Archive for healthy children
The basics of healthy children: encourage safe fun in the sun
Posted by: | CommentsWhat does fun in the sun have to do with healthy eating? First of all, sunshine converts inactive vitamin D in our bodies to its active and beneficial form. Vitamin D is necessary for strong bones and normal calcium metabolism. Additionally, an Australian study recently reported that increased sun exposure during childhood and early adolescence is associated with a reduced risk of multiple sclerosis. This is supported by the fact that multiple sclerosis is more common at higher latitudes, which generally have lower levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
Second, having fun in the sun is time spent doing something other than lying around in front of the TV, playing video games, or surfing the Web. Outdoor play usually involves a healthful level of activity, which goes hand in hand with healthy eating.
All this said, make outdoor play safe. The sun’s UV rays are present year-round, but because our kids spend more time outdoors and wear less clothing during the warmer months, the risk of exposure is greater. Excessive and unprotected exposure to the sun is associated with premature aging, undesirable, changes in skin texture, and various types of skin cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, people receive up to 80% of their life’s total exposure to UV light by the age of eighteen.
Start early in promoting a healthy attitude about sun protection for your kids. Think about SPF (sun protection factor) even when it’s hazy or cloudy. Encourage your kids to play in the shade or to avoid playing outdoors between 10:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., when the sun’s rays are strongest. When your kids are outdoors, be sure their skin is protected. Choose a sunscreen of SPF 15 or higher. Sunscreen is not recommended for children younger than six months old, so keep infants in the shade and covered up with comfortable clothing.
It’s time for a well-deserved vacation, for time with your family, and the open road calls. Good for you, but while you’re on vacation, don’t take a vacation from your healthy eating habits. Just because you get to sleep somewhere else doesn’t mean that the extra calories you consume won’t accumulate as fat, as they do in your own house. It can be tough to eat healthy when you’re not preparing your own food and you find yourselves eating out more often than not, but with a bit of planning your family can stick to a dietary routine.
First of all, when your family is on the road, you don’t necessarily have to eat out at fast-food restaurants. However, if you find that you’re short on time and a drive-through meal would be convenient, don’t supersize individual meals and be sure to keep the portions small. In fact, you don’t need a separate meal for each person in your family. A sandwich and fries shared between two or three people gives everyone all the calories and nutrients they need. Also, nearly every fast-food restaurant now offers salads, so order one! And one last tip on fast-food restaurants: a sure way to avoid the urge to pull into a fast-food restaurant is to not drive too long and get too hungry before stopping to eat.
Most families pack snacks when they go on road trips. Instead of packing candy bars and potato chips, bring along a variety of nutritious foods, such as vegetable sticks and fruits. For your younger children, you can prepare saltine crackers spread with low-fat peanut butter. Also, instead of packing a cooler full of soda, take plenty of water along. Not only will drinking water spare your children the empty calories of the soda, but being able to avoid the diuretic effects of caffeinated beverages will result in fewer roadside bathroom breaks.
Fatty acids come from the consumption of dietary fat and are vital for your child’s health. Fatty acids are important sources of energy for the heart, building blocks for cell membranes, and essential elements in normal neurologic development.
Additionally, dietary fat is necessary to absorb fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamins A, D, E, and K. Vitamin A supports night vision and keeps skin healthy. Vitamin D helps the body absorb and use calcium, which is essential for healthy bones. Vitamin E keeps red blood cells healthy and may prevent cancer through its antioxidant effects. Vitamin K is necessary for the normal clotting of blood and may play a role in skeletal health.
Your child should be getting these vitamins from his daily diet, since fat-soluble vitamins are stored in the body and it is possible to achieve toxic levels of vitamins A and D if you give your child excessive supplements. Excessive supplementation is not always easy to quantify because each child clears differing amounts of fat-soluble vitamins from his system. In general, you should not give your children supplements that give more than 200% of the recommended daily allowance of individual nutrients. If you offer your child green, leafy vegetables instead of a vitamin supplement, this won’t be an issue.
Try this healthy vegetable dish. Cut up asparagus, yellow, red, and green bell peppers, and shallots and place them all on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle olive oil and a little salt over the vegetables. Bake the vegetables in the oven for ten to twenty minutes, or until done. The combined colors, textures, and flavors of this vegetable medley will be enticing to your children to eat and will simultaneously maximize the absorption of the fat-soluble vitamins contained in them.
The basics of healthy children eating: don’t ever give up
Posted by: | CommentsThe Roman poet Ovid wrote, “Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.” This idea brings us to the fourth of the four Ps: persistence. Sure, there are dietary benefits from incorporating, say, fish into your child’s diet, but how can you be persistent in the face of your child’s obstinate dislike of fish?
It’s simple. Just recognize that you don’t have to transform your child from a picky eater into one with a taste for all foods. As a parent, you just have to continue to offer her a wide variety of foods on a frequent basis. Eventually, your picky eater will add a few new “likes” to her repertoire. From there, she may begin to try new foods with gusto and, with luck, may one day decide it’s more fun to be adventuresome in eating than to be limited.
How many times is too many times to ask a child to try something? There is no right answer. My general feeling is that you shouldn’t give up on introducing a food until you’ve offered it fifteen times. (But don’t re-serve the rejected food fifteen meals in a row!) That sounds like a lot of times to prepare something you’re pretty sure will be rejected, but if the rest of the family is having the food in question anyway, you need only ask your picky eater to try one bite at each sitting. If you’ve also limited snacks between meals to ensure that your child is really hungry when he sits down to the meal at which you’ll ask him to try a new food, you’re more likely to be successful. And don’t forget to reward success with praise while staying positive in the face of failure. Be patient and persevere by revisiting past failures. When you least expect it, your child just might take the bait and decide to eat the fish.
The basics of healthy children: talk to your children about alcohol and drugs
Posted by: | CommentsIn this complex world there are many issues that are difficult for children to understand and for adults to explain. The issue of alcohol and other drugs can be very confusing to children. If drugs are so dangerous, then why is the medicine cabinet full of them? And why are my friends drinking and smoking without any apparent harm?
Although teachers, doctors, and clergy bear some of the responsibility to educate our children, we would be remiss to not accept and embrace our duty to educate our children ourselves. Remember, it’s never too soon to talk to your children about drugs and alcohol. A recent study demonstrated that many children first sample alcohol at age eleven and marijuana at age twelve. The main two reasons cited by children for trying these substances were peer pressure and curiosity. Peer pressure is something you can help them resist by raising them to be strong, independent thinkers; curiosity about drugs and alcohol is something you can control by giving your kids the facts about the health problems associated with their use.
That said, make sure the information you offer fits your child’s age and developmental stage. When your five- or six-year-old is brushing her teeth, try saying something like, “We brush our teeth twice a day to keep them healthy, but some people do things that aren’t healthy for their bodies, like smoking, drinking too much alcohol, or using drugs.”
An older child might be ready to hear about more specific side effects.
More often than not, children will do as you do, not as you say. Knowing this, think twice about pounding a six-pack when your favorite team is playing on TV. Your behavior needs to be consistent with what you expect of your kids.
The basics of healthy children: some children prefer softened vegetables
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve listened to many parents complain that their kids stubbornly refuse to eat vegetables at all. Some of the fault, however, lies with the parents and their previous dietary choices. After all, why would a child accustomed to bottle after bottle of sweet juice want to eat cauliflower when it’s introduced? A two-year-old doesn’t understand the nutritional benefits of a well-balanced diet, he only knows that purple tastes good! Other parents allow their kids to fill up on non-nutritious snacks before meals, leaving no room for foods at mealtime. The good news is that many of these “picky eaters” can be reformed with a little planning and preparation.
We all have certain foods that we like or dislike because of the texture or color rather than the flavor or smell. This is particularly true of toddlers and small children. Making the transition from pureed foods to chewable solids can be a rough period for parents. Previously “good” eaters can become picky. Part of the problem is that the new foods are different in consistency and texture from the foods to which they were accustomed. When making this switch, serve soft fruits such as bananas, peaches, and pears. Steam vegetables until they are soft, even mushy. If this doesn’t work, puree vegetables into a soup. You might lose some of the minerals from oversteaming vegetables such as broccoli, but your child will still get the fiber from them and will begin to eat the previously rejected food. As she gets older she will learn to appreciate crisper produce, but for the time being try to be content that she is eating a healthy, varied diet.
The basics of healthy children: make fun-packed lunches for your small kids
Posted by: | CommentsIt doesn’t matter if you’re running errands around town or sending your kids off to school, pack a healthy lunch for them. Your lunches are competing with fast food and whatever the other kids have in their lunch boxes. When your kids are at school and out of sight, you can be sure that they will be tempted by their friends’ store-bought snack packs. Many of these snacks, despite their enticing packaging, are not as healthful as they should be. It’s simple but true: there is no substitute for a healthy, well-balanced meal that you’ve packed yourself.
That said, there are things you can do to make your child’s home-packed lunch interesting and perhaps even the envy of her peers. When I was small, I was the king of picky eaters and wouldn’t go near a box of cereal whose contents weren’t completely sugar-coated. My mother discovered, however, that I would eat less sugary cereals if they had a prize in the box. Soon she was busy rigging the event, placing stickers and other small prizes in the boxes of healthy cereals.
You can purchase stickers and inexpensive party-favor-style toys and try the same trick in your child’s lunch box. Pop a toy in with her carrot sticks and she will come to look forward to veggies with lunch! Perhaps the most important aspect of this tip is to communicate with your child’s teacher. Find out what your child is eating for lunch. Is she eating her carrots or just playing with the little toy you packed with them? Cooperation with her teacher will allow you to maximize her nutrition and to stay well informed.
The basics of healthy children: teach your kids to chew their food thoroughly
Posted by: | CommentsChewing food is a lot like breathing: many of us do it without ever thinking about it. Here are some ideas, however, to chew on. Chewing their food at least ten times per fork- or spoonful helps prevent your children from choking on food particles too large for their esophagus. Chewing breaks up large particles into smaller bits and lubricates them with saliva. It also slows down the eating process, making it less likely that food will go down the wrong pipe and into the respiratory tree.
Chewing stimulates the secretion of saliva with amylases that begin digestion before food even reaches the stomach. Even the most pureed soups need to be covered in saliva. If you slow down and taste the soup in your mouth before you swallow, the carbohydrates present in the soup can be partially digested by your saliva. Also, by keeping food in the mouth a little longer before swallowing, you allow receptors ‘n your mouth to recognize the nutrients in the meal and send signals to the brain and enteric nervous system, where a plan for digestion is formulated. The correct hormones and enzymes are then released to allow for the nutrients in the meal to be broken down, absorbed, and utilized by the right parts of the body.
Chewing food thoroughly also ensures that meals take longer, allowing your child to feel full before overeating. For your smaller children, you should cut food into smaller pieces and allow them to eat only one or two pieces at a time. This ensures adequate chewing, decreases the risk of choking, and adds time to the meal.
The basics of healthy children: teach your kids about nutrition
Posted by: | CommentsNo doubt, you’ll one day get this question from your preschooler: Where does poop come from, Mom?
Think about your answer. Now is an opportunity to teach your child something about his physiology. Accurate and straightforward information demystifies natural bodily functions and helps both you and your child feel less embarrassed about the things we all do. If you yourself are embarrassed by this kind of question, you’ll inadvertently teach your child that bowel movements are embarrassing! He might react to your embarrassment by withholding his own poop, which in turn could result in embarrassing accidents, painful constipation, rectal fissures, and bleeding.
Since this particular question is a common one, here’s the scoop on poop.
The food we put into our mouths and swallow passes through our digestive system and comes out below. Along the way our bodies extract water, sugars, proteins, and fat, as well as vitamins and minerals. The indigestible fiber from our food gives bulk to our stool and just keeps passing through. In addition to the stuff we can’t absorb from our food, our bodies add digestive juices to help break foods down and slimy mucus to help lubricate the passage of stool. Finally, the body also takes the opportunity to get rid of some of the waste products of metabolism that it can’t dispose of in the urine, such as the molecules from used red blood cells. In fact, the breakdown products of hemoglobin give the stool its brown color!