Start Your Child With Healthy Breakfast
How to improve your kids’ health through nutrition and not vitamin supplements is vital to their healthy growth in the years ahead.
Kids have gained access to an unmatched variety and quantity of foods in the past thirty-five years. This is not necessarily bad if they eat more whole grains, nuts, fruits, and veggies. However, the trouble is that kids eat unhealthy stuff such as butter, margarine, chocolate, chips, and cookies. Equally, more kids eat over the recommended amount of saturated fat. While few eat enough fruits and vegetables
Therefore, as a parent, you should be concerned if your kids don’t seem to eat a balanced diet. The reality is that kids are what they eat even if their height is less than four feet. Hence, your concern about your children’s nutritional intake is simply hitting the bull’s eye. But you can do more to make your kids’ eating habits healthier by balancing ‘healthily” what your kids consume at home. So how to improve your kids’ health through nutrition is good information on what you need to do.
Encourage Healthy Eating, Not Vitamin Supplements
Most kids drink too many soft drinks and eat too many salty or sugary snacks. Such eating increases their risks for several chronic health conditions like diabetes, childhood obesity, hypertension, and heart disease. So you should be concerned if your kids eat like other kids their age. As a result, think critically about how to improve your kids’ health through good nutrition, not by taking vitamin supplements. If unchecked, current bad eating habits can affect their health in the future.
The key phrase here is healthy eating. Hence, if you are worried about your children’s diet, give them the nutrients they need through real food, not encased capsules. Offer a variety of foods at each meal that meets their unique nutritional needs. This includes the fiber of whole grains and bread. A wide range of vegetables and fruits will ensure a variety of antioxidants and other nutrients. Also bone-building calcium from low-fat dairy, enriched tofu, and soy products. And tissue-making protein from lean meats and beans.
Be A Good Role Model For Your Kids
Offering wholesome foods is just one side of the equation. But being a champion of healthy eating habits in your home tends to rub off on your kids. As such, one important thing to remember is that whether the children are at school, at home, or with you, their primary cues about what to eat come from adults. So ensure that you are modeling good eating behaviors by offering and eating wholesome foods in their presence.
Also, maintain a low-stress feeding environment by easing the way for pleasant conversation. As well as encouraging them to try different foods. Resist the urge to force them to eat when they are full. In addition, change your expectations for quick or shortcut health. This means giving kids real wholesome foods to meet their nutritional needs.
Serve Food Everyone Enjoys
Aside from making healthy eating a family affair, try to serve foods everyone enjoys. For instance, do not keep sweetened fruit yogurt in the refrigerator if one child is not allowed to eat it. It will be hard for the child to resist eating the prohibited food.
Likewise, resist the temptation to prepare separate meals of fried chips and chicken wings for the kids, when the rest of the family is eating spaghetti and minced meat sauce with a green salad for dinner. Persuade them to eat the same spaghetti and minced meat sauce with a green salad that adults are eating.
Teach Healthy Lifestyle Activities
Don’t leave it to healthy eating alone, teach your kids about good exercise. Regardless of your child’s weight, this should be part of daily practice. For instance, if your child is overweight, the goal doesn’t have to be limited to weight loss alone. The focus can be eating healthier and increasing physical activity, which has long-term benefits for a kid and the family.
So teach healthy activities in childhood, because it becomes difficult to alter their health habits as they grow older. This is the time to encourage good nutrition and physical activity with your kids. These are activities that can help prevent childhood obesity.
Bottom Line
Improving your kids’ health through nutrition without depending on vitamin supplements will help your child grow up healthy. Therefore whether your kid is a toddler or a teen, you can take steps to improve nutrition and encourage smart eating habits as follows: 1. Having consistent family meals. 2. Serving a variety of healthy foods and snacks. 3. Being a good role model of healthy eating. 4. Avoid fighting over food by serving the same meals to everyone.
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https://www.parents.com/kids/nutrition/healthy-eating/must-eat-nutrients/
