Give Your Kids The Gift Of Healthy Eating

Serving a delicious meal is one way to bring about a child’s brilliant smile. Creating a meal that is both good for your kids and tasty can be a task within itself. Healthy eating for kids can seem difficult and perhaps even insurmountable, and the trick is to make easy, small adjustments. Let’s start at the basics of healthy eating for kids - vegetables.A child’s ideal snack food certainly doesn’t consist of anything healthy, let alone a vegetable. Kids have sensitive taste buds that are new and fresh, and can pick up on the smallest of tastes. With the help of other food items and their masking flavors, slipping a portion of vegetables beneath is easier than you think. The natural sugars within spinach, carrot, and beet pulp bond with yeast and flour, and only augment the flavor of a baked good. My own beet-pulp muffins are a hit with young and old alike, and the kids don’t even know they’re eating vegetables until we point it out to them! Pulps aren’t the only way to sneak vegetables into your child’s diet. In many dinner instances, vegetables on the plate go unnoticed, ignored, or pushed to the side. Simmering and chopping vegetables finely and putting them in lasagnas or marinaras is a great way to get a helping of vegetables in - I recommend spinach for both. Dark, leafy green salads that include collards or kale and topped with a sweet dressing to dampen the bitter taste are great for kids. If your family eats meat, consider buying free range beef, pork, and chicken. The expense of free range meat is offset by the assurances that come with it - none of the animals are exposed to controversial, potentially harmful chemicals. A must for every healthy minded or vegetarian family, organic eggs are rich and full in nutrients. With the same benefits as free range meat, organic milk is a must-have addition to the meal plan of any families looking to reinvent their child’s diet. Our current craze with slimming products is ill placed in that two percent milk contains none of the healthy fat cells crucial to a child’s healthy growth. Substituting olive oil for butter whenever possible in cooking is also recommended for a child’s healthy eating. Though sesame and coconut oils are widely popular as substitutes for olive oil, they may require to be used carefully, as coconut oil burns easily and sesame has a peculiar taste that can only be masked in certain foods. From personal experience, high-grade coconut oil is exceptional as a sub for butter in baking. Proportions are a vital and delicate balance in any part of healthy eating for kids. It is recommended that the meat is outweighed by twice as much vegetables and about the same portion of carbs. This ratio, while difficult to follow, ensures the minimum fats and maximum healthy nutrients are ingested by your kids. Maintaining a ‘colorful’ plate while incorporating healthy eating for kids is important - the more color on a plate, the more nutrients there are.