Nutrition make parents apprehensive about the growth and development of their son with whom they meticulously plan but tend to forget that a nutrient diet plays a vital role in child development.
Parents try to choose healthy meals with adequate nutrition, vitamins, and minerals in their young diet. However, it is not easy to plan the children’s menu because your metabolism is faster than adults and your spicy habits. Furthermore, they have special nutritional requirements for their growing bodies.
Healthy Eating Benefits Son Energy In many ways; Stabilize your strength and improve your mind and mood. Furthermore, it helps prevent many chronic diseases, including high blood pressure, type two diabetes, obesity, and cardiac disorders.
What are the guidelines for child nutrition?
Learning healthy eating habits in childhood remains with the child for life. First, however, you should follow some guidelines for your child’s diet since this will provide you with healthy models to stay away from different chronic diseases previously listed.
Make a balanced breakfast.
Children should start the day eating a healthy and balanced breakfast nutrition with protein. Proteins help children stay full of energy all day at school. In addition, if you are a teenager, you can lose weight.
There hardly any time in the morning for working parents, for that the mentioned food items can be a boon in their diet as it provides all the required nutrition in one go.
- Whole grain wheat bread with peanut butter
- An apple, boiled eggs, toast with a glass of milk.
- Whole grain wheat sandwich with lots of vegetables.
- Yogurt with Almonds
Children’s diet should be the priority.
When you sit with your children at the table to eat, help them learn healthy eating habits.
- Help children to have a set routine to eat with the family and avoid postponing family lunches.
- You can monitor your children, whether they are eating correctly or leaving the food unfinished.
- You can carefully prepare food with adequate nutrition and make children’s habits adopt healthy eating habits.
Make small changes in the nutritional diet for healthier food.
Try to change unhealthy objects in your fridge with healthy alternatives. You do not have to reconstruct your complete meal plan, even if you can do small swaps such as:
| Change | With |
| White bread Butter fried Chip Soda Ice- Cream Whole Milk Cream salad Dressing | Whole grain wheat bread Olive Oil or Walnut Oil Baked Chips or Nuts Water Fruit smoothies and milkshakes Low-fat milk Oil based salad dressing |
Protein –Choose seafood, lean meat and poultry, eggs, beans, peas, soy products, and walnuts and seeds without salt.
Fruits– Encourage your child to eat a variety of fresh fruits, canned, frozen, or dry, instead of fruit juice. If the child drinks the juice, make sure it is 100% juice without aggregated sugar and limits its portions. Search canned fruit that says it is light or packed in its juice, which is low in aggregate sugar. Keep in mind that a cup of dried use of One quarter counts as a fruit. When consumed in excess, dry fruits can provide additional calories.
Vegetables- Serve a variety of fresh, canned, frozen, or dried vegetables. We aim to provide various vegetables every week, including dark green, red and orange, beans and peas, starchy, and others. When shopping canned or frozen vegetables, look for lower sodium options.
Grains– Choose integral cereals, such as complete bath bread, oatmeal, corn popcorn, quinoa, or brown or wild rice. Limit refined grains like white bread, pasta, and rice.
Dairy- Encourage your child to eat and drink dairy products without fat or low fat like milk, yogurt, and cheese, or fortified soy drinks.
Limit Children’s nutrition Calories
Added sugar– Limit added sugars. Natural sugars, such as fruit and milk, do not add sugars. Examples of aggregate sugar include cane sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, honey, and others. Check the nutritional labels. Choose cereals with minimal aggregated sugars. Avoid drinks with aggregate sugars, such as soft drinks and energy and drinks.
Saturated and Trans-fats– Limits saturated fats: fats come mainly from food sources, like red meat, poultry, and dairy full-fat products. Look for numerous ways to replace saturated fats with vegetable oils and walnuts, which provide essential fatty acids and vitamin E.
The healthiest fats are also naturally present in olives, walnuts, avocado, and seafood—limit trans-fat or avoid foods containing partially hydrogenated oil.
Sodium– Most children in the United States have too much sodium in their daily diets. Encourage sandwiches in fruit and vegetables instead of chips and biscuits. Verify nutritional labels and look for the low sodium product.
Limit the intake of sugar for children
Try reducing sugar consumption in the child’s diet since it can have harmful consequences such as diabetes of type two diabetes, hyperactivity, obesity, and mood disorders. First, follow the suggestions below to check your sugar intake: Instead of saying that no baby for sweets and pastries, organize these delights only on special occasions. Second, avoid drinks with sugar preservatives since a refreshment can have ten teaspoons of sugar that last about seven teaspoons plus the limited quantity. Third, it provides natural sugar to children in the form of fruit and even fruit desserts. Fourth, try reducing the amount of sugar in the recipes you do at home.
Be selective on fat for children nutrition.
Fats are important part of the human diet, but only healthy fats are helpful in children’s food. Healthy fats are unsaturated fats, such as almonds, pumpkin seeds, omega3 fatty acids, avocado, olive oil or walnut oil. These are oils are boon to the memory of children, and they also threaten their mood. Try to limit trans-fat such as baked goods, margarine, sandwiches, food, or food packaging with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Create interests for fruit and vegetables
Try making food more attractive and appealing, so children will love to eat it.
Furthermore, it is necessary to avoid keeping food packaged as chips at home that children prefer more. Keep a bowl of fruit in a place where it looks attractive, and the child can easily see it and choose it from when feeling hungry.
Try to hide vegetables in other foods, as you can prepare a stew of carrots or other vegetables that your child will never know what they are eating. Leading them to the grocery store let them decide which food item wants to choose. You can also use your imagination to create a food scene on the plate, as you can serve broccoli like a tree.
Involving your children in purchases and food planting
Brings your children to a grocery store when you buy food to eat. Teach them to read food labels from various foods to choose from; for this, they learn the nutritional value of food. They have the opportunity to understand what they are eating at home.
Keep a kitchen garden at home and encourage your children to plant different vegetables and herbs in the kitchen. Does it not only give you a lesson but the opportunity to grow and collect your food.
As a parent, your job is to
- Establishes a regular meal and snack that works for the whole family. Share meals and eat with your children.
- Offers a balanced and a variety of food from all food groups in meals.
- Offers food so that they can easily manage it. For example, cut into small pieces of food to avoid suffocation in more minor children.
- Help your children learn to use a spoon or a cup so that they can eat independently.
- Includes the child in the preparation of the appropriate food by age and arrangement of the table.
- Avoid using dessert as a bribe to the children. Serve healthy dessert options, like a cup of fruit or yogurt.
- Teach your children how to read the labels to help you choose food when you buy.
- Avoid fast-food restaurants; show your children the importance of enjoying food time as a family while eating healthy meals in home comfort.
Conclusion
Do not stress the children or get worried too much if your child rejects a food product or food. Instead, try giving them something else among other meals to eat. They undoubtedly tend to like other things.
Do not worry too much or stress if your child does not seem to eat enough. If your child’s weight and size are on track, you probably get what you need. Make sure you offer your child a variety of food from all food groups to get the correct nutrients. Your child’s doctor will supervise the growth in regular appointments and let him know if there is any problem. Appetites for children change from Day-to-day or even food-to-food. Children have small stomach and they eat less but requires to munch on food quite often.