Nutrition for Kids

I decided to go to the PTA meeting the other night, since there was a speaker talking about nutrition for kids giving a presentation called “Growing Healthy Kids (in a junk food world).” I am highly interested in nutrition for kids

My Plate 

Here is a picture of My Plate and the website where you can get it is Choose My Plate.gov. This replaces the old food pyramid we grew up on with a logical picture of a plate. This gives a much better picture of how your plate should look if you are eating a balanced meal. As you can see half the plate is fruits and veggies and the other half is grains and protein. If you are homeschooling and talking about nutrition for kids with your children this is a wonderful website resource with tons of information, coloring sheets and learning tools about nutrition.

Portion Control & Nutrition for Kids

Know what a portion is and how that relates to your plate for proper nutrition for kids. We tend to give children larger portions than they can really eat. This leads to overeating and not really knowing when they are full. Thus all this leads to childhood obesity. Here is a link for Estimated Daily Calorie Needs for proper nutrition for children of all ages based on gender and activity levels. I was amazed to see the difference between activity level and gender. There is a major difference between all of these factors and should be considered when providing the proper nutrition for kids.

How to Reduce Sugar for Kids

One of the things she preached, I mean spoke about frequently offering no or low sugar drinks to your kids. It is amazing to see how much sugar really is in these drinks! Yuck. Some parents were trying to find the best way to do this. One suggestion was to take the full juice and add water to water it down. This will make the juice last twice as long and after a while the kids won’t really notice. We do it all the time at my house. You could also make healthy drinks with real fruit to seem like a treat such as real fruit healthy slushies or healthy smoothies for kids to provide additional nutrition for kids in a fun and healthy way. We make these all the time at my house and they are a huge hit. 

Exercise – My Challenge for You

I know most of us just can’t seem to get up and go work out. The excuse is we don’t have time. Ok that is the excuse, what is the solution? I offer you a simple challenge: After you finish eating go for a small walk after dinner with the whole family. At first make it small for 10 mins. Then slowly increase this 5 minutes each day or over time until you are at 30 min. You will be amazed how much you talk to your kids, since no one is plugged into a device or TV. Now this your technology free time of your day and you are active. After a while this will become your routine. So I challenge you to start your family walk this evening and report to me how easy this is to start.