Help Kids Develop Healthy Eating Habits

You can help children develop healthy eating habits by getting them involved in kitchen, looking for ways to make favorite dishes healthier, and reducing calorie-rich temptations.

Involve Your Children in the Process.
First of all, get your kids to help create menus, shop and prepare food. They are more likely to eat when they have made some decisions about the meals. You guide their decisions.  Look for children's cookbooks, which have kid-friendly recipes and basic cooking lessons.

In the summer, try to get your children interested in gardening.  If they can see super sweet cherry tomatoes, strawberries, corn, or baby peas growing, then harvest them, that may get them more interested in fruits and vegetables.

Nutritionists say that most children need to actually see a new food four to five times before they'll even try it, so keep introducing those fruits and veggies.  To begin, try to focus on the sweeter 'healthy' foods, like strawberries, mandarin oranges, cherries, tomatoes, sweet peas, and corn.
Look for ways to make favorite dishes healthier.

The recipes that prepare regularly, and that your family enjoys, with just a few changes can be healthier and just as satisfying. You can also sneak fruits and veggies into the foods you make with the following suggestions:

• You can add some finely chopped fruits to gelatin salads, add some pureed sweet peas to guacamole, and serve tiny vegetables, like baby carrots and baby corn, with appetizer dips.
• Finely chop carrots and mix them into spaghetti sauce.
• Make some breads - banana bread, pumpkin bread, and apple bread are all good.
• You can also finely mince vegetables and add them to hamburger patties or turkey burgers.
Start making casseroles. You can begin with just pasta, cheese, and sauce, but then gradually add more finely chopped vegetables to the sauce.
• Check out the book Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld.  It's full of recipes to get your children eating healthy.

Remove calorie-rich temptations!
Although everything can be enjoyed in moderation, reducing the calorie-rich temptations of high-fat and high-sugar, or salty snacks can also help your children develop healthy eating habits. Instead only allow your children to eat them sometimes, so that they truly will be treats!

Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/ptchildcare or look us up on Facebook at facebook.com/ptchildcare