Child Nutrition: Helping child develop healthy eating habits

Child Nutrition: Helping child develop healthy eating habits

It’s not difficult to understand that child nutrition is important and teaching children healthy eating habits goes a long way for them. Maintaining healthy weight and nutritional intake can help them prevent lifestyle diseases later in life. It can help them control weight and build immunity early to fight diseases and infections.

When the child is growing up, his nutritional needs change with every passing year. He needs mix of every nutrient to grow, in terms of height, weight and immunity. His paediatrician can help in telling what the child needs and what deficiency he’s dealing with. Based on that, you can make the needed dietary changes for him. The idea is to teach him portion control and cut on excess sugar and carbs.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that you have to start early with kids. You can expect to take it positively once they have moved on from their formative years—first five to seven years. Also, keep in mind what he likes and what’s his physical activity level.

Leading by example is the first step towards developing healthy eating in children

Rather than announcing it to your child what he’s supposed to eat, guide your family too towards healthy eating. When the child sees everyone eating healthy, he knows that he too is supposed to eat the same. Also, make sure you make variety of healthy food, so you know your child’s taste and liking. If he likes fruit over dairy, you can include more of it than dairy. Make sure you eat the same thing with him; children learn by example. Healthy role modelling is the key here.

Encourage children to eat slowly for proper nutrition

To make sure that they learn to register fullness and hunger properly, it’s important to teach them to eat slowly. So, in a way before you give them second serving or if they demand for it, they know whether or not they actually need it. In fact, it’s fine to give them a break of 5 minutes between first and second serving. They need to know for sure how hungry they are in order to not overeat and avoid wastage. You can keep the second serving comparatively smaller and restricted to veggies.

Make meals a healthy family time

Try to have your meals together than making your child sit alone and eat before you. If needed you tweak your mealtime to match it with your child. Make it happy, positive and little bit conversational. Don’t use this time to scold him or argue with each other. It can impact his nutrition; he may start associating the mealtime with stress. This can make him eat faster or eat less, in any case it’s not good for his nutrition.

Limit screen-time specially during or around meal time

This is one of the worst habits kids are developing these days. Children as young as one year old are habitual of eating with phones and TV in front of them. Experts believe that this type of eating doesn’t count under mindful eating. It may not give your child complete nutrition even if he completes the whole portion because his focus is not food but on his screen.  Usually, parents find it difficult to get their child away from this habit. So, start early. Make it a rule. Tell them to get involved in conversations rather than watching shows. You can award them with an hour of screen-time if they eat and finish their meal properly.

Don’t use food as reward or punishment for proper child nutrition

Making the child stay without food as punishment can be detrimental for their health. They will think that they might have to go to bed hungry and thus, try to eat whatever is they get. This can lead to unnecessary calorie intake and unhealthy eating. Also, if you reward them with food specially with candies and chocolate, they might value it more than healthy food. So, eliminate the whole idea of using food as bait or punishment.

Involve your child in grocery shopping with you

When they grow to the age of three to four, you can start taking them out with you for grocery shopping occasionally. They idea is to only teach them that in the store full of food, what can be more nutritional and healthier. It can also give you a chance to know their preferences and tastes. These days, grocery and department stores have live kitchen too. It can be interesting for your child to try new food there and in fact start to like what they didn’t like before.

Don’t kill the snack time, add more fibre and protein in it

Snacks are not only unhealthy so don’t kill the snack time all together. In fact, add fruits, oats and shakes for snacks. This won’t kill their mealtime hunger and will also keep them full. Fuller tummies keep children happier else they get cranky. Another thing to keep in mind here is that occasionally, you child can have fried and unhealthy snacks like noodles, burgers and cutlets. Sometimes, treats are also required, and it doesn’t make them sensitive towards these foods. Yes, you can make sure that these are home cooked.

Published : October 31, 2019 12:39 pm

6 ways to get a head start on your New Year’s resolution to eat healthy

Healthy eating, like many things, doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing enterprise.

You don’t have to dive head-first into keto or immediately jettison everything with added sugar, just because you made a New Year’s resolution to eat healthier, experts say.

That may actually be counter-productive, says registered dietitian Andrea D’Ambrosio.

“Remember that any valiant effort to lose weight that involves deprivation and/or extreme exercise is unsustainable — you will eventually default to your old habits,” D’Ambrosio said.

“Therefore, make a commitment to focus on life-long behaviour change using strategies that are healthy, enjoyable and therefore sustainable.”

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Nadine Moukheiber, a registered dietitian in Montreal, said that diets can be appealing. “We tend to want results very fast,” she said.

“And the more rules we have to follow, the more we think things are going to work out.”

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She agrees that rule-based diets are hard to keep up, though.

“It’s never long-term results,” she said. “It’s always short-term results and you can never escape the cycle.”

If you’re looking to eat healthier, here are a few simple things you can do that don’t involve an extreme diet.

1. Figure out the problem

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Moukheiber says it’s important to know what you’re trying to fix. If you’re a person who doesn’t eat very much sugar at all, adopting a paleo diet that doesn’t allow you to eat sweets won’t make much of a difference in your life, she said.

“I would just first of all get to the root of the problem and see what the main obstacles are,” she says.

Then, you can look at the cause. If you decide that you spend too much time mindlessly snacking, maybe it’s because your meals aren’t filling enough, or you need more nutritionally-balanced snacks around, she suggests.

“Decide how you want to feel,” says registered dietitian Sarah Remmer.

“Are you worried about your heart health? Are you concerned about your weight? Do you fall short on veggies in your diet? Is your energy low?

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“Decide what is troubling you, and how you want to feel better before making any changes.”

2. Start small

“Make one or two changes to your daily routine and see how that goes,” Remmer says. “If it’s doable and sustainable, try adding another change and see how that feels.”

It’s about building new habits, Moukheiber says. “If the habit you are building is customized to you, to your lifestyle, to how you feel and to your reality, it will be easy for you to repeat it and to make it a habit.”

Here are 3 food trends for 2020 3. Cook more at home

“We have become increasingly dependent upon processed, convenience and restaurant meals,” D’Ambrosio says, and our taste buds can come to crave these high-fat, high-salt foods.

Cooking more often can often improve your dietary quality and decrease your reliance upon these foods, she says.

“Your waistline and wallet will thank you for it!”

4. Add some fibre

D’Ambrosio says many of her clients feel “full and energized” after a high-fibre meal or snack. “Remember that fibre fills us up on few calories. It slows digestion, lowers cholesterol and stabilizes blood sugars,” she says.

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High-fibre diets have been linked to a range of health benefits, including protecting against disease.

D’Ambrosio recommends choosing whole grains, and suggests adding chia seeds to things like cereal or yogurt to boost their fibre content.

Tasty ways to increase your fiber intake 5. Use smaller plates

Using smaller plates at meal time is an easy thing to do that can bring big benefits, Remmer says. “This will help to control portion sizes so that you can be a more mindful eater.”

She also recommends making sure that half your plate is covered in fruits or veggies — something also recommended by the Canada Food Guide.

Canada’s new food guide: 5 things you should know 6. Know what you can’t live without

For Moukheiber, this is chocolate. “If I don’t eat my chocolate during the day, don’t stand next to me,” she says.

Replacing all her snacks with healthy alternatives just won’t work for her, she says. “I’m not going to be happy with carrots and hummus.”

“If you love having a glass of wine with dinner and it brings you joy, maybe that’s not what you should give up,” Remmer says.

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“On the other hand, if you tend to mindlessly snack on unhealthy snack foods just because they’re laying around, that’s something you can probably give up.

“Give up things that you won’t miss. Feeling deprived will only mean that you’ll end up eating more of it later.”

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