Healthy Eating For Your Children-3 Tried and Trusted Tips
As parents, today, we face an uphill battle in trying to get our children to eat healthily. There are so many temptations out there in terms of television and advertising and every which way you look, there are new products on the market, aimed at children.
They’re always advertised as colourful and exciting and very pleasing to the child’s eye. But we must give up on teaching them the life-long benefits of healthy eating.
1. Start as you mean to go on
When our baby is born,
we are overjoyed with this beautiful new human being and we treat him/her with the utmost care. We breast-feed to ensure that they are getting the best start, but we need to continue nourishing them with healthy foods after the baby faze is over.
We should introduce new foods regularly and if they are not received well on the first go then we need to reintroduce them again and again until our child becomes accustomed to the taste. It has been found that it take 10 tastings of particular food to actually acclimatise to the taste and texture. Therefore, persistence is key and will in the long run help your child to have a healthy palate.
2. Everyone Eats the Same
It is very important to make sure that everyone in the family has the same food to eat at each meal. When you plan a dinner you should use the same ingredients for everyone and of course, when your child is very small you can mash up or liquidise the meal for him/her.
When they’re toddlers introduce finger food so that they get used to feeding themselves. But stick with your plan of everyone eats the same. This will only change if your child has an allergy to a particular food type
3. Lead By Example
You are your child’s first role model. What they see you do they will mimic. Therefore, it’s very important that they see you eat healthy foods like fruit, vegetables, yoghurts etc…You should never use sweets and chocolate as a reward. It sends out a bad message to your child that sweets are the goal when they do something good and can, perhaps lead to comfort eating in adult life.
That is not to say that you can’t give your child sweets from time to time. It’s like everything in life, it’s all about balance. If you give your child good eating habits in childhood, chances are they will remain with them throughout their lives.
