by Kelly Hayford, C.N.C. provided by the ICPA
Children’s bodies respond quickly to their diet one
way or the other. Feed them well and
they’ll thrive. Feed them poorly and
they’ll nose dive. The younger children
are when they begin to eat harmful foods and miss out on the nourishing foods
their body needs, the more likely they are to develop chronic disease in the
future and at a younger age, whether they currently have symptoms or not.
Consequently, the best advice for helping children
establish well-balanced eating habits is to start from the beginning by feeding
them primarily, whole, fresh, natural foods (80-100%), minimal amounts of
naturally processed foods (0-20%), and absolutely no junk foods or fake-food
brands. Keeping kids away from extreme
tasting fake food is the only sure way to prevent them for developing a taste
for it. If it’s too late for that, as it
is for most people today, systematically transition them off the undesirable
foods and re-educate their wayward palates.
This is not as difficult as people sometimes
think. I have seen scores of parents
transform their children’s dietary habits with little to no trouble. And yes, all of them thought “not my kids!”
at first, just as many of you may be thinking now. Although some will fight and kick and scream
initially, children learn, make changes, and adapt more easily than
adults. Once made aware of, and taken
off the foods that are overriding their natural sensibilities, kids are often
surprisingly more attuned to their innate desire for initiating and maintaining
a nutritious diet.
Make Eating for Health a Priority!
You must place the same importance on good nutrition
in your household as you do on wearing seat belts in your car. Seventy percent of deaths in America are due
to chronic degenerative disease and the average American loses 15 years of
their life to these largely preventable diseases. So, statistically speaking allowing children
to indulge in poor eating habits is even more dangerous than driving without
their seat belts on. As you do with
seatbelts, make your words and actions convey the danger of poor nutrition and
the value of good nutrition to your children.
Don’t rob your children of the opportunity to establish
good eating habits that will serve them for a lifetime. Developing self-care skills is a critical and
sorely neglected part of their education.
You must rise to the occasion and make your responsibility bigger than
your excuses. Make use of the following
practical tips to help:
Top Ten Tips for Helping Children Eat Better:
1. Have a heart-to-heart talk and let them participate in
decision making before you begin.
2. Make small, incremental changes over time and establish
them as lifestyle habits.
3. Appeal to their interests when talking about the benefits
of healthy eating—i.e. every child wants to be strong, healthy, fast, smart,
nice looking etc.
4. Educate them about wise food choices.
5. Involve them in food preparation as much as possible, at as
early an age as possible.
6. Be an example by Eating for Health as much as possible
yourself!
7. Don’t keep temping junk food in the house. Do keep plenty of healthy foods on hand!
8. Encourage other parents, teachers and family members to
make healthy foods available at school and social functions.
9. Pack a bag with nutritious foods when going out to avoid
resorting to convenient, albeit poor-quality food choices.
10. Implement the Five Bites,
Five Times method described below.
Five Bites, Five
Times!
A tried and true
method of helping to train children’s and adult’s taste buds to like new,
healthier foods, is to serve a food item on five different occasions and have
them take five bites each time they have it.
Why? Because the brain automatically
repels unfamiliar tastes in the mouth as an innate defense mechanism that helps prevent us from eating poison
berries, for example. Having at least
five bites, five times, helps override this mechanism and develop tastes for
healthier foods as they become more
familiar. Explain this to your children
and make a fun game out of seeing who likes what food the fastest.
