5 Ways To Get Your Kids To Eat Healthy

Some great thoughts especially since we still have tons of Easter candy around the house!  This came from http://www.currclick.com's/ weekly newsletter dated Monday, April 25, 2011.


5 Ways To Get Your Kids To Eat Healthy



Getting your kids to eat healthy shouldn't be a daily chore that you avoid or regret. Instead, with these 5 strategies to get your kids to eat healthy, you'll find that you and your family actually enjoy and appreciate healthy food even more!

#1: Keep Vegetables Visible: Don't get confused about this! It is true that in the last article, you learned that one technique to get kids to eat vegetables is to disguise it in the food through blending and mixing techniques. But your kids do need to know what vegetables are and be comfortable with them. Each week when we're at the grocery store, we take our children down the produce aisle and let them choose one new vegetable that they're not familiar with with. We teach them the vegetable name, then buy it, take it home, and prepare it in a yummy recognizable way! From rutabagas to parsnips, your kids will be far more likely to eat healthy if they're familiar with healthy foods.

#2: Let Them Decide. Never set a food on the table and tell your child that "even if they don't like it, they need to eat it." Instead serve the healthy meal and lead by example: dig into it with gusto yourself. Let your children taste, experiment and decide for themselves whether or not they actually like it. Most of the time, through the power of your example, your kids will dig in too.

#3: Teach Them About Their Bodies. From an early age, we've taught our children about mouths, tongues, the stomach, the intestines (tunnels!), poop, germs, rotten vs. fresh food, smelling foods, growing muscles and more! So when we're sitting at the table, we can explain to them that the spinach will help them grow muscles, and as they grow older, they will be positioned to understand why we make the food choices that we do.

#4: Age-Appropriate Help. Our three year old children can remove sticker s from vegetables or fruits that were purchased at the grocery store, help to plant, pick and pull foods created and harvested in a garden, assist with washing and rinsing, stirring and mixing, and become involved in the entire food preparation process. As they grow older, they will be able to chop, blend, cut and cook. By involving your kids in meal preparation in an age-appropriate manner, healthy meals can become a creative, cooperative creation, and not a dish that his shoved in front of their faces.

#5: Start Young. In most popular, name-brand baby foods, the ingredients are over-cooked and adulterated with preservatives or added sweeteners. As a result, a child develops a palate for sweet or salty foods that have been engineered to send a chemical message to their brains that keeps them craving those tastes. So if your kids are still at baby food stage, try to develop their palate by switching to purees and blends that you make at home from carrot, pea, broccoli, fruit and other whole ingredients.
If you want more healthy tips on meal preparation, nutrition, fitness and lifestyle from Ben and Jessa Greenfield, check out Inner Circle