What our children eat is vital to their long term health wellbeing, behavior and even intelligence.

Despite this being the case our kids are becoming fatter and consuming poor food groups in an increasing amount.

They just like us are being lead towards poor food choices through advertising, media, availability and the addictive nature of fast, processed, snack based foods makes proper food choices even more difficult to follow.

Moreover conflicting advice as to what constitutes a healthy diet vs and unhealthy one makes parent choices even harder when they are deciding what to feed their children.

Make no mistake about it – what you kids consume and how they end up looking and feeling as a result of the foods they are provided with and encouraged to choose – is your responsibility.

If you can’t look after yourself then what chance have your children got to make a good healthy start in life.

Never before has this been so important – with an increasing array of sedentary activities available to children and a fear of playing outside in larger cities, combined with an increase in ‘super bugs’ the quality and composition of the foods we eat and the activities we get our kids to do are critical to building their cells, immunity, and strong bones, muscles ligaments and tendons.

Here is the first part of a series of articles based on simple principles you can adopt to get your children eating healthier.

Overall it pays not to be too anal when preparing your children’s food. The key is the ‘majority’ of what they eat comes from healthy places and sources. Sometimes it’s good to eat stuff off plan and even some of the foods listed on the foods to avoid list. Try to practice the 80/20 rule or 90/10 if your kids are fat. That means some treats – healthy ones are best – but going ‘off plan’ encourages a sensible attitude towards food rather than a forbidden fruit mentality which can lead to secret eating and other disorcers later in life.

As far as you can try to help the kids understand why it’s good to eat certain foods and not so good to eat other foods. Protein foods will help to build strong muscles and high pigment foods help to keep cells happy, small pictures of happy cells consuming nice blueberries and other fruits help them understand – we’ll include some of these ideas later on in the series. Also as children are growing they can eat more fat than the amount we eat, so things like cheese and butter (not margarine please) are good for them, as well as nuts, oily fish, olive oil and so on. The fat will provide essential building blocks as well as sustained energy to balance out any sugar they might manage to get their little hand on!
Top foods to avoid;

Crisps
Donuts
Soda pop
Diet soda pop
Pringles
Milk chocolate
Breakfast cereals
Deep crust or cheese filled crust pizza
Commercially available cakes, biscuits, pastries and pies
French fries
Fast food burgers
Chinese food (MSG)
Hot dogs, processed meats
White flour goods
Excess fruit juice consumption, juices from concentrate

Particularly harmful foods for kids are MSG, artificial sweeteners and then all the things which are harmful for us too; heated fats, excess saturated fat in relation to other fat, processed foods and a low intake of vegetables, quality proteins and fruits.

Healthy Alternatives

Oven roasted potato slices in coconut oil
Lemon infused pistachio cake*
Home made lemonade*
Fizzy water and low sugar cordial
Home made muesli or oat based muesli*
Dark chocolate
Thin based pizza with whole grain wheat flour and plenty of protein and vegetable toppings*
Homemade biscuits, using low sugar flour alternatives and natural fruits for sweetness*
Homemade fries using low fat cooker
Homemade burgers
Chinese food without MSG
Proper high meat yield sausages, some hams and other cured meats

Top Foods to include in your childrens diet;

Goat’s milk, cheese and yoghurt
Oats – jumbo
All organic meats and fish
Home breaded meats – chicken snitzles
Eggs – and omega eggs, omelettes – eggs on toast, hard boiled eggs
Spelt bread and other gluten free breads – it’s good to keep gluten within reasonable levels
Spelt pasta and wheat free pastas

ALL VEGETABLES
Sweet potato
Root vegetables
Spinach and greens
Peas
Tomatoes
Onions
Garlic
Leeks

Humus – home made and you can add different types of vegetable into the mix.

BEANS AND PULSES
Chick peas
Kidney beans
Mixed beans
 
FRUITS
Avocado
Tomato
Apples
Pears
Berry fruits
Bananas
Tropical fruits

NUTS
All nuts, almonds, brazils, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, linseeds, pumpkinseeds, peanuts (in moderation).

OILS
Olive oil
Coconut oil
Sesame oil
Walnut oil
Flaxseed oil

If you’ve got children – you’ll know that one of the hardest things to do is to get them to eat a wide variety of healthy foods and in particular enough vegetables!
 
Matt