June 1st Fun Day offers parents a little advice on how to get your child a diet that is both healthy and balanced for the sake of their health? If you are interested in adopting a healthy diet, try a few of the simple methods described below. Breastfeeding Breastfed children are prone to good eating habits and are less prone to obesity than those who are formula-fed. Provide your baby with a healthy diet Since a child’s lifelong taste preferences are heavily influenced by the foods he or she is exposed to early on, you should provide your baby with healthy and natural foods from the very beginning. In addition to providing healthy foods, you should also provide healthy beverages – primarily water and milk for young children. Although you can also offer your child juice, make sure that he or she only drinks the right amount of juice. Fruit juice, especially apple and grape juice, does not contain a high vitamin content and therefore does not provide as much nutrients as milk. And because it contains a lot of sugar, it is prone to tooth decay. Finally, children who drink a lot of juice are usually not interested in drinking milk. Avoid offering food as a prize No matter how attractive it is, avoid asking your child to eat one food (e.g., vegetables) before he eats the one he craves (e.g., dessert). Parents need to physically act Children are watching you! They form their own attitudes toward food by observing your behavior. Thus, if your child sees you drinking soda, eating potato chips, or enjoying lots of sweets, he will develop positive attitudes about those foods. It is difficult to prevent your child from tasting what you are eating, and your behavior can lead to premature exposure to such tastes. On the contrary, if a child sees that his parents are eating fruits and vegetables, drinking water and milk, and choosing wheat bread, he is more likely to be attracted to these foods. Therefore, it is your responsibility to not only stock your home with healthy foods and have a full array of them, but in addition, to enjoy these types of foods yourself. Let your child make his or her own food choices Your child exercises his or her independence by choosing the foods he or she wants or does not want to eat, and you need to understand that this is an important developmental stage. Once you have provided a range of food choices, you should allow your child to choose within that range. If your child’s food choices are occasionally a little strange or nutritionally unbalanced, that’s okay because the nutrition is still balanced throughout the day or week. So allow your three-year-old to have a peanut butter and jam sandwich for breakfast, cereal for lunch, and yogurt and cookies for dinner. The classic children’s book “Francis’ Bread and Jam” describes how a child may like a certain food for days at a time, and after a few days they get bored with it. Believe that babies eat when they are hungry Although many parents worry about whether their babies are full, the truth is that children eat when they are hungry. So the thing for parents to do is to offer their babies the right healthy foods to choose from and trust that they will eat when they need to. If you offer peanut butter, eggs, cheese and fruit and your baby is not interested, this is just a sign that they are not hungry and you no longer need to offer your baby small sweet cakes, potato chips and sugary juices. It should be remembered that children have small stomachs and small appetites compared to adults. So, sometimes a child is full after eating only a small sandwich and a few strawberries. And we may think that how this little bit of food can ensure the healthy growth of our children! If your child is short compared to his peers, you may be concerned about whether he is eating enough. Don’t simply go out of your way to provide your child with his favorite foods like sugary cereals, sweet juices and refined foods. A friend of mine has a four year old who is short compared to his peers. Therefore, she lets him eat milkshakes (actually made with ice cream) for breakfast. If you are truly concerned about your child’s size, you should talk to your pediatrician to see if you are overly concerned. If the doctor thinks your child is indeed undersized, it’s time to figure out how best to fix the problem, rather than just going to rely on quick fixes that will only provide your child with more calories than proper nutrition. Avoid pressure from others One of the most difficult aspects of maintaining a healthy diet for your child is the temptation for your child to eat unhealthy foods from other children. Many of us face strong pressure from our children to buy foods that other children at daycare have eaten or that are promoted in TV commercials (another reason to turn off the TV, see below). Also, well-meaning family members may also offer your child food that you would rather he not eat, and this should not be overlooked. For example, your mother may insist that having an ice cream after dinner is a treat you deserve as a child, but this is obviously never a long-term solution and will inevitably lead to negative consequences. How can you avoid such stress? One way to avoid this particular situation altogether is to not take your child to McDonald’s and expect him to buy only one salad there! In other cases, you can simply explain to your child and others involved that your family follows certain dietary rules. When my children were preschoolers, we spent a week vacationing with another family at a beach house. This family had three children, slightly older than my children, who had completely different eating habits and whose recipes included things like soda, chips and ice cream. Apparently my oldest son sensed the difference and asked if I could eat some of what they ate as well. I said no, because our family has different dietary rules. Turn off the TV One of the major causes of childhood obesity is that children are exposed to too many TV commercials promoting unhealthy foods. When children watch television, they are exposed to an average of one commercial about food every five minutes. As you can imagine, almost all such commercials promote such unhealthy foods as fast food, sugary cereals, salty snacks and sodas. This exposure can make children crave these foods and buy them at the grocery store. Not watching TV will prevent your children from being exposed to them and thus prevent them from becoming interested in various unhealthy foods.