healthy eating and healthy living often go together. Nurturing healthy eating habits in your children can go a long way in helping them maintain a healthy weight, good physical growth, and build higher immunity levels. It is essential that parents practice good eating habits themselves so that your children imbibe them naturally. Healthy eating habits developed during childhood mostly stay during adulthood, enabling a healthy lifestyle.
If you want to keep a tab on your child’s health parameters, contact your child’s health care provider who can evaluate your child’s weight, height, and explain Body Mass Index (BMI). You can then decide whether your child needs to gain, lose, or maintain weight and what dietary changes are required.
How To Help Children Maintain Healthy Weight
Two important aspects of healthy eating relate to controlling the quantity of food, sugar, and fat intake. It is not at all difficult to reduce fat consumption in your child’s diet to promote a healthy weight. Just start serving:
- Lean meats
- Whole grain bread and cereals
- Low-fat or non-fat dairy products
- Poultry without skin
- Healthy snacks like fruits, nuts, and vegetables
- Reduce soft and fizzy drinks and beverages
- Reduce salt in their diet.
You can consult a registered dietician for nutrition counselling if you want to get a proper idea about selecting and preparing high nutrition content foods for your family.
Other Approaches
Some steps to develop healthy eating habits in children:
- Ideally, food choices should never be dictated but can be guided. Easy access to healthy foods can lead to eating healthy. Stock your house with a variety of nourishing foods to help children choose ones that promote health. As far as possible, avoid stocking chips, sugary juices, soda, etc. Water is the best drink for children at meals.
- Children tend to eat and drink very fast. Encourage slow eating habits in your children to help them detect hunger and satiation.
- Make your meals a time for family togetherness. Only when the meal time is pleasant, fun, and chatty, will eat food without stress. Avoid scolding children or talking tough at meal times. That that will only increase their stress, and they will avoid eating together, or they may finish their meal faster and leave the place.
- Children love to snack. But snacking can lead to overeating and affect hunger at mealtimes. If you plan appropriate and nutritious snacks for their snack times, their appetite at meal times will remain unaffected, making them eat full meals. Children will happily eat tasty, nutritious, and attractively plated snacks. An occasional treat of chips, cookies, cakes, and ice-creams at home and parties will make them accept their nutritious snacks without resistance.
- Nutritionists also suggest setting family goals for deserts and soda, and weekends are the ideal time to allow children an occasional treat.
- Hydration is a poorly recognised part of good health. Keep your water bottles filled and encourage children to drink enough water during the day. Try to wean them away from soft drinks and sodas, which are linked to obesity among children.
- Make it a practice to eat meals at the table in the dining room or kitchen, so that meals and TV watching never happened in tandem. When children are allowed to watch TV while eating, it often leads to overeating, as they ignore signs of
- Make sure their food is balanced when they eat out. Check their school lunch programme and also pack nutritious food for them. Keep the nutrition aspect in view while eating at restaurants.
If you want to know more about math activities for pre-schoolers at Clovel Childcare and Early Learning Centres, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Just give us a call at 02 9199 0294 or fill in this contact us form.
Thanks for reading,
Clovel Childcare
1300 863 986
