Why is a healthy eating habit important for a child? Many US children are now being diagnosed with alarming cases of high cholesterol. So parents are more worried about their children getting overweight. The problem with obesity is that, it leads to other health complications like diabetes or high blood pressure. Even worse, though the child seems fleshy from outside, he or she might be lacking the most essential nutrients.
Fortunately, you can keep most of those complications away by putting your kid on a balanced and healthy diet. With this, some regular exercise can only help. Let’s get to some details, shall we?
How can you help your child eat right?
The best way to do that is to set a good example for the child. Prepare nutritious and healthy foods for the whole family. Start eating health foods yourself and the child will be used to eating healthier, too. But be sure to prepare various types of health foods, as your family needs all sorts of vitamins or minerals for all round health.
What are the best healthy meals?
Breakfast: You can give whole-grain breads and cereals. A great combination would be fresh fruits, and low-fat (preferably nonfat) cheeses. Finish with some yogurt. You can also use low-fat milk instead of whole milk. Stay away from 2% milk. And fruit juice comes with lots of high calories and useful natural sugars. Moreover, they come with lesser nutrients compared to whole fruit (fresh or canned).
Lunch: Here as well, whole-grain breads are good choice. Make bread rolls to prepare healthy sandwich. According to nutrition specialists, whole grains have strong potentials to boost the total fiber in your child’s diet. In addition, they are less processed compared to rich white bread.
You can also give her some whole-grain crackers with fresh vegetable soups, mild chili and some stew. And serving fresh fruit does count. Try to serve them skin for best maturation value. These are good substitutes of chips or other forms of hi-calorie, low-nutrient food items.
What snacks have the best nutrition value for your child?
Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are good. Same goes for low-fat and nonfat dairy foods. Here’re a few ideas for serving healthy snacks for the kids:
Fruits:
• Small slices of fruit, preferably stirred into low fat or nonfat yogurt
• Strawberries
• Raisins
• Grapes
• Pineapple chunks
• Orange sections
• Grapefruit sections
• Light cooked (preferably in diluted apple juice) bananas
• Apple slices meshed in natural, healthy peanut butter
• Fresh mixes of dried fruits
Vegetables:
• Flimsy carrot sticks
• Celery sticks meshed with natural healthy peanut butter
• Fresh raw broccoli meshed with cauliflower florets and a non-fat dip and/or salsa
• Thick slices of cherry tomatoes
Protein:
• 1% fat (fat-free is also good) cottage cheese and ricotta cheese
• Some water-packed tuna meshed with fat-less mayonnaise on celery sticks (whole-grain crackers are also good)
• Fat-less yogurt topped with sunflower seeds. This gets better with nicely chopped dried fruits or 1 table spoon of oat bran
• Fresh unsalted almonds meshed with some dried cranberries
Sweets and desserts:
• Fat-less frozen yogurt
• Natural juice bars
• Sherbet & sorbet
