6 Tips to Make Your Child Eat Healthy Diet

I have never been able to understand how children from picky eating habits. I have tried to feed my boy vegetables, fruits and especially milk since he was two. Most mothers face an everyday task of getting their child to eat a healthy balanced diet. The last decade has witnessed increasing health concerns in Indian children.

Ensuring that the child eats healthy and nutritious food is every mother’s wish. But there are some children who are picky eaters and then there are children who don’t want to try anything new in terms of food. As a mother, you are highly concerned with your child’s health; you want to ensure that what goes down your child’s system is a complete and nutritious meal. [More on Healthy Eating - Ways to Encourage Child Eat Healthy]

Ways to Ensure Child Eat a Healthy & Balanced Diet

The question is how to do that without becoming a food cop? Here are a few tips to ensure that your child eats a healthy and balanced diet every day. Our pro-parent and blogger Ridhi Doomra shares 6 tips to ensure that your child is eating a healthy and balanced diet every day

1. Easy Availability of Junk food: There are different reasons why children grow up to be picky eaters. The easy availability of junk food is a major reason. paediatricians say that junk food including fast food, ready to eat packed meals, processed foods, soft drinks and so on, are high in carbohydrates and fats. It is important that a child is kept away from these as long as possible and is only introduced to fresh, healthy food.  Many a time, parents use a child’s demand for ‘burgers and pizzas’ as rewards for acceptable behaviour and conduct. This has a long-lasting impact on a child’s eating habits as they start weighing everything in terms of junk food.

2. Fear of Trying Anything New: Most children face ‘neophobia’ which is fear of trying out something new. Force-feeding is not recommended a way to counter this fear. Children can get anxious when fed forcibly. Your child’s relationship with food can get sour if you are constantly controlling it. It is important that you control your child’s eating habits when they are very young. Around the age of four allow them to make their own choices. If they make the wrong choices, structure their choices by explaining the impact of junk.

3. Understand & Appreciate Your Child’s Appetite: It is high time when we parents need to understand that appetites of children suit their needs and not expectations. Children don’t need a whole lot of food they need quality food even if it is consumed in small quantities.

4. Mealtime Are Bonding Times: One of the most effective ways to ensure your child eats a proper meal is to make the child eat with the rest of the family. Mealtime should be a family bonding time. Hence, it is important that T.V. time and mealtime should be separate. As it is during meal times, parents can be role models for their children and inculcate sound eating habits in them.

5. Nutrition vs Taste: Children understand ‘taste better than nutrition’. Most children prefer sweeter tastes to spicier ones. The challenge for a mother is to turn the nutritional food to the taste your child would prefer the best. You make the pasta nutritious by adding vegetables to it or you may make a home-made burger with fresh-cut cucumber, tomatoes, and a mix-vegetable cutlet.

6. Colour Therapy: Colour therapy on your child’s plate can hold their interest. Children like to see a colourful variety on their plates from which they can choose. Give them orange and red carrots, green cucumbers, red tomatoes, white cottage cheese, along with tri-coloured sandwiches.

Nurturing healthy eating habits and choices of children at a younger age influences their choices as and when they grow up. It becomes crucial to constantly supervise what your child is eating and to make healthy food tasty. After all, there is no job that demands commitment as high as parenting.