5 Effective Strategies To Implement Healthy Eating Habits For Your Children

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In the era of fast food outlets, malls and calorie-rich, high-energy foods like pizzas, burgers and soft drinks, the chance of children getting addicted to fast food and developing poor eating habits is very high. It is essential for us, as parents, to guide and help our children cultivate healthy eating habits from a very early age.

In this blog, 5 useful strategies are explained that will long-term pay very effectively in helping our kids be healthy eaters and living a healthy and productive life.

 

Be a Role Model

 

Children imitate the adults they see around them, and as parents, whatever they do is imitated by their kids. Thus, before parents try to develop any good, healthy eating habits in their children, it is of utmost importance that they first develop healthy eating habits themselves. Parents need to act as role models in this situation.

An effective way for parents to be good role models for their kids is to adjust their personal diet accordingly. They should incorporate more fruits and vegetables in their daily diet, avoid the consumption of half-cooked food, strictly limit the drinking of alcohol, soft drinks and colas, limit the consumption of red meat, eat together with their children and family, and follow a strict eating schedule. By integrating these measures in their daily eating habits, the children will follow their lead and thus, parents will serve as an effective role model for their kids.

 

Make Healthy Eating Habits a Part of Children’s Identity

 

To teach children the importance of following healthy eating habits, it is important to involve them in meal planning. This allows children to own their food, to feel that food as their reward instead of one that is being fed to them forcefully. By being involved in meal planning, they will be further motivated to mould their personality and habits around eating healthy. Unless this process is not taught to children as one of virtue and one that is for their own benefit and goodwill, they will never agree to willingly and happily follow good eating habits.

The lure of fast food outlets, restaurants, and parties arranged by friends is highly addicting to children, whose minds have still not been developed completely. To avoid letting children slip into these bad eating habits, it is necessary that they honour the good and healthy eating habits their parents are trying to inculcate in them. The children must follow them with a sense of pride and dignity. When these healthy eating habits become a part of the identity of children, one that they cherish and work towards productively maintaining and nourishing, it is unlikely that they will disown the habits, once their nature is fully developed after growing up.

 

Teach Good Morals and Ethics to Children

 

Since the Stone Age, the importance of the concept of family bonds has been an integral part of human nature. There is no better way of strengthening family bonds and developing good eating habits alongside, than to eat together.

From a very young age, children must be taught the importance of sitting to eat together with their family. When eating together, it is likely that children will eat more nutritious meals, follow proper methods of hygiene, nurture emotions better, and inculcate better manners and ethics in their overall conduct. When these moral habits and ethics are developed in children from a very young age, they are automatically going to transmit towards eating habits as well. Children are going to learn to appreciate the importance of eating healthy, just as they have learnt to appreciate the importance of other moral ethics. An overall well-nurtured, holistic, and less stressful nature is fostered that also includes healthy eating habits. All these developments take place by growing stronger family bonds within children’s homes and the best way to do that, as mentioned, is to eat together.

 

Ensure Proper Hygienic Practices for Children

 

When discussing how to develop healthy eating habits in children, it is of fundamental importance to maintain good hygiene for them. At a young age, children are vulnerable to being exposed to numerous diseases, due to a less developed immune system and substantial exposure to outside environments. As a result, it is necessary that good hygienic practices like washing hands, taking baths, using sanitizers, and keeping a clean cloth are also developed in children.

To develop good hygienic practices, it is useful to make children carry a small hand sanitizer with them at all times. Easy to use, and small to carry, the hand sanitizer will allow children to keep their hands clean before eating anything outside, reducing long-term exposure to bacteria and dirt.

Upon coming home from outside, they must be made to wash their hands and face to clean off any dirt or bacteria that could contaminate their food. Parents must also make their children take a shower daily and change their clothes upon getting dirty, sweaty, or after wearing them for a long time. Other small actions like nail cutting, hair combing, body spraying, and keeping a clean towel or cloth are also very efficient in maintaining good hygienic practices. These small habits will automatically make children prioritize eating healthy and clean food as well, ensuring better eating habits as a result.

 

Create a Suitable Eating Schedule

 

The importance of developing a suitable and effective schedule is fundamental in all aspects of life, ranging from work and study, to home chores and developing healthy eating habits for children. All the healthy food eaten by children will be worth nothing if they are not made to follow a suitable schedule, one that is well adjusted to their daily life and body demands.

Before going to school, it is important that children are fed a good breakfast, ideally before 8 AM. During the school day, they must be made to eat a healthy snack mid-way of the day. This can include any small and clean snack like a sandwich or a biscuit that can be digested easily, and is easy to consume in a short span of time. The ideal time for lunch breaks in schools is between 11 AM - 12 PM. Following on from their school, an effective and nutritious lunch must be fed around 2-3 PM to children. This is followed by an evening snack that takes place between 5-6 PM, where a small and easily digestible snack is given to children, giving them energy till dinner and avoiding acidity. Lastly, the ideal time for dinner is considered to be around 8-9 PM for young children, allowing their body and stomach sufficient time for food digestion before they go to sleep.

Although this provided schedule does not necessarily have to be followed rigidly and exactly, this is an ideal schedule recommended by many people, which can be adjusted as per the child's daily schedule. The importance of developing an effective eating schedule remains paramount however, and is thus, an important tool to make children cultivate healthy eating habits that will last in their future.

We have discussed 5 basic strategies that are highly recommended to parents to apply in the case of their children. Assuredly, once these simple strategies are applied in an effective, productive and focused manner, they are going to produce profound results for children. Healthy eating habits are vital to develop for everyone, not just for children but also for parents, the children’s peers and their elders. But once they are developed by parents and their children, it will automatically start impacting the environment around them, helping foster a culture in their home where healthy eating habits are respected, encouraged and honorably applied.