October 5, 2009

Three Ways to Help Children Eat Healthy

Every parent wants their child to be healthy and energetic, but many will choose to avoid confrontation when it comes to eating habits. Below are three ways to help children eat healthy. 1) Don't Tell Them It's Healthy: For children, the term "healthy" quickly develops a negative association. They will automatically assume anything you call healthy is not going to be sweet, and won't taste very good. It creates a situation when you struggle to get your children to try anything healthy for them. You can re-establish a positive association by placing healthy snacks in special containers like cartoon characters. Making the special containers exclusive to their healthy snacks can add to the positive association. 2) Make The Food Interesting: A creative way to improve children's eating habits is to arrange the food in a new and interesting way. Cutting up vegetables and using the pieces to build an animal or vehicle will shift their focus away from the food, and onto the object you've created. Your kids will take great pleasure in destroying your creation one healthy piece at a time. And 3) Let Them Choose A Healthy Snack: Children are told what to do all day long, which feeds into their need to capture some control of daily activities. You can take advantage of this desire by giving them the authority to choose a healthy snack. Give them two or three options, all healthy, and tell them they can choose whichever they want. A good trick is to add a healthy snack you know they hate. Introducing the snack they hate first, will make the subsequent choices more appealing Ashley Greene Trudy says It's always good to find out specific healthy foods for your child through a blood test done with their own blood cells. Then, you will know the best choices and the worst choices for them in particular! You can click on food testing on our website to read more about it!
T.E