Good eating habits can affect a child’s health for a lifetime.
In a world that celebrates chicken nuggets, lollies and hot chips, how do you convince a child to choose better foods like broccoli, fresh fish or apple slices?
But parental concerns about the importance of healthy eating can sometimes backfire, causing children to reject foods or develop preferences for less healthy options. While you can’t always control what your child eats, you can learn from the research and avoid what experts say are six common food mistakes.Studies show that food restrictions backfire.
Keeping kids on a regular meal and snack schedule can help. “It’s not laissez faire,” says Isobel Contento, emerita professor of nutrition and education, Teachers College, Columbia University. “It should be on some kind of schedule. You can offer healthy food and sometimes not-so-healthy food. They get to choose what they eat.”Some cookbooks and parenting websites tout making pasta dishes with puréed pumpkin or hiding zucchini and beetroot in a brownie.
“The same foods that are healthy for one child are healthy for another child,” says David Ludwig, professor at Harvard Medical School and co-director of obesity prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital. “And what’s going to treat a weight problem in a child with obesity will also help prevent the problem from developing in a sibling who is thin.”Parents can control the quality of the food in the house, but children should still be part of the decision-making.
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