Eat-right tips that work…
It’s vital our kids eat properly because good nutrition is one of the building blocks of heath and wellbeing. But obesity levels among kids are soaring, setting our children up for a lifetime of health problems. We all know what’s good for our kids but getting them to eat it can be difficult. Motivate your child with the Supernanny team’s eat-right tips…
1 Set a good example
Kids are copycats and just as they learn to walk and talk by watching you, so they learn to make healthy food choices. If you spend your life snacking on junk food, so will they. Make sure they don’t by eating a balanced diet yourself and making salty cholesterol-packed snack attacks a thing of the past.
2 Give plenty of choices
If you limit your toddler’s fruit and veg choices to apples, bananas and over-cooked carrots she may be less willing to try new tastes as she gets older. Stock the fruit bowl with peaches, nectarines, tangerines, berries, plums, pineapple, kiwifruit and watermelon. Introduce her to raw veggie slices dipped in hummus. The same goes for other diet staples: vary her breakfast cereal to include bite-size mini shredded wheat and raisin bran; swap that boring slice of toast for wholewheat crispbread and pita strips.
3 Make it look good
Form your child’s meals into a smiley face using fruit or vegetable slices or give her a bowl of cooked pasta and veg and get her to use the pieces to make a collage on a separate plate. Once she’s finished the deal is that she has to eat the collage!
4 Sneak in the good stuff
Home-made pasta sauce can hide a multitude of sins as far as fussy eaters are concerned – add in tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers and anything else she usually rejects and blend it to a smooth purée. If she won’t eat fruit, offer it in smoothie form. Is your child a muffin lover? You can bake pretty much anything into them – just grate it into the mixture!
5 Make it personal
Kids grow rapidly once they enter adolescence – your child will gain around 20% of her adult height, 50% of her adult weight and 45% of her bone mass during her tweens. Her vitamin and mineral needs grow too, so ensuring she eats properly is vital.
Tweens and teens who see past your attempts to feed them veggies by stealth may be more receptive to a little health info that appeals to their own particular interests and their growing interest in body image. Is your child a straight-A student and keen to keep it up? Explain how certain vitamins and minerals might boost his brain cells. Bringing up a local Little League star? Point out that healthy food choices will give him the energy and strength he needs to hit those home runs. Teen obsessing over their looks? Tell them how eating the right foods will make their skin glow and her hair shine, as well as building those muscles. And get your kids interested in reading labels to find out what’s in the foods they eat.