Ask any parent about the top challenges of raising kids and getting them to eat healthily would probably be high on the list. Some children don’t even like the sight of any food in the first place.
Peer pressure and TV commercials for junk food can make getting your kids to eat well an uphill struggle. And eating healthy, especially for children, cannot be overemphasized. They need all the nutrients they can get to enhance their proper growths and development without any organ malfunction and system breakdown.
Healthy eating can help children maintain a healthy weight, avoid certain health problems, stabilize their energy, and sharpen their minds. A healthy diet can also have a profound effect on a child’s sense of mental and emotional wellbeing, helping to prevent conditions such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and ADHD.
If your child has already been diagnosed with a mental health problem, a healthy diet can help your child to manage the symptoms and regain control of their health.
It’s important to remember that your kids aren’t born with a craving for pizza and an aversion to carrots. This conditioning happens over time as kids are exposed to more and more unhealthy food choices.
However, it is possible to reprogram your children’s food cravings so that they crave healthier foods instead. The sooner you introduce them to wholesome, nutritious choices, the easier they’ll be able to develop a healthy relationship with food that can last them a lifetime.
Focus on the overall diet rather than specific foods
Kids should be eating more wholesome, minimally processed food—food that is as close to its natural form as possible—and less packaged and processed food.
Be a role model
The child’s impulse to imitate is strong, so don’t ask your child to eat vegetables while you gorge on potato chips. Our kids watch everything we do, so it should be no surprise that they can be influenced to make better choices if they watch us doing the same.
Make food interesting
Lori Day, an educational clinical psychologist says her mom always told her that she was a terrible eater and that it would be karma if her daughter also didn’t like to eat well. But that’s not what happened. When her now-grown daughter was young, Day thought that if she found food interesting, she’d be more likely to try it. So Day let her daughter shell peas, count them, sort them by size and play with them before putting them in the pot. She loved eating them raw or cooked, Day said.
Get kids involved
Several parents talked about how bringing their children with them to the farmers’ market or the grocery store and having them help with the cooking can get them more excited and interested in what they are eating. In shopping for groceries and preparing meals. You can teach them about different foods and how to read food labels.