Promoting Healthy Eating Habits in Children

In today’s busy sociality that we live in it can easily become a habit to just buy food at a local fast food restaurant or order take out instead of cooking every day. An increasingly large amount of families today are finding it more difficult to make time to sit at the dinner table as a family and eat a healthy well-balanced meal together. Parents and caregivers play an important role when it comes to choosing healthy meals for children and teaching them how to make smart healthy choices for themselves when it comes to snacks. Developing good nutritional habits at a young age in order to promote optimal health and growth is something that could benefit children throughout their entire life. Therefore, by making time and planning healthy creative meals parents can help improve or maintain children’s nutritional diet just by making a few simple changes.

“Healthy eating means eating a variety of foods that give you the nutrients you need to maintain your health, feel good, and have energy” (What). From birth, the body requires adequate amounts of vitamins and nutrients every day in order to function at its highest capacity. School-aged children are still growing and developing but at a much slower rate than infants and toddlers. “Bad eating habits as a child can contribute to immediate health

From there you will be able to know how many calories they need on a daily basis. “For a child who is 4-8 years old and gets around 30 minutes per day of moderate exercise it is recommended that they get 1-1.5 cups of fruit, 1.5 cups of vegetables, 2.5-5-ounce equivalents of grains, 4-ounce equivalents of protein, and 2.5 cups of dairy daily” (MyPlate). It can be tough for children to meet these daily recommendations every day but by substituting certain foods for something better they can be on the right track in no