Over the past few years, healthy eating has become a buzzword for all of the right reasons. We now understand far better how what we eat impacts everything from cognitive function through to our hearing health. It’s hardly surprising, then, that as a parent, you’re keen to inject these benefits into the food you serve to your children.
Unfortunately, with kids requiring very different nutritional intake, it’s all too easy to get healthy eating wrong here. This can be a problem considering that not getting the right nutrients in childhood has been proven to significantly impact later life, affecting cognitive development and increasing the risks of escalating issues like obesity, diabetes, and even heart disease. Furthermore, studies have revealed that children who don’t eat right are 50% more likely to be diagnosed with hearing loss during pediatric hearing tests. Of course, each of these is a worst-case scenario, most likely caused by ongoing poor diets throughout childhood. However, to keep these issues truly at bay, it’s also essential to avoid the following mistakes.
# 1 – The limitation mindset
As adults, changing our diets often means limiting certain foods, keeping portions smaller, and generally making an effort not to indulge. For kids, however, the limitation of any foods can prove detrimental, increasing their desire for the sugary, fatty foods they aren’t allowed, and also generally preventing the sometimes extensive nutrition that they need to grow. Of course, no one’s saying that you should pile their plates high with endless chips, but healthy meals where they can eat as much as they want, finished with an occasional treat to satisfy their curiosity in that area, are far more likely to result in the growth, and balanced eating outlook, on which healthy diets rest.
# 2 – Cutting out the carbs
Adult diets like Atkins and Keto encourage us to cut out carbs, but studies reveal that healthy childhood functioning relies on at least one carbohydrate per meal. What’s more, the fact that children under two can struggle to digest whole grain fibers means that those carbs should be things like the white bread and pasta we’ve been taught to avoid. This is because the higher glucose content in these foods plays a key role in healthy brain development, helping children to stay alert, curious, and receptive to learning all day long.
# 3 – Opting for low-fat dairy
As adults we’re often taught to fear fats in place of low-fat yogurts, semi-skimmed milk, and even reduced-fat cheeses, but these same foods can leave childhood diets severely lacking. That’s because full-fat dairy, particularly blue milk, is vital for childhood development, especially between the ages of one and two, as it ensures the fat stores and full vitamins that children need for the healthy development of bones, and growth in general.
Childhood diets can be confusing to get right when they’re often the opposite of what we consider ‘healthy’ eating for ourselves, but make sure that you research to give your kids the best possible shot at a healthier life moving forward.