Tips to Develop Healthy Eating Habit in Children

Healthy eating is a matter of habit formation. Children adopts eating habits of the family.

Healthy meal time culture and food preferences are imbibed over the growing years. Habit to opt for healthy foods can therefore be cultivated most effectively in children. Developing healthy eating habits involves thought, time, art and advertising. Follow the tips: I can not ensure 100 percent success rate, but most will have good results.

Tips to cultivate healthy eating habits in children

Stock healthy foods at home and keep them at easy reach for children.

Marketing tactics does the trick
Remember the ads on TV to which your child is most attracted?

They demonstrate and narrate how pleasing the "crispies" are to the senses.

Do you think any child would have bought them if it was advertised as healthy meal with the nutrients enumerated?
No na na….never!
"Must eat" philosophy? No!!!
It never works. If a child persistently denies a food, then it is possible that the food does not agree with her. This is often noticed with food allergies and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Read more on types of IBS diets at ibssos.com

Advertise your healthy meal.
How the model in the advertisement entices your little baby?
Express most dramatically the taste and flavor.
Children are taken up by the taste buds tickling gestures.
Implement it at home!
Presentation is the key.
Present it like the restaurants do and not as nutrition education tutorial.
Don't nag.
Nagging about unhealthy eating habits has a negative impact on a child’s attitude.
Introduce variety of foods at home.
Prepare individual plates in the kitchen.
It helps children learn the correct proportions of healthy food choice.
Respect your child’s opinion and suggestions on your cooking.
Give children the liberty to ventilate their preferences.
Promise to make it in a couple of days and then keep the promise.
Be creative.
How you imbue your child’s desired dish with essential nutrition is only a matter of a little creativity.
A major mistake.
Do not make the mistake to first restrict a food and then give the same food as a reward on a particular accomplishment.
It sends a conflicting message to a growing child and increases the desirability of that type of food.
Use of food as a reward or to withhold it as a punishment s highly discouraged.
Over encouraging children to eat some foods renders those foods less desirable. Therefore, phrases such as "finish your vegetables, and you will get ice cream for dessert" can result in establishing unhealthy eating habits once the child has more autonomy in food choices.

Time constrain?
Yes, I know you are professional and that too a very busy one, but is that your child’s fault?
Please do not deprive children of their precious childhood experiences.
Use your profession as an asset for yourself, your children, family and the society at large rather than as a handicap.

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All this?
Of course you can do it; it's easy!
Follow the tips right away; induce healthy eating habits in your children.
The parents are children's greatest heroes; their role model.

Make it work and your child will never get over his mother's cooking.
Healthy eating habits induced during childhood development last for life.
The fast food joints will then be only a convenient option in the times of absolute necessity and that to with an added phrase: “Ah, how I miss my home food!”

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Healthy Food for Optimum Child Health

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