Click Here to Sign Up for Your Free Fitness Magazine Subscription
Nutrition Tips For Parents
Nutrition is very important for the growth and development of children. A combination involving all the food groups is essential to ensure that the child derives all the macro and micro nutrients. Growing children need a good amount of protein as these are the building blocks of our body. Children being very active, require energy in the form of carbohydrates and fats. Apart from these, the food that they eat should contain vitamins and minerals. The presence of all the nutrients in the food helps the child to grow well and reach developmental milestones at the right age.
Are you worried that your child is a fussy eater? Are you always in doubt if your child is getting the required nutrients? How to bring about your child to eat healthy food? These are the problems encountered by all parents. Simple changes on your part will help in the child relishing the food from being a fussy eater.
Innovate your cooking: Children are very fond of something very bright and colorful. Instead of the old way of blanching spinach and asking your child to gobble it up (which he would out rightly reject as disgusting), you can try and make green spinach rice, by keeping the theme for the day as green day. Else you can add the spinach puree to the tortilla dough and roll out green tortillas. You can make colorful tortillas by adding carrots and beets to make them more appealing for kids. Innovation is the key to success in any field.
Eat right: Ensure that your child eats the right food from the beginning. A right start will go a long way in having a healthy life. Also by starting off with good eating habits, the child tends to inculcate the same after growing up and remains hale and healthy.
Be a role model: Children ape and mimic adult behavior. If you as a parent eat an unhealthy diet filled with junk and processed foods, then you cannot blame the child for his improper eating habits. Practice before you preach, same applies with children too. Follow a healthy diet and your kids will adopt the same.
Allow the child to decide: We as parents, especially mothers force feed the child not realizing that it does more harm than good. The result of force feeding is that the child would develop an aversion to food. Let the child decide how much he wants to eat. If he’s hungry, he will ask you for it.
Repeat the food: We are not comfortable in bringing about new changes in our everyday life. Then, how can we expect kids to start eating new foods, just because they are a healthier option. Children are not aware of the nutritional benefits. They eat what they like. No point in forcing them. Try repeating the food at intervals by bringing in some changes. Slowly but gradually he will start liking.
Reward your child with healthy foods: Praise your child for every achievement of his. Reward him with healthy food options like carrot sticks, granola bars instead of chocolates and high Cal desserts. You can offer the chocolate incentive if he continues on a healthy food for a month. Having chocolates once in a while does no harm.
Children’s nutritional needs are of prime importance. A balanced diet will provide the child with the essential nutrients and help him to develop as a strong individual. Getting children to eat healthy is not an easy task, but a little bit of creativity and patience on part of the worried parents will turn fussy kids into healthy kids.
Author Bio: Marguerite being a fitness enthusiast loves to blog on fitness and topics related to fitness. You can check out her latest post on how to lose belly fat on her website.
