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6 Tips to Teach Kids About Nutrition

A child’s relationship with food starts young and while it may be the parents and caregivers who make the choice of what will be served for meals, it is usually the child who decides what will be eaten! If we teach kids about nutrition and why we make some of the food choices we do, they may be more willing to try new things, to eat healthy food before the ice cream, and develop a life long relationship with real food.

How many times have you been on the kitchen floor picking up the latest casualty in what you thought would be dinner only to have it go flying in toddler protest? We have all been there and in many ways, feeding kids can be a game of hide and seek or hit and miss.

6 Tips to Teach Kids About NutritionPin
Fruits, veggies ,and nuts.

6 Tips to Teach Kids About Nutrition

Start Young

As soon as your baby starts on solids talk to them about what they are eating, naming the carrots, the avocado, and the beans so they learn to identify taste and texture with the food they are eating. Provide a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains and meats and talk about all the different types of food while doing your grocery shopping with the kids in tow.

6 Tips to Teach Kids About NutritionPin
6 Tips to Teach Kids About Nutrition

Keep it Real

As often as possible serve real food, especially as they get older, even if you are in a hurry. Find meals you make in a flash that are still healthy and avoid fast foods. Serve sliced fruit instead of fruit cups in syrup, cheese cubes instead of wrapped cheese slices, plain yogurt with berries instead of tubes of artificial flavours.

Explain Why

If they grow up knowing the difference between a processed cheese slice and a cube of cheddar. The ingredients and manufacturing process that went into making each. They will be more prepared to make educated decisions and will hopefully choose the less processed food.

6 Tips to Teach Kids About NutritionPin
Pancakes

Treats Are O.K.

When my kids ask for cookies, chocolates or ice cream I don’t react like it is the forbidden food. I try to never say No, but will instead say “Sure, after you eat your dinner” or “of course, after we have lunch.” As the kids get older, I explain in more detail why filling up on cake and chips before dinner is not a good idea, and what healthy snack choices are ok before dinner such as almonds, grapes, cheese cube, sliced fruit or veggies and a dip.

Teach Food Groups

You don’t have to go into the entire Health Canada Food Guide Pyramid and serving sizes. A simple fun exercise of cutting out different foods from a grocery store flyer can go a long way to helping kids understand that eating a variety of foods is key.  At meal time discuss what is a protein, a grain, dairy, fruit or vegetable and have the kids determined if it’s a balanced meal.

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6 Tips to Teach Kids About Nutrition

Family Dinners

It may not always be convenient to eat together as a family but it is usually possible.  On nights when one of my kids is super busy we all sit down and have dinner at 4pm: if after school is crunch time, I take healthy snacks in the car and we sit down together later at night for a meal. Sometimes we even eat tuna melts and carrot sticks in the dance studio parking lot and call it dinner in the van.  . . but we are still eating as a family!

By @Deb_Lowther

Raising Healthy Kids
Raising Healthy Kids
Deb Lowther is a writer, runner, mom of 3 and wife of a very driven entrepreneurial husband in the health and nutrition field. When not running after the kids, Deb is running in the trails, climbing mountains, training for a triathlon, doing hot yoga and enjoying her evening glass of wine. She ensures her own family has fun while eating healthy & staying active together. After selling their first company in 2015, the Lowthers' launched Element Nutrition with Stuart focusing on creating nutritional products for the baby boomer generation with Boomer Nutrition and kids with IronKids Nutrition. Deb inspires healthy families through numerous articles in print and online, encouraging others to enjoy a healthy diet, staying active and not being afraid to flex a little muscle.

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Comments

    • My kids are 8, 10, 12 now and I am still explaining and now we read labels at the grocery store and they are learning the value of sugar/sodium content vs fibre and protein. I’m no nutritionist, but I can help them with understanding the basics!

    • With 3 daughters I wanted to make sure they grew up very informed about food choices and had a healthy relationship with food. So far so good! We do enjoy our ice cream, but after the healthy dinner of course : )

    • Thanks Victoria – todays dinner is cottage cheese mini quiches with broccoli served in the mini van on the way to music and gymnastics . . but we are together. Reality of active kids is that it does get harder, but we do our best to eat healthy and mostly together even if we are going in 3 different directions!

  1. My grandson is becoming a know–it-all on the food labeling he read everything and tell us now whats good and whats not good

  2. Family meals are so important,every Monday night we have dinner with the whole family brothers and sisters kids and our Mom

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