5 Healthy Eating Tips for Kids

As our children round up their second week back at school, offers some healthy eating tips to start your children’s year off right!

Helping to encourage and maintain your children’s healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle, is all about balance. We have to learn (and teach our children) that when it comes to food, we need to carefully balance the amount and types of food we feed our bodies.

1 – Food is Fun!
Sharing a meal with friends and family is a great way to enjoy food. How many different kids of fruits and vegetables can you spot? How about arranging your food into funny shapes or even smiley faces? Why not try a new sandwich filling everyday and compare it with your friends’ lunches? Its fun to see what everyone likes (or doesn’t like) to eat. Talking about food can also be a lot of fun for kids. Slippery spaghetti and mushy bananas gets every kid giggling. Introduce new textures, and let them create their own combinations.

2 – Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Set your kids up right. Give them the best fuel possible, first thing in the morning to help them perform at their peak for the rest of their day. Carbohydrates (cereals, toast) will help to sustain them through to lunch. Add a delicious seasonal fruit, lean meat or yogurt to ensure they receive all the nutrients they need.

3 – Variety! Variety! Variety!
We all need to consume over 40 different minerals and vitamins everyday to maintain optimal health. Providing a variety of foods for your children daily (yes, including the occasional treat), is the best way to ensure that your children receive all the vitamins and minerals they need for optimal health and development. Remind your fussy tweens…no single food (or food group) provides all the nutrients they need.

4 – Introducing the feature attraction….Carbs!
While many diets that us adults try to follow call for the cutting of carbs, it is essential to understand the importance of this food type in our diets. It is essential that whole grain cereals, rice, pasta, potatoes and bread be a prominent (at least 50%) feature in your children’s diet. Introduce children to the variety of colors, flavors and shapes this food group offers and include them in the shopping, baking and cooking process.

5 – Five Fruits and Vegetables per Day.
Fruits and vegetables not only bring your dinner plate’s color palate to life, they provide essential vitamins and fiber. They are easy to include in any meal. Mix colorful vegetables into a pasta dish, add bananas, apples, peaches and more as a lunchbox side, or let them enjoy a glass of fresh orange juice with breakfast in the morning. Being that most fruit is sweet, this is a great area to begin to encourage children to experiment, try and eventually LOVE new foods.

Include children in their family’s fruit and vegetable purchases, meal preparation and lunch plans. They will look forward to that next fruit and veg filled meal all day long!

Look out for Kids Space Place’s following 5 tips next week as we head into your children’s third week of the 2011-2012 school year. Here’s to wishing you a happy and healthy week!