Good Food Habits In Children

 

INCULCATING GOOD FOOD HABITS IN CHILDREN

 

“You are what you eat, so don’t be fast, cheap, easy, or fake.”

 

 

Introduction:

 

Due to the tough situation of the pandemic, children have been at home for more than a year now, they tend to adopt wrong food habits and also waste time, slowly these may become their permanent habits. They must eat right and learn to value time. Let's be committed to inculcating good food habits and time management skills in children - two important aspects to focus on for their bright future. Good food habits are extremely important for a healthy body and a sound mind.

70 percent of children's pocket expenditure goes to eating junk food. Not only children, while passing through the market, you too can not take your eyes off the momos, cutlets, pakoras, chowmein, spring rolls, bhelpuri, burger, pizzas, samosas and chaat. You coming home from office, bring some snacks from the market almost every alternate day.

Things that are spicy and fried in oil are very pleasing to our tongue, but they spoil our health. Obesity, high cholesterol, high BP, stroke and heart diseases are the result of bad eating habits. To avoid these diseases and keep your family happy forever, it is important that you inculcate good food habits in children. Here we are talking about some such measures, with the help of which you can develop healthy eating habits in your children and other family members too.

 

Teach the value of healthy diet:

 

To develop good eating habits in children, it is necessary that they know the value of food. According to dietician Neha Gupta, things like cleanliness in food, home food and eating with family together etc. add a healthy relationship with children's food. Teach children how much eating outside can harm them. Why it is important to wash hands before eating food and most importantly what are the benefits of eating with the whole family.

Women in today's time are very aware of eating healthy food. She also works hard on her behalf to feed healthy food to the family. But being able to feed healthy food to children is also a big challenge. Children are very picky when it comes to food and they absolutely do not want to compromise on taste. At the same time, the food that they do not find attractive to see, they also shy away from it.

When children constantly insist on eating junk food and refuse to eat home cooked food, then their health becomes a cause of concern for the parents. In such a situation, the question arises that how to feed healthy food to children.

 

If you are also troubled by this problem, then let us know some such ways, through which children can be inspired to eat healthy food-

ü Grow a kitchen garden/ an organic farming on your terrace

ü Make a timetable for children diet chart (weekends fast food)

ü Don’t waste food

ü Improvement in parents as well as children’s food habits

 

School Report:

 

Springfield School organized a workshop for its students of classes- 1^st to 5^th to inculcate good food habits among children. In this workshop, they put together some activities to make the students have a deeper understanding about the benefits of healthy food consumption. The students realized the importance of making healthy food choices over junk food choices, as junk food consumption make them lazy, lethargic, fat and slow.

 

Healthy food choices lead to a better lifestyle which boost self-confidence and self-esteem in the students, hence help them in transforming into better performers in all the tasks undertaken in life- be it personal or professional.

 

The workshop was organized for age group: 6 to 10 years, i.e. from Class 1 to 5. This workshop provided detailed guidelines to the teacher as well as parents to make a creative diet plan. All the necessary resources such as video/ PPT/ display resource/ handouts/ worksheets/ Parents’ Circular etc required to conduct the activities were given with the diet plan to each student.

 

In the nutshell, the workshop instilled an awareness that patience will increase in children with healthy food habits. Children usually insist on eating their favourite food. Demand for Maggi, Cupcakes, Pizza or Burger is very common during meal times, but if fulfilling these demands on regular basis, children do not understand the benefits of healthy food. In such a situation, be a little smart in giving children the things of their choice. For example, keep healthy food in breakfast, lunch and dinner. Include things of their choice in the evening snacks.

 

“Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments.”