Sneaking Nutritious Foods Into Your Child’s Diet
As parents, we want our children to eat healthy and, hopefully, maintain healthy eating habits throughout their lives. Sometimes, this chore can be down-right impossible when it comes to finicky eaters. Below you will find some helpful tips you can use to get your kids to eat the healthy super foods they need.
One main hint to remember when preparing your child’s food, is that if you don’t eat it, they won’t either. For example, broccoli. If you serve this to your child with cheese sauce they are getting nutrition from broccoli, calcium from cheese and other nutritious elements. Do you eat your broccoli plain? Then why should your kids?
Some quick tips:
- Try to use freshly grated Parmesan cheese on vegetables, in soups, and on salads.
- Add ground flax seeds to you cereals, muffins, breads and oatmeal.
- Use yogurt to encourage fruit consumption. Yogurt is very nutritious and also has that creamy texture kids love.
- Most kids love pasta, and it’s best to serve the whole wheat version. Of course you don’t tell them and truth is, they will never know. I have tried this countless times with my child and he has no idea. It contains much more protein and fiber than plain white pasta.
- Have easy and portable carrot sticks, celery with peanut butter (natural peanut butter) real chunks of cheese, and fruit salad. These items are much more nutritious than cookies chips etc which you should avoid.
Avoid fruit juice, most of it is made with juice concentrates which can raise the sugar and simple carbohydrate levels significantly. If your kids are hooked, try diluting with water, and make sure they do not see you doing it. Another route to go is to make sure that you choose brands that contain 100% juice and do not use sugar as an additive.
