All parents want their children to eat healthy and nutritious food with a lot of vitamins and minerals. They know that it will help them grow and develop. However, healthy products are not always tasty for little ones, so the battles over food break out rather often. Moreover, encouraged by commercials and their parents’ example of bad eating habits, children completely reject everything that is called healthy food, and they are rather aggressive about their choices.
The only way to improve the situation is to introduce the healthy products step by step using healthy recipes for kids, and show them by role modeling the importance of eating healthy without urging some options that are completely unacceptable for children.
Using Healthy Recipes for Kids Is the Most Beneficial Option
There are a lot of benefits provided by healthy eating at any age. The most important decisions on this matter, however, should be made by parents who want their children to avoid physical and mental disorders, and use their energy and healthy minds for further development.
First of all, every parent needs to realize that eating unhealthy and junk foods can cause certain problems in their kids. They may be the following:
- depression;
- anxiety;
- obesity;
- diabetes II Type;
- cardio-vascular disorders;
- poor school performance;
- lack of self-confidence;
- schizophrenia;
- frequent traumas, physical disabilities, infections;
- constant tiredness;
- bipolar disorder;
- risk of suicide.
That is why it is vitally important to avoid such substances as added sugar or saturated and trans-fats by using healthy recipes for kids, instead.
It is always better to prevent the problem than to get rid of it. Healthy nutrition helps children fuel their organisms and be able to cope with everyday challenges. Such ingredients and products as proteins, fruits and vegetables, grains and dairy can provide the bulk of components necessary for staying healthy both at present and in the future adult life. They contain healthy fats used by brains, calcium necessary for the bones, minerals, and vitamins needed for growth and supplying energy for development.
It is also a great job if parents can arrange a balanced diet with 3 meals a day and 1-3 snacks. For this, they may use healthy recipes for kids to make their family’s eating routines and habits well-organized and easy to maintain.
How to Encourage Healthy Eating with Healthy Recipes for Kids
It is very useful for parents to know how to encourage healthy eating in their kids at different ages. The first thing is considering that their children were not born with a strong preference for junk food and disgust towards healthy products. It is the family’s beliefs and eating habits, their own example and sometimes unwillingness and lack of time for cooking home-made dishes that build up the unhealthy eating habits in the young ones.
To start the process of diet transformation into a more acceptable and healthy menu, there are some tips to be used together with healthy recipes for kids.
- To avoid conflicts over food, especially with picky eaters, it is useful to emphasize the overall importance of having minimally processed foods instead of insisting on eating certain products that they may not like. Encouraging kids to make their own choices of healthy foods is quite appealing for them.
- It is wise enough to prove the importance of having full breakfast to children. The sufficient help is in using healthy snack recipes for kids to be taken for lunch, or eaten at home in the morning, even if they are in a hurry or in a bad sleepy mood. Breakfast time is the most essential mealtime that gives young people energy for the whole day performance.
- Becoming a role model in eating habits is the first task and objective for parents. Kids are inclined to imitate adults in everything. There is no use insisting on the child’s having carrots or broccoli for a meal if parents are enjoying potato chips.
- Involving kids in the process of buying and preparing foods adds much to the development of responsible attitudes towards foods. It is still better if parents teach their children how to pick out foods, to read labels on packages, or why the procedure of cooking is so important.
- Mealtime is the best time for getting the family together, discussing the daily routines, problems, sharing views and opinions, making plans for the future, etc. Children, even rather moody teenagers, love when they are listened to, and this is the best moment for it. Combined with tasty home-made food, it brings comfort, a good mood, improves eating habits, social interaction, and builds up self-confidence.
- Children usually like it very much when they have a chance to go to a restaurant with their parents. Opting for pizza, hamburger, French fries, or Pork Rinds is a common way when a family is eating out. Giving preference to healthy chicken or vegetable dishes, smaller portions, salads and baked potato, corn, and greens against the fries and soda will improve children’s eating habits, and they are likely to follow them in their future eating out with friends and partners.
There are some other tips on healthy eating for children, and if they are followed, the diets will become more nutritious and enjoyable. They are the following:
- Disguising the taste of healthy vegetables by introducing them into dishes preferred by kids.
- Limiting sugar and refined carbohydrates is possible by replacing the unhealthy ingredients with complex carbs contained in beans, fruit, non-starchy vegetables, nuts, and high-fiber cereals.
- Cutting sugar does not mean banning sweets and sugary drinks completely because children will strongly oppose it. Home-made frozen treats and popsicles will be the best alternative.
- It is important to know that highly processed foods impair the mood and cause anxiety, depression, and aggression in kids. So, avoiding tons of fried food, refined cereals, sugary snacks and drinks containing caffeine is an indisputable requirement.
- Looking for alternatives to junk food is helpful, and it can prevent many health problems in the future.
- Enriching children’s diet with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats with Omega-3 fatty acids will keep a child filled up while improving their mood and concentration.
- Avoiding GMOs and pesticides by using organic foods and products when possible will keep harmful chemicals away from kids’ organisms.
- Focusing on weight problems in kids is important, so healthy nutrition and physical activity are indivisible components of a coordinated plan to reduce risks of bone and joint problems, cardiovascular disorders, poor self-esteem and severe health conditions in the future.
The Best Healthy Recipes for Kids and Foods to Substitute Bad Options
Those parents who are concerned about their children’s eating habits, know how difficult it is to feed a child with nutritious foods making them eat something that they do not like at all. There are many healthy recipes for kids that help solve this problem in an agreeable way for both parts. Here are some foods that are recommended as the best options if parents have to deal with their young picky eaters:
- yogurt;
- apples;
- beans;
- peanut butter;
- eggs;
- tuna fish;
- avocado;
- cereals;
- sweet potato;
- oatmeal;
- milk;
- sunflower seeds;
- chia seeds;
- nuts;
- whole grains;
- greens;
- berries;
- any kind of vegetables.
Served in an attractive way together with the ingredients kids love eating, they will be both beneficial for children’s health and saving time and good mood for their parents.
Some easy healthy recipes for kids will help a lot in this case. Combined with removing pressure and negative language on part of care-takers, these dishes will soon become admired by young opportunists, and help keep good relationships in the family.
In conclusion, it should be highlighted that malnutrition and bad eating habits are apt to correction. The more effort parents put into solving the problem and the more open-minded and role-modeling they are themselves, the more benefits they will be able to provide to their young ones. Using healthy kids’ recipes will help them much on their way.
