How To Help Your Kid Have A Good Relationship With Food

Today's kids and their families have hectic schedules. These factors make it difficult to eat cooked food every day. Many children's meals consist mostly of convenient takeaway meals. These items, however, can be harmful. They have the potential to harm your child's health. A few of the issues that improper eating may bring might last throughout adulthood, and can potentially turn into life-threatening illnesses.

Here's how you can improve your child's view of healthy food and nutrition:

1. Healthy food can be tasty too

For many kids, anything healthy automatically becomes associated with bland, disgusting food. Helping your kid realize that healthy food doesn't have to taste bad would be a great start. Start with sweet fruits instead of salads, as kids tend to prefer sweet foods over savory meals. Then, slowly, experiment with seasoning and make their salads cheesy and flavorful. This will help them see it as appetizing food that is also healthy at the same time. Adding vegetables to their favorite foods can also be a great hack. Try and make pizzas or pasta with a couple of finely chopped vegetables (so that they do not have to face what they are eating).

2. Cook with your kids, whenever you can

It is important to have a healthy connection with food and its making process, to fully appreciate its value and worth. A kid who has watched you cook or helped you in the process is less likely to refuse to eat it than a kid who has been aloof to the process. Our kids must grow up with a love for cooking and respect for those who prepare their food.

3. Give them choices

Kids, just like adults, love having choices. Even if that said choice is an illusion. Give your child two options for lunch, or dinner. And make sure that both of them are healthy. Asking "Would you like to eat some salad or a yummy vegetable pizza?" would make them think that they are in control. This is again a great way to normalize eating healthy food.

4. Don't reward them for eating healthy

Giving them a muffin for finishing their bowl of salad only further enforces the narrative that salad is a bad thing to eat/ a challenge that deserves a reward for accomplishing. Make sure they enjoy the food itself, and if they do not, they eat it because they know this food will give them some specific benefits.

5. Mention the benefits of their food each time they eat

For instance, when they eat a carrot, mention how "lovely their eyesight will become", is a great way to see food as an enriching thing in life. Portraying food as nutrients is very important. This also builds their idea of food as something they need to have to have a good healthy lifestyle. Similarly, mentioning that eating that fish would give them great skin, would change the way they look at it.

6. Turn foods into a color game

Every pretty picture needs a lot of colors. And so does your child. Playing games like "how many colors of food did you have today" can be a great tool to make sure your child is eating all the vegetables and fruits that you want them to eat. A balanced diet goes a long way in maintaining a person's health. And most naturally occurring nutrient-packed foods come in a variety of colors.

These tactics will prevent frequent visits to the family doctor, the family clinic, or in extreme cases, even an urgent care clinic.

Our Providers and Physicians at Phoenix Family Medical Clinic treat and provide care for kids with ADHD.

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