It is important to start eating healthy early. If you abandon the mission of getting your kids to eat healthy too late, it becomes harder to change the habits they’ve learned. On the other hand, if you have always insisted on having healthy eating children in your household, then you will find it much easier to keep your children on the straight and narrow path of healthy eating.
Start by making sure you have healthy foods in your fridge and pantry. You can’t teach your kids healthy eating when they’re surrounded by candy, chocolate, and fizzy drinks. Remember that kids are a perceptive bunch and will quickly spot any discrepancy between what you say and what you do.
Let your children help you choose fruit and vegetables in the supermarket or grocery store. The sense of involvement is important. Eventually, if your children have had a hand in choosing the foods they eat, they will feel more included and will be more likely to want to eat it. Even if they simply don’t want to eat something, including it in the purchasing decision will at least save you from wasting food later on.
Encourage your children to drink plenty of water. Skim milk is good too. And fruit juice is healthy, but can increase the calorie count if he drinks too much of it. If your kids do get a craving for freshly squeezed orange juice, buy one of the inexpensive hand squeezers and let them squeeze their own juice. This will start a healthy eating habit for your kids and will also slow down the pace at which they drink the juice – squeezing a liter of juice by hand will take a long time!
Eating together regularly as a family is a great way to raise children on healthy eating. The fact that you all sit down to eat instead of grabbing a quick snack on the way to another location makes meals feel special. This will almost certainly prompt you to plan more carefully what your family eats. And once you start thinking about food, you’ll find that the whole family starts eating healthier.
Thanks to Trevor John