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 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.
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.
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.
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
I like the “explain why”. I haven’t started doing that yet with my toddler, but will now!
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!
Thanks for the tips,very interesting
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 : )
These are AMAZING tips! I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of family dinners and keeping it real.
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!
Some good tips here, I will pass the post on to a couple of newer mom’s in the family
We have started discussing food and the kids are enjoying it so far
I always tell my son he can have snacks,only after dinner or he eats someting healthy first.
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
I love him! Never too young to learn the importance of ingredient labels!
Ingredient labels are so important to read
Family meals are so important,every Monday night we have dinner with the whole family brothers and sisters kids and our Mom
We all need to educate ourselves about whats going into our food and our bodies!
I wish this would have been done for me growing up.