Many parents are faced with the age old question of how to make their kids to eat healthy. The desire of any parent is to want their children to willingly prefer healthy food over junk. So what options do parents actually have?
Nutrition experts are of the opinion that parents don’t need to stress themselves up about their children’s eating habits, instead, they need to be innovative and simply find creative ways to get their kids eating right.
Here are a couple of creative tips that actually work wonders.
Start serving dinner for breakfast
Nutritionists believe that breakfast is the most important meal and this applies to kids as well. If you notice that you children are picky eaters during the day, just ensure they eat a healthy breakfast. The best way to do it is making them have their dinner during breakfast. It’s very much okay for your kids to have the leftover chicken, veggies and rice as their breakfast, and pancakes for their dinner. Switching things up will get them eating. Just ensure it’s nutritious.
Junk is actually not so bad
The thing about junk food is that the more parents tell their kids not to eat it, the more attractive it becomes. The idea is for parents to mix junk with some healthy meal choices so as to make them more attractive. For instance offering chips and a good salad choice, or pizza, or chocolate milk is perfectly ok. It’s junk but it contains some significant nutritional benefits.
Involve your kids in the food preparation
Every once in a while let your children join you in the kitchen and even let them pick out the menu. The thing is your kids will be more inclined to eating if they actually took part in the cooking process. It gives them some sense of accomplishment eating what they played a hand in cooking. It may be a lot of work but it will get your kids eating healthy. Make it a family tradition to once or twice in a week the kids pick out an interesting meal from a cook book and you work together in preparing it.
Incorporate more sauces
It’s always fun when you dip your food in some type of sauce or even mix this sauce into your food. Even though your kids may not like the taste of the food, adding some sauce that they like may improve the taste of the food and encourage them to eat more. Learn to make sauces form things the kids like such as yogurt, hummus, ketchup, maple syrup, and gravy among other sauces. With time, your kids will get used to food they previously disliked.
Getting your kids to learn to eat healthy is actually not rocket science and you are likely to achieve more by being creative and making some compromises as opposed to forcing them. Try these creative ideas and we can guarantee you an improvement in their eating habits.