Here are some nutrition tips to help you pave the way to healthy eating with your child:
- Be a good role model for your child. If you are seen eating well and exercising regularly, your child will learn a healthy lifestyle from watching you.
- Keep fewer junk foods in your house. Let them be for special occasions only.
- Discourage sweetened drinks – especially ones with high fructose corn syrup. Try to teach your child to choose water for a drink over anything else. Milk is a good choice as well – particularly 1% milk.
- Try to stay away from fats. Do not serve fried foods often. Broil, bake or grill your food. Switch to low-fat or no-fat salad dressings, and use non-stick cooking sprays.
- Restaurant food has 55 percent more calories and fat than foods prepared from scratch at home. Fast food also contains a large amount of unnecessary salt. Reducing the number of trips to the fast food restaurant will not only help your wallet, but will teach your child that fast food should only be an occasional splurge.
- Toddlers need only a fraction of adult sized portions. Be sure the portions you give your child are appropriate to his or her age. Teach your children that super-size portions lead to a super-size body!
- Don’t make your children completely clear their plates. When they are full, allow them to stop eating. This will help them to recognize when they are truly hungry and when they have had enough.
- Take your child shopping with you and choose new fruits and vegetables together. Let your toddler pick out interesting things and make it a game at home to open it and try it together.
- Move, move and move some more! Try to get outside and exercise together for at least 60 minutes a day. Go for a walk, take a bike ride, play hide and seek, tag, basketball, anything that will get you moving. If it is a cold day, stay inside, turn on a cd and dance with your child – you won’t believe how fun that can be!
- You can begin teaching your child to prepare food at a very early age. Even toddlers can arrange vegetables on a plate, snap the ends off of green beans and shuck corn in the back yard. As your child grows older, begin teaching him or her how to cook. Children gain a great deal of pride serving something to the family that they have made themselves.
