Healthy Kids Make Healthier Adults

 

Teaching your children to eat well from a young age is absolutely paramount to their health and their ability to continue living a healthy lifestyle as they grow and develop. Over the last decade, research has shown that due to changes in our lifestyles, more and more kids are becoming obese. Much of this is due to poor diet and inadequate amounts of exercise.

Home cooking is found to be the element that is missing from the lives of many of those children with poor diets. Busy parents, who are not able to cook good weeknight meals, usually take the easiest route out and allow their children to eat fast food and processed or frozen foods like pizza, chicken nuggets and canned or microwaveable meals. These foods are full of preservatives and unhealthy ingredients.

Here are six simple tips for busy parents that want to ensure their kids are eating well balanced meals, with fresh ingredients and clean cooking methods:

Include them in weekly meal planning and preparation.

Weekly meal planning can be a really useful tool for weeknight cooking. Including the kids in planning can not only encourage them to buy in to eating the meals you prepare but can also help them to learn how to create balanced meals. If they are old enough you may even consider giving them one meal a week to be in charge of and responsible for, which would include them preparing a grocery list for the meal and actually preparing it with your guidance of course.

Make it a point to enjoy your meals together.

Studies show that there are many benefits to sharing meals with your kids. Perhaps one of the most beneficial things is the comfort of knowing that they are getting nutritional meals needed for healthy growth. This is also an opportunity to talk to your kids about school or just their day in general.

Take them to the local farmer’s market or grocery store to help you shop for local produce and herbs to compliment your meal plans.

It is important for your kids to understand where you source the items they eat. This will also help them to identify and be able to name vegetables and fruits that grow locally. It may even spark their interest in trying a food they may not be familiar with.

Encourage them to try new foods.

Introducing your kids slowly to new foods is important. The introduction of new foods will widen their scope of healthier substitutes or choices, so that they don’t get bored with eating the same foods over and over. This will discourage them from resorting to foods that are less healthy.  

Set aside one day that they can have whatever they want to eat.

They are still kids, so we have to give them the option of having a treat every now and then. You can be assured, that as they learn and become more involved with food prep and meal planning, their choices when they are allowed to eat whatever they want will make you proud.

Lead by example.

As parents it is not always easy to do everything you know you need to do to ensure your family is living a healthy lifestyle, because ‘life’ can sometimes get in the way. However, even if you are not perfect, your kids will see the effort you put in and they will emulate what they see.

 

Let’s teach our kids to live healthy lifestyles now, so that they can be good stewards of

Healthy living later!