Thursday, 28th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

By Bridget
03 August 2016   |   2:00 pm
You can help your child develop healthy eating habits early in life that will bring lifelong benefits to them. As a parent, you can encourage your kids to evaluate their food choices by simply being a role model. Being a good role model entails you set the good morals. For instance, if your children see…

You can help your child develop healthy eating habits early in life that will bring lifelong benefits to them. As a parent, you can encourage your kids to evaluate their food choices by simply being a role model. Being a good role model entails you set the good morals.

For instance, if your children see you frequently pulling into the local restaurant for a quick dinner, guess where they’ll be heading once they start driving as well? – You don’t have to be perfect all the time, but if kids see you trying to eat right and getting physically active, they’ll take notice of your efforts and you’ll be sending a message of good morals to them.

Let me show you some tips to adopt to bring children to healthy eating habits.

Make Home Cooking a Priority: Like I said you don’t have be perfect, but as much as lies within you and they effort you put into raising healthy children, making your meals at home is one of the most rewarding things you can do for your kids. Not only will you get to spend quality time together, but your chances of eating healthfully also increases because most of the time you will be making your meals with natural ingredients. When you make your own meals at home, have your kids see how you make them. Now chances are that you might have budding chefs already through this–take them into the kitchen with you. Share the fun. The earlier they develop healthy cooking skills, the better.

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

Start the Good Grades for Good Foods Game: As your children head back from school, tell them you have a new game the family will be launching, and that it is about good grades. Then, throughout each day (not just at mealtimes) have fun grading different foods together. This is how you play it! Bring out some foods or pictures of some foods and classify according to healthiness to the body. So “Cherries, pineapple, apples, veggies and so forth would be in the ‘A.’ grade. But what about doughnuts, meat pie, apple juice, and ice cream? Sort of a ‘C’ grade right? So which ones are ‘B’ ‘D’ ‘E’ and ‘F’ grades?

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

Children love trying to guess how to grade each food. That’s the game. The goal is their realization that they really do eat a lot of “A” and “B” foods. And it’s good for their health. So very quickly, they start to feel like “A” and “B” kids. Those “A” foods, just like “A” grades in school, take on a certain aura, a mark of excellence. And children begin to feel proud of themselves and their healthy choices. This also teaches them a lot about nutrients, health, lifestyle, and grades generally.

Make Dinnertime a Family Time: When everyone sits down together to eat, there’s less chance of children eating the wrong foods or snacking too much. Get your kids involved in cooking and planning meals. Everyone develops good eating habits together and the quality time with the family will be an added bonus.

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

Make a Game of Reading Food Labels: The whole family will learn what’s good for their health and be more conscious of what they eat. It’s a habit that helps change behaviour for a lifetime. Learning more about reading nutrition labels and what they do to the body.

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

Stay involved – Be an advocate for healthier children. Insist on good food choices at school. Monitoring cardiovascular indicators, blood pressure and cholesterol, encourage neatness; (clothes, hand sanitising, brushing and flossing, hair keep) just general neatness and stay active to that lifestyle, before long your children will emulate not only the healthy eating lifestyle but general well-being as a whole.

Teaching Kids Healthy Eating Habits!

In this article

0 Comments