The birth of a child is a joyous thing. It’s amazing especially when you watch the child as she grows. Many parents would like their kids to be healthy and grow well compared to other children. Which parent wouldn’t like her child to grow healthily?
As kids are delicate and need to be taken extra care of, it is important that you ensure your kids get the best of nutrition when growing up.
This article is a guideline that aims to prescribe the best nutritional methods that have a lot of advantages. You would like to follow this food and nutrition guideline for healthy kids.
Nutrition is just more than the food that you eat but how and when you eat.
For kids, it is different as their body is still developing and would need extra care and consideration so that their health will not be damaged by the food that they eat.
The following tips would help your develop a functional nutritional framework for your kids.
Be good examples
Kids learn by seeing. Instead of setting rules and expecting your kids to follow them, why not be the example? It would be futile when you tell your kids to follow a plan and you’re the one that’s breaking it.
Many habits that you exhibit intuitively might be normal to you but if your child copy it would be disastrous. For instance, watching Television while eating would slow your rate of digestion. It might not be harmful to you. But for a child, the story would be different.
Cultivate good nutrition habits that your kids would learn from and help them in the long run.
Make food easy to digest
What is the importance of eating when the food would not be digested?
You should ensure that every meal that your kids eat is digestible. That way everyone will be happy. The enzymes that would digest the food. The kid. You the parent.
Make sure that the food is soft enough for your kid’s consumption. Prepare the meal with the child as the person you’re cooking for. This way, whatever you’d do would be influenced by that basis.
Tell your kids to drink water at least 15 minutes before eating. It would aid your kid’s digestion.
Also ensure that your kid do not overeat. Overeating can lead to constipation and stomach-ache. You should also ensure that your child do not eat late especially during the night.
Avoid refined food
Refined food or processed food can be an issue. Especially for kids.
You should avoid processed food by all means. They are dangerous to health of your child. They contain some chemicals that are detrimental to the health of your child. Additionally, most processed foods are stripped of the stuff that make them food.
Before you buy any food especially for your kids, ensure that you check the label of the food item. If it’s processed, avoid it. It is even easy to know if it’s processed. Watch out for E-numbers. These E-numbers are chemical denoted by the letter “E” followed by three to four digit numbers. The chemical range from colourings to preservatives.
Doing this would prevent your kids from long term side-effects.
You cant be wrong with iron
Iron should be an important portion of your kid’s diet. It is such a wonderful nutrient that not including it in the diet of your kids is asking for trouble. Lack of it can lead to anaemia, which is a dangerous health condition where there is low production of red blood cell.
There are several ways to add iron to your kid’s diet.
Kidney beans, spinach, pumpkin seeds and red meat are food that contain iron. Organ meats like the liver is an abundant source of iron. Turkey meat also contain iron, one reason everyday should be Thanksgiving.
With the right amount of iron, your child would grow well. It would even help the body absorb some vitamins that need them to be absorbed.
Be strong with calcium
If your kid’s diet does not have the necessary amount of calcium, you better start adding the calcium to your child’s diet.
Calcium is the major constituent of our bones, with phosphorus being the other constituent with traces of other elements in it. Since the bone is a living tissue, it needs to right amount of nutrient to grow just right. Thus, a calcium laden meal is important.
Calcium is just more than a nutrient. A strong bone means a strong physique. A strong physique would lead to good health.
Calcium rich food include milks, baked beans and dairy products.
Be whole with fibres
Fibres is one nutrient that got discarded out of the plates of the average family at the beginning of the industrial age. Since foods are getting processed, unwanted stuff gets discarded out of it. So started a time that fibres no longer matter to us.
Although fibres have no real nutritional value, hence the discarding, its major benefit is that it leaves one with a healthy stomach. This is beneficial for kids.
Check out for whole-food, the general name of cereals that have not being stripped of its fibres.
Vegetables and fruits also have fibres in them. Make sure your kids get them fresh. Ensure that the vegetables and fruits do not have a high concentration of chemicals as it is the case of major retailers.
Be smart with brain foods
You should ensure that your kid’s food not just contain the right amount of food but that it is brain friendly. It should help develop the cognitive and mental capacity of your kids.
Eggs, berries and salmon are brain friendly foods that will help develop your child’s brain.
Incorporate them into your kid’s daily meal and you’ll see the difference it will make in your kid’s health.
Dieting is one thing that is seldom taken serious by parents. With the focus mainly on what to eat, it is sad that many parents don’t know how to provide their kids with healthy meal. Follow this nutrition guideline and you’d be among the few parents who are raising healthy kids.