Teaching children to eat well should be done from an early age, there is no doubt that this can be difficult, but if we can teach a child to tie his shoes and brush his teeth after meals, we can also teach him to eat healthily.
Traditionally, the feeding of children in our society is imbued with constant conflict, on the one hand, the concern of adults to make children eat what they belong to at all times, such as lunch or snack, on the other hand, children wanting to eat what it is. not because of this hour.
We can see that the real difficulty is not eating, but eating well and healthily.
Babies begin to feel different flavors from the first 6 months of life, that’s when fruit and vegetable purees and baby food are usually introduced. At this stage, there is still no big problem in trying to teach children to eat well.
Eye-catching colors and new sweet flavors help kids accept new food options. The problem begins when you start offering less attractive and varied flavors. This is where parents should do the most.
The best way to act right now is usually the same: present the food in a positive way, insisting but without getting to the point of forcing the child to eat, it is not necessary for the little one to stay for hours with a plate on the table. in front of him until he decides to eat it.
The real key is to gradually taste the different flavors. It’s easier for kids to try small spoonfuls than to eat a full plate of new foods. Gradually, the food becomes more familiar to them.
You can even mix new foods or foods that have not yet been accepted with others that are already accepted, which can help the child learn about new flavors. Here are the first steps to teach him how to eat well.
Children usually put their parents and siblings in an exemplary position as a guide on how to behave, so it’s highly recommended that the child have to watch their parents eat fruits and vegetables, try new foods they don’t know.
It is an excellent method to arouse children’s curiosity, it is also important that they see that their parents decide not to eat foods harmful to their health, such as products high in refined sugar.
To teach a child how to eat well, you have to start by teaching him what it would be like to eat badly or what we shouldn’t eat.
Sweets and the composition of sugary products have powerful effects on children as well as adults.
Although we all know these problems, the sugar consumption of the world’s population is much higher than the recommendations, not only are we talking about a risk to child health, we are also talking about a risk to the adult population.
Nature has endowed the human being with an incredible body, sophisticated mechanisms to use the nutrients we consume and, therefore, we contribute to our organism, but what if the food intake, and therefore caloric, is greater than expenditure?
Something very simple happens: our body stores the surplus, a big drawback because this extra energy is not stored in a bank, in a box outside the body or in an application, it is stored in the form of fat.
When we accumulate a very large amount of fat what we call overweight, if we accumulate even more we reach obesity.
Why does our body do this? Because during the evolution of the human species, it was beneficial to save excess calories for the next day, after all, we might not find food the next day when we were still cavemen.
Today, the availability of food is infinite and this mechanism of our body ends up playing against health.
Overweight is linked to a visible accumulation of fat, and this occurs mainly in areas such as the abdomen, which increase a lot of volume and weight, although there are different types of obesity depending on the relationship between our height and our total weight, none of them are considered beneficial or appropriate for health.
Nowadays it is very common for us to see overweight children, this looks very mundane, as normal as being blond or having brown eyes, far from being normal, however, overweight is a major problem for childhood development, this condition presents the following risks :
Investing resources and strategies to promote healthy eating and sports activities is safe against a sedentary lifestyle and an increased risk of overweight.
However, the best time to promote good nutrition does not begin until we are adults and children can now participate in this learning. Parents and teachers should explain the benefits and benefits of good nutrition.
Teaching children to eat well is quite preferable because of economic and health problems, in this way we avoid being overweight, when it comes to child health prevention is the certainty of betting on the health of the future.