Fifteen ideas for family fitness
Healthy Eating Tips for your Family
Parents
You are Your Child's Most Important Role Model
To provide your child with the opportunity to model good eating habits, you need to eat with your child on a regular basis. Even though families are very busy today and may not always have opportunities to eat together, it is important to try to eat meals together as often as possible.
Here are some benefits of getting together for family meals:
• You can set the example for good eating habits.
• You control the kinds of foods that are eaten at the dinner table.
• It ensures that your child is eating nutritious foods.
• It gives you an opportunity to introduce your child to new foods.
• You will discover your child's food likes and dislikes.
• It keeps you up-to-date on what is going on in your child's life.
Remember, children learn by example. Eating junk food, while serving your child vegetables is sending the wrong message. A parent’s responsibility is to provide healthy and nutritious food choices at every meal.
Juice Use in Children
Children today are drinking more juice, pop, and other sweetened beverages than necessary. These products taste good, but kids often fill up on them and this decreases their appetite for other healthy foods and drinks. Children then miss out on important vitamins and minerals. Too many liquids can also dull a child's appetite, causing them to eat less at meal time. Increased pop consumption among children is one of the single biggest changes in drinking habits leading to childhood obesity.
• Younger children aged 1 to 6 should only have 4-6 ounces of juice per day.
• Older children should be limited to 8-12 ounces of juice per day.
• Avoid fruit drinks or fruit sodas, since they often have very little fruit in them.
• When you give your child juice make sure it is 100% pasteurized fruit juice, NOT drinks.
• Remember the recommended servings of fruit juice are actually limits. Your child doesn't have to drink any fruit juice especially if he is eating 2-3 servings whole fruit daily. Whole fruit has less sugar, more fiber and trace nutrients not found in fruit juice.
• If your child is a picky eater, has a poorly balanced diet, cavities, diarrhea chronic abdominal pain or is overweight, then you should take steps to limit his intake of juice and other sweetened beverages.
• In general, if your child is eating a well balanced diet, including some fresh fruits and vegetables, is drinking 12-24 ounces of milk everyday, and doesn't have a problem with cavities or being overweight, then he likely isn't drinking too many sweetened beverages.
