Fat Loss 4 Idiots Opinion

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Teach Your Child Healthy Eating

By James Zane Johnson

Healthy eating is something that is talked about widely today. However, despite the general recognition of the importance of a healthy diet, many people still do not appreciate what is involved to ensure that they and their families constantly enjoy healthy eating.

Introduction to a healthy lifestyle should be made right from the beginning of a person's life. Many people do not appreciate for example the role of breast feeding in tuning a child's taste buds for life. Studies have shown that babies whose mothers ate a lot of spicy food while breast feeding were more ready to accept spicy foods after weaning than other children. The flavours of the spicy food passed into the mother's milk and the babies had already grown accustomed to the taste.

Likewise, if a mother consumes a diet that is high in salt or refined sugars her breast fed child will lean toward preference for salty or sugary foods also. You can start to gear your child toward healthy eating from this early stage of development by ensuring that you eat sensibly while breast feeding.

After your child has moved from breast milk to solid food they continue to form lifelong eating habits. Children will learn to eat healthily if that is what they see you eating on a regular basis. Your own diet should mainly consist of fruit, salad and leafy green vegetables. It should also be rich in fresh fish and whole grains. Early introduction to these things will help your child continue with a healthy eating lifestyle right through to adulthood.

If a child lives in a family where the diet mainly consists of processed foods high in saturated fats, refined sugars, salts, refined carbohydrates such as white bread and pasta and too much red meats such as steaks and burgers, that child is liable to form lifelong eating habits that are far less than optimum.

The mistake many parents make is to give their children a diet of things they think children enjoy. Advertising is culpable in this regard. Commercials convince parents that children will enjoy packet foods that are highly processed such as frozen pizzas and fries. Many parents cannot think what to give their children for breakfast except commercial breakfast cereals many of which are very lacking nutritionally. Many parents end up eating junk food themselves because this is what they buy to feed the children.

Parents should stand firm and not be swayed by advertising. By continuing to follow a diet that is devoid of commercialized products their children will not develop the wrong eating habits. Parents who eat healthy food themselves find that their children are inclined to want to eat what they are eating.

Healthy eating is not something that can be done once in a while if it is going to have a lasting impact on your life. There is very little point having a salad once a week if the rest of the week is a diet of soda and junk food. People need to be consistent with their healthy eating. Every single meal of every single day should be healthy. This should not be seen as drudgery. On the contrary, healthy eating is very enjoyable and satisfying indeed. - 17269

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