Nowadays, many families have busy schedules; and parents often find it difficult to stay loyal to homemade meals every day, they eat out more than ever before. However, you can always make healthy meals no matter how busy you are.
Having healthy nutrition habits is the easiest and the most essential way to prevent several diseases, that’s why you should teach these good habits to your children so that they can stick to them all over their lives.
Nonetheless, opting for healthy nutrition seems like a big challenge in a world that encourages eating processed food, candies, chips and chocolate, more than any other healthy food. Fortunately, kids always chose to follow their parents and look up to them. So the best idea is to guide the parents to make good choices, they must be good role models to their children.
Adopting healthy eating habits, stabilizes children’s energy, improves their minds, helps to avoid lifelong health risks, and maintains the childhood weight. Here are some tips that parents can follow to set up good nutrition rules for their children.
Start with a good breakfast
Kids need to start their day with the right breakfast, full of energy. While skipping this important meal, children can’t focus while studying or be dynamic, they feel lazy and tired. All in all, they should have a good breakfast with enough protein, calcium and vitamins…
Protein found in eggs, cheese, low-fat milk, and nuts; helps them to stay fuller as long as possible.
Adding to that, Avoid giving them pastries and sugary cereals, they don’t provide them with enough and appropriate energy.
Generally, a good breakfast should include not only protein, but also carbohydrates like the ones in whole grain pancakes, oatmeal, whole grain bread… fruits, and vegetables.
Choose good fats
Your kids need some good fat in their meals; it helps to get full. Nevertheless, you should be smart about fat, Opt for omega-3 and omega-3s fatty acids; they help in the brain development, promote memory and lift the mood up.
You can find healthy fats in olive oil, avocados, flaxseed, salmon, and nuts. However, saturated fats which are unhealthy fats can be found in margarine, fried potatoes, cookies, and processed food.
Avoiding these kinds of food is the best choice to make, in order to promote children’s physical activity.
Decrease the sugar intakes
Natural sugar, like the one in fruits, grains and dairy products is necessary to maintain physical and mental health, and to have enough energy to think and move.
However, many foods like ketchup, canned soup, breads and fast food… contain added sugar, which causes childhood obesity, mood disorders and hyperactivity.
Here are some tips to reduce the un-natural added sugar intakes:
- Cut out with sodas and juices
- Fruits contain natural sugar; make fruits smoothies for your children to satisfy their sugar crave.
- Try to reduce the amount of sugar you add to recipes, and make more recipes that do not need sugar.
Kids do as parents do
Be a role model, kids often want to eat, dress up and act like their parents. Keep in mind that the best way to help your kid with nutrition is to encourage healthy habits. Set down good nutrition habits; eat healthier and your kids will be more likely to do the same way as you.
Eat at home
Even if eating out once in a while isn’t that bad, going out to eat regularly still might normalize unhealthy food.
- Encourage eating homemade food, you can go for picnics at the weekend and eat homemade sandwiches instead of fast food…
- Hide vegetables in other food if they don’t like them, you can bake them in muffins, or hide them in sauces…
There are many tips on how to help your child to eat healthy food, but still the best way is to encourage healthy habits.
Leave a Comment