Childrens Nutrition

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It is important for us to teach our children nutrition, healthy eating habits and exercising! Coming from a generation of white bread lovers and fattening milk, I know these are hard habits to break. Or, at least for me the switch to whole wheat bread it a hard one! As a family, we try to make healthy choices and teach our children good habits. It is important to offer healthy meal choices and healthy snacks in our children’s diet.

Here are several tips, suggestions and ideas of things to teach your children about nutrition:

1. Get your children involved in learning about nutrition. Read books and print out the pyramid from MyPyramid.com. Children love learning new things! 2. Have fun cooking and planning meals with your children. Get out your some cookbooks and look for fun meal ideas. If the meal has uses white pasta. Talk to your children about substituting it for whole grain pasta.

3. Set a good example! 4. Teach your children about the following food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, and oil. Oil is not a food group, but you need them for a healthy diet. MyPyramid.com uses the colors are orange, green, red, yellow, blue and purple. These represent the 5 food groups, plus oil. 5. You will want to eat from some of the food groups more than others. For example, since the oil category is thinner, you need to eat less oil and more fruit! 6. Choose healthier foods from each group. For example, in the grains category, you will need to eat whole wheat grains and less white bread. You can also incorporate this into your cooking, which you can bake with whole wheat flour and use brown rice. This may include everything from loaves of fresh bread to fun and snacking pretzels. 7. Eat a balance diet and try several foods out of each of the food groups every day. 8. Physical activity is an important part of living a healthy lifestyle. You must eat and exercise. 9. Be sneaky! A good friend of mine is the best at being sneaky. For example, she inserts vegetables into her children’s foods! In fact, she has so much fun juicing fruits and vegetables that her children love it. How does she do it? She uses the juice from the vegetables to add to her girls smoothies or milkshakes. The green vegetables then turn their milkshakes green. Voila! Her girls love it! They drink their smoothies without a problem! 10. You need to make healthy choices that are right for you and your family. If you don’t want to increase your grocery bill and still be able to have fresh fruits and vegetables, then you may have to start your own garden this summer. Or, another suggestion might be to make your own meals. For instance, you may not want to purchase prepared guacamole at your supermarket. Instead, buy an avocado and make your own. Trust me, your children will have fun helping you! Healthy recipes for kids and the whole family! Want to see your kids eating healthier and excited about it? Our healthy recipes for kids (and the whole family) and ideas to get kids excited about cooking and eating healthy can help. Children’s Nutrition: Making new healthier eating habits Unfortunately, if you are trying to change your diet, you can’t scrap everything bad and start over. Our children will rebel and resist the changes. After all, they do live off of sugar. Therefore, we have to implement the healthy new changes gradually! Return to the-childrens-guide homepage