It is not always easy to get kids to eat healthy.
In my upcoming ebook, The 50/50 Diet Plan I touch upon this subject and give you a few tips.
Here is the excerpt:
Kids
I was so very blessed to learn a lot of this information early on when my daughter was just a baby and even some prior to her birth. I was able to breast feed her long-term which I feel greatly benefited her health. I also learned that kids actually love fruits and veggies and that these are ideal first foods. She had lots of bananas, avocados, green juices, green smoothies early on and continues to eat a primarily vegetarian diet with emphasis on raw fruits and vegetables. We have had great success with this diet and her health is wonderful.
But if you are new to all of this and have kids who have already begun to have preference for foods you wish they didn’t, I will give a few words of advice:
- Take your time, kids will sense your rush and desperation. We all know kids hate to be forced into anything.
- Teach and lead by example. If you are feeling good, looking good and having more patience with them as a result, they will notice. And it is quite possible they will be more interested in what you are doing if you are not trying to shove it down there throats. They will want to know what is making Mommy and/or Daddy so happy!
- Have fresh fruits and veggies around all the time. Offer these as snacks. Have salads with every meal and let them decide what they want to put in them. Your kid ate three apples, two carrots and a half a cucumber for snack and isn’t hungry for dinner? This is okay. The nutrients they have just consumed are so very beneficial to them. When my daughter was three, she ate an entire cantaloupe for dinner one night. She just kept asking for more. Then she wasn’t hungry for anything else. We often think in our society that a meal as to include protein, starch, and vegetable for us to get complete nutrition. Trust me, when your kid is hungry, they will eat. And better that they eat something with lots of nutrients than trying to stuff them with anything just so they will eat. Please know that I am not saying that eating cantaloupe for every meal, every day is what to do. I am not. But if a child eats a few meals a week that are just fruits and veggies ~ this can be very beneficial to them. And yes, The 50/50 Diet Plan is great for kids too. Some time in the future I will come out with a version specifically for kids but for now, the basic plan is good for them as well.
Thanks for this post. That helps to put me into perspective as I have been trying to get my children to eat healthily and everything. I’ll need to eat more “patience” myself and plant more fruits on the table for the kids!