3 Simple Steps to Manage your Weight
Improving your Child's Diet
Simple Steps for a more Active Lifestyle
Add it Up:
Your Sugar Intake
Healthy Living Factsheets
In addition to regular exercise, children need a healthy balanced diet to ensure they get all the nutrients they need to develop.
For Vegetables, try:
Getting them while they're hungry. Place an appetiser bowl of carrots, celery, or cherry tomatoes out before dinner. Added incentive: A low-fat dip made with yoghurt or fat-free sour cream. Young children love to dip!
Preparing them different ways. Steam vegetables, sauté them, bake them. Your child may find that a vegetable that seems unappealing prepared one way is delicious in another. Note: Many children like to eat raw vegetables instead of cooked ones.
Hiding them. Finely chop carrots, celery, broccoli, onion, or zucchini, soften by sautéing in a tablespoon of oil, and add them to pizza, spaghetti sauce, macaroni and cheese, burgers, soups, stews, or casseroles.
Mixing new vegetables with sure things. Add a sprinkling of the new vegetable to a combination your child already likes and eats.
For Fruit, try:
Making it special. Make a fruit salad for dessert, top it with a spoonful of low-fat yoghurt (regular or frozen) or sprinkle SPLENDA® on it. Another option: Wedges of fruit served with a low-fat yoghurt or cream cheese dip.
Making it fun. Cut fruit into shapes and allow children to make faces and pictures with them on their plates. Make boats out of melons and allow children to top them with smaller fruits, like strawberries and grapes.
Repacking it. Slip fruit into pancakes, muffins, smoothies and puddings.
Letting them pick. Children have little freedom when it comes to what they eat. Letting them select the fruit they want to try at any given meal or snack-time gives them an investment in the adventure.
A Healthy Lunchbox
Trimming empty calories from lunches is easy. Try introducing these healthy foods into your child's lunchtime routine:
- Water, a can of vegetable juice, or milk
- Whole wheat bread, bagels, pita bread, or tortilla wraps
- Individual servings of fresh fruit or canned fruit in a light syrup or its own juice
- Low-fat yoghurt, calcium-fortified orange juice, or low-fat cheese
- Baked chips, breadsticks, popcorn, rice crackers, or other low-fat crackers
- Low-fat or fat-free turkey breast, chicken breast, ham or roast beef
- Dried fruit, trail mix, granola bars, fig bars
- Hummus, mustard or bean dip
- A high-fibre breakfast bar
Healthy Snacking
Remember, children have small stomachs and high-energy needs, so some snacking should be expected. Try to encourage your child to reach for healthy snacks, such as fruit, instead of turning to crisps and sweets, when hungry.
Good luck!
