Picture called "Fruit platter" by Brenda Godinez.
It feels almost impossible to make your child healthy these days. With many unhealthy options that are so convenient for all ages to consume, eating healthier has never been more challenging than before. Especially from the marketing of fast food chains, unhealthy options have shunned healthier options and their importance.
First and foremost, why should our children eat healthily?
Well, that is to expose your child to nutrients that can help support your child's growth! Nutrients help your child grow in size and shape, cognitive functioning and emotional development with brain growth too! There are specific nutrients source that help achieve that. For example, nutrients that promote growth and body tissue come from our minerals, proteins and water. For stimulation of brain growth and cognitive functioning, it comes from macronutrients and micronutrients, respectively. For promoting bone and teeth growth, it needs nutrients from Calcium, Fluoride, and Phosphorus.
My point is that nutrients are required for our child to grow - and that can only be achieved through healthy eating. Unhealthy eating lacks proper nutrients and is also full of fats, which can promote obesity, which comes with new problems.
So, the question still stands, how do we make our children eat healthily - after all, eating healthy is not as easy to promote as opposed to eating unhealthy for children. Well, here you're mistaken; here are some ways that can help encourage your child to eat healthily.
Be a role model.
Children love to follow the actions of their parents or someone superior to them as the environment very quickly influences them - so to make them have good habits like eating healthily, eat healthily and show it to them. This will make them more inclined to follow your direction as a parent and be more willing to eat healthy as they may believe that whatever you do is perfectly normal.
Besides, if you do eat healthily, it will reduce the chances of that conversation where your child is asking you why he must eat healthily, but you as a parent don't need to - that is something that I don't know how to answer with, and you are on your own for that one.
Play around with ingredients.
As well all know, one way of motivating us to eat is to eat with our eyes - that is, by making the food we eat visually appealing. That situation applies to our children too! Make the food visually appealing for our kids by making it colourful and cute by arranging the ingredients to make it look like an animal. It does not need a lot of effort to make it! You can take bread, place two slices of banana on the bread, two strawberries on top, one on each top corner, and that makes the meal much cuter - isn't it simple?
Cut down on added sugar by eating healthier snacks.
According to research done by the Singapore college of paediatrics and child health, to prevent our children from being overweight, children are only allowed to consume added sugar confined to just 10 per cent of their total required calorie intake per day.
Snacking contains one of the most massive amounts of added sugars. We all eat snacks - both children and adults as they are considered essential for us, but we also have to ensure that they do not get out of line. Of course, I am not telling you to eliminate all the snacks that contain sugar, as that may result in our children having a massive craving for it. As a result, it will eventually cause them to overindulge in such snacks should they ever get hold of them.
Instead, introduce snacks and small bites that are much healthier and with lesser added sugars to your child. For example, you can be as simple by providing apple pieces and grapes, wholegrain crackers with cheese and even apple slices with peanut butter (trust me, they are good!)
Introduce vegetables and fruits to your child.
Fruits should be straightforward to introduce to your child. After all, they are naturally sweet, and the sugar content in fruits is not likely to cause your child to be overweight due to sugar. Fruits are also colourful and visually appealing. Hence, I will find fruits not the most challenging item to introduce to your child.
Instead, the more difficult one is vegetables. Urgh - the dreaded V words that most children hate. Even some adults hate the sight of vegetables, too, I understand.
One way you can help them eat vegetables is to introduce them slowly. Please do not make your child suddenly eat a massive portion of broccoli in one shot when you know your child hates them! This gives the children all the more reasons not to eat their vegetables. Instead, slowly integrate vegetables into their diet and slowly ramp it up. Whatever you do, forcing them will never work.
Another way is to be creative, just like the first advice here. Play around with the ingredients. Maybe make the vegetables look like they are smiling, or sequence them such that they look like a giant dinosaur on the plate. Making it visually appealing will help them to eat their vegetables more effectively too!
Use whole grains.
Whole grains like brown rice contain more vitamins, minerals, poly chemicals and fibre that can help promote growth and reduce the risk of your child being exposed to diseases like heart disease, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
But again, your child may oppose wholegrain substitutes because of the taste - and some may also find brown rice scary (it's true, I am one of them). So, the best way is to introduce it slowly to their diet. For example, add a little brown rice to their bowl full of white rice, and eventually, increase their portion such that the brown rice is visible but not enough for the brown rice to overtake the entire bowl.
Have a family meal together with only healthy ingredients.
We have already established that children will imitate us; what better way to exploit that knowledge than by having the entire family sit together and consume only healthy meals?
Since children are easily influenced by their environment, putting them into an environment where everyone is observed to be eating healthily will also encourage them to do the same and eat healthily. Not only that, but this will also be the perfect opportunity for the parents to educate their children on why they should eat healthily and what benefits they will reap too!
Finally, never, ever use rewards to tempt your child.
Rewards can be like a double-edged sword. It can benefit your children to eat healthily but also cause them to eat healthy only because of the reward.
By using rewards to tempt your children to eat healthily, your child may perceive that he should only eat healthy because of the reward he is bound to receive. As a result of that mentality, your child may not want to eat healthy again when there is an absence of rewards. That mentality is not the right mindset that we want our children to have as not only will it deter them from eating healthy in the long run, but also because they will then learn the wrong concept of why they should eat healthily.
Ultimately, there are many steps and methods that you can try to encourage your child to eat healthily - but what matters the most is that you do not give up on this quest to encourage your child to eat healthily. Only we adults have the power and ability to drive our children toward the steps of eating healthily.
These steps will help children grow the habit of eating healthy, eventually.
If you liked this article or know any other methods to encourage your child to eat healthily, share them with us in the comments section or on our Instagram post!
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