Best Diet Plan for Kids – A few important tips for parents

“She is eating fine, so let her eat what she feels the best” or “Why can’t you eat properly? Why do you skip breakfast” – such questions are quite common in homes. Kids are naughty and love to play all time, and they share almost all traits in common. But when it comes to food, they broadly divide as two groups. If kids love food, parents tend to feed them whatever they like, and if he hates food, parent may take severe measures to make him eat, and both these procedure are not right. So change is needed in parent’s attitude, not in kids. Common feeding issues of kids and myths of parents are as follows.

My kid won’t eat all these

“He hates vegetables most, and he picks even the vegetables in fried rice. He needs chicken every day” – When you complaint about kids so, please remember, such bad food habits were planted by you only. In most cases when a child shows reluctant to certain nutritious food items repeatedly, to save time and efforts, parents feed them with the same wrong diet. When time passes by, it becomes difficult for a kid to adopt other food habits.

Solution – When a kid has some bad food habits, never express it to others in front of others, saying “My kid won’t eat these food items”. Your kid will take it as a ‘green flag’ to avoid these items later. But instead while giving milk or vegetables which he prefers to avoid, you can tell him about its health benefits – “It helps you to grow better and smart, and helps in intelligence……” Try to encourage them to take health and balanced diet making some false stories too. For instance if your kid hates leafy vegetables, you can show him some cartoon heroes and tell him that such food items will you strength like these super heroes.

He is only a kid. Let him eat what he feels

Some parents give bakery items, fried snacks and fish, sweets, ice creams, cakes etc to their kids on a daily basis. When you give him extra calories, end result is obesity and many health issues related to it. Even while he eats plenty of food items, he often misses necessary nutrition content.

Solution – Try to avoid buying bakery food items and snacks fried in oil at home. They reuse the oil which causes a lot of health issues due to trans-fat content. Instead you can prepare snacks at home. Certain packets though written ‘Zero fat’ are not fat free. Avoid over feeding them. Instead fill their plates with grains, vegetables, fish, eggs, meat, pulses, milk and milk products. You can also add fruits and protein content items in his plate.

No importance given to lunch box

When you fill kids’ lunchbox with noodles, barbeque chicken, fried fish, nuggets, pizza and burger, you are harming his health a lot. For convenience many parents often give money to kids to have lunch at school canteen where above items are provided. They are tasty than homely food, but harmful to them. They can affect the taste buds of your kids. When they put on a habit to eat items with artificial flavours, they start hating natural flavours and tastes. As time passes by, he completely leaves homemade food, and when he grows up he fully depends on restaurant food.

Solution – Kids love food that is easy to eat, and attractive. You can prepare many nutritious food items at home with less efforts and time consumption. You can chop different vegetables overnight and prepare fried rice adding eggs. Use only pure ghee or oil of good quality to prepare the dish. Provide a little salad or raita as side dish. You can also prepare sandwich using egg, a little cheese and a lot of vegetables. While preparing dosa and chapatti or other breakfast dishes, add palak, spinach, moringa leaves etc to make them more nutritious. You can also add paneer, tomatoes, onions and scrapped carrot while preparing dosa. Prepare chicken/paneer roles using chapatis, and add a lot of vegetables too.

Make momos and use chicken, vegetables and eggs as fillings. Use wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour for preparing momos. You can prepare masalas at home and preserve them so that you can make delicious homemade noodles and pasta. While using eggs and meat to prepare dishes for lunchbox, add more quantity of vegetables with ruining the looks of the dish.

Let him eat whenever he likes

Some kids may skip breakfast while going to school and parents may provide them pocket money to eat snacks at morning break. If so he may not eat lunch. Sometimes he eats bakery food soon after returning from school or tuition classes. At night he may not feel hunger.

Solution – Right from the childhood teach him good food habits. Instead of eating in front of television and computer or bed, serve him food at the dining table. Parents should also follow these rules so that kids can learn from you. If so kids will respect the food they eat, and won’t waste it. Serve a little food in the first course, and if needed only serve him for the second time. Also parents can sit with them while he is having food. Otherwise he may waste food or lie about it.

Snacks means ‘biscuits and cakes’

In most cases lunchbox is not the main issue, but the snacks box. Biscuits, cakes, pastry, chips …… such things are most commonly used to fill the snacks box. Artificial colours and flavours used for some products are really unhealthy and harmful if used in excess. Diabetics and hypertension at younger ages could be the end result. Flavoured drinks and colas can make condition severe, because they only provide empty calories.

Solution – We can prepare homely snacks with less usage of salt, sugar and oil. Sprouted beans, chopped tomatoes, boiled and smashed potatoes, sev, chat masala, coriander leaf and onions chopped can be used to prepare Chaat at home. Dry fruits and nuts can also be given as snacks, or mix them to prepare dry fruit mixture. You can bake cakes at home using carrot, dates, pineapple, banana etc. If you participate your kid also while preparing such tasty tastes, he/she would definitely feel interested to prepare such bakery items at home. Bread sandwiches can be prepared using vegetables, eggs, chicken etc. You can also fry paneer and cauliflower to prepare snacks.

We should also become modern

To show before others that we are modern too, some may adopt fast food methods and eat pizza, sandwiches, burgers etc at a restaurant. It’s really a wrong habit. We can prepare traditional breakfast and snack items at home. Yet if they are not satisfied with steam cake or dosa and prefer noodles and pizzas, then actual treatment is needed for parents. Also never give wrong promises to buy burger for him if he eats vegetables. Kid may wrongly assume vegetables to be bad food, while burger or nugget to be the best.

Solution – Idli-Sambar, Steam cake-chickpeas curry, Oottappam, Appam-Egg curry etc are ideal breakfast dishes. Based on climatic conditions and physical factors, our diet may differ. That’s why pizzas and burgers are not best for us. Be aware of the nutrition quotient of the food we eat, and also tell your kids about it. Also remind them about the need to remain fit and healthy through good food habits. If you succeed in this case, you won’t need ‘drama’ to make them eat a healthy diet.  Became a star who prepare nutritious and delicious dishes at home. Your kids will definitely love it.

What needed is diet modification, not dieting

Fatty kids are good to see. But doctors will definitely give you warning if they are overweighed. More than dieting, diet modification can help you to reduce a few pounds.

Overweighed kids may also have calcium and iron deficiencies. Also it’s not wise to reduce the intake of food during their growing phase. You can’t fully change the bad habits within a day or two. Instead spend a little time to regularize their diet. While reducing harmful items from their dish, slowly add fruits and vegetables as substitutes.

It’s advisable to give him food items that can be counted easily, for instance – two dosa, three chapatti etc. It also gives them an illusion that stomach is filled. While taking rice also you can use measuring bowls to know the correct intake of food.

When kids reach home after school, give him heavy food so that he needs only light food at night. A fresh juice or veg soup will be sufficient enough. Avoid fried evening snacks as much as possible. Ask him to go to bed early.

Regular exercises are also needed. Send him to swimming class or dance classes.  

Changes in kids without their knowledge

You can’t correct the bad habits of kids by warning him or with the help of a stick. Instead you can make slight changes in his meals without his knowledge and change his food habits slowly.

If you are trying to reduce the weight of obese kids, he should not be aware of it. Otherwise he may feel hurt with your efforts.

Parents should also follow healthy food habits so that kids can learn from you.

You can make your kid aware about the bad effects of junk food. Also ask him to tell the same to his friends. This is the best method to deal with the problem psychologically.

When you try to add veggies to Omelette or ragi flour to chapatti your kid may identify it easily. So slowly bring changes, and gradually increase the measurements.

Never compel him to eat food. When he feels hunger he will have it. Also when he is in hunger, never feed him with items he dislikes most. Both these procedures are wrong. Kids may hate food and they may go behind fast food, in both these cases.  

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