Top 10 Healthy Eating Habits For Your Kids

Healthy eating habits are key in stabilizing your child’s health, sharpening their minds, and keeping them in joyous moods. This article’s Bridge Project equips you, the parent with ten proven tips for healthy children’s habits.

Keep Them from Bad Influence

With the negative impact of peer pressure and the much-hyped TV commercial adverts on junk foods, a child can make misinformed food choices which, if made over a long time, could lead to obesity. Despite all this noise surrounding your child, you as the parent have the ultimate responsibility of monitoring what the child eats. The bodies of healthy, active children tend to demand just the right amount of food and they will leave the food on the table once they are full. However, their minds may crave for more even when their stomachs are full. As a parent, it is your role to come in and settle this body-mind battle.

Use Services of Your Family Doctor

once your child hits middle-age, it is very probable that you will overestimate their food intake by placing food that is as much as what is on your plate. Be warned; do not do this. You can check with your family doctor to tell you the morsels you ought your child with.

Know Their Bodily and Food Intake Changes

At puberty, children’s energy needs soar high and so does their food needs. At ages 7 to 10, both boys and girls can consume between 1600 to 2400 calories per day. When girls hit the ages of between 10 to 12, their calorie intake increases by 200 per day. Boys on the other increase their calorie intake by 500 calories per day. At this crucial stage of puberty, increase your child’s protein and calcium intake. Protein will help build their body tissues while calcium goes a long way in bone growth and expansion.

Child Feeding depends on their BMI and activities

How much your child eats ought to be determined by their Body Mass Index (BMI) which is got by dividing their weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters. For BMI less than 18, then your child is underweight, if they have one greater than 25, they are overweight.

Involve Them in Kitchen Affairs

As your child grows older, make them feel part of the cooking process. Involve them by letting them choose healthy recipes from cookbooks and involve them in the food preparation process. As you share such intimate kitchen time together, use the opportunity to teach them the healthy eating habits you expect them to adopt.

Good Planning

Plan your meals ahead and let your child know what to look forward to during the next meal. This way, they will be so eager to wait for your cooking without straying to fatty food joints for junk.

Have Tranquil Dining Environment

Cultivate peace, love, and unity on your dining table. Surrounded by peace and love, your child will eat quietly, chew thoroughly, and will realize when their stomachs are full. If there is mayhem and chaos however on the dining table, the child will be tense and may eat hurriedly without realizing when they get full.

Be a Role Model

Children learn more by examples than by precepts. They are copiers. They will do anything they see you do. If they hear you say, “Veggies are gross,” they will take that as the gospel truth. Again, if you are in the habit of taking junk foods, they will imitate you.

Neither Use Food as Reward or Punishment

If you withhold food as punishment to a child, they will start getting too dreadful of hunger. Again, if your child gets good grades and you give them a dessert as a gift, they will start thinking that sugary food is better than healthy food.

No Thirst, No Sugary Drinks

Monitor your child to ensure that they take enough water for a day. Thirst causes dehydration which could cause a false trigger for hunger in a child’s mind. Again, when thirst, do not give your child juice or soda. Such beverages could cause child obesity. All they need to drink is water.

In case your child has health-related problems, apply for an Eric card for free medical services