Teaching Kids About Balanced Diet Through Candies and Fruits

It’s essential that you teach your kids the benefits of taking a balanced diet as early as possible. Early learning about balanced diets lessens your burden of ensuring that your kids voluntarily eat healthy food. If you fail to train your kids to eat a balanced diet when they are toddlers, meal times may end up turning into unwanted push and pull escapades.

Remember that only two per cent of adolescents and children in America consume a diet that meets the health standards that USDA provides. So, it’s important that you implement measures to avoid having your kids fall into the 98 percent statistic. Take note that this statistic eventually translates to low immunity, diabetes, obesity and other preventable lifestyle diseases.

A Balanced Diet for Your Kids

Basically, a balanced diet for kids constitutes carbohydrates, protein, fruits and vegetables, fats and sugars. Great sources of carbohydrates include rice, fruits, bread, grains, and pasta. Great protein sources for kids include dairy products, seafood, soy products, beans, and lean meat. Opting for a wide variety of vegetables with different colors is the best way forward to help you get an optimal vegetable balance in your kids’ diet. Fats and sugars are also essential for your kids’ healthy growth and development; great sources include nuts, seeds, seafood, and dairy.

Diets in use in most global kitchens are cutting back on sugar consumption not only for kids but also for adults of all ages. A good number of diets focus on consumption of whole foods, whereas the other majority emphasize cutting out processed food and opting for sugar alternatives. Low-sugar diets go a long way in lessening the amount of sugar intake. Well, too much of anything is poisonous, but if you adopt a low-sugar diet in moderation, you may be many steps ahead in the right direction.

Sugar Intake for Kids

Sugar consumption has been a controversial topic for the longest time. Consumption of sugar is necessary for the rapidly growing and highly active kids in town! However, the controversy comes in given the heart-wrenching difference between the sugar kids consume and the amount a child needs.

Your 8-year-old kid needs about 4 teaspoons of added sugar in a day and about 7 teaspoons when older. However, given lifestyles in the present day, most kids are consuming an average of 19 teaspoons of sugar a day, thanks to confectionaries and sweetened drinks.

Besides putting your kid at risk of developing obesity-related conditions and cavities, letting your child consume high amounts of sugar lowers immunity. In turn, this effect compromises the ability of your child’s body to fight against life-threatening conditions such as cancer.

It’s highly recommended that you teach your child and guide them through the process of adopting a healthy lifestyle. Teaching your child about balanced diets doesn’t have to be difficult. Below are some creative ways you can use fruits and candies to educate your kid on healthy eating.

Tips to Help you Teach your Kids about Balanced Diet

Before you create a rainbow teaching plan or the all-too-famous self-built MyPlate, it’s important that you learn the art of teaching your child when it comes to healthy eating.

One essential must-do when teaching your child healthy eating is differentiating between teaching and getting your child to eat healthily. For instance, when teaching your child to read, you teach the child how to read and you don’t focus on getting your child to read. In the same way, avoid getting your child to eat healthily, and teach your child how to choose a balanced, healthy diet.

• Use Candy to Teach Kids

Using candy to teach your kid about healthy eating easily motivates and builds genuine interest. Often times, you may want to instruct your

 kid on what to eat and what not to touch. However, this approach triggers rebellion.

Instead of making candy seem like the forbidden fruit, consider using it to encourage healthy eating habits. For instance, you can teach your child the benefits of a particular vegetable using candy that is in the shape of that vegetable. Even better, you may opt for candy that has the flavor of the particular vegetable.

You can get a variety of vegetable-shaped candy or vegetable-flavored candy from specialist shops. Also, you may want to consider online platforms, such as Sweet Services Candy Buffet that offer different types of candy.

(source: https://www.sweetservices.com/Candy-Buffet/)

Remember that the goal of a balanced diet is to provide all necessary nutrients. So, it’s advisable that you use candy that represents the different food classes that include fats, proteins, carbohydrates and vitamins.

• Use Fruits to teach your kids about balanced diet

It has become common knowledge that the subconscious mind significantly drives action in human beings. In turn, using fruits as examples when teaching kids on how diet to maintain a balanced diet helps feed the subconscious mind with the right information.

You can also go shopping with your child to make the learning process more effective. Train your child how to choose the right foods from the point of purchase all the way to the point of consumption. Remember to teach your child the role each fruit plays in their body. For instance, you can focus on one or two benefits for each fruit. This approach will help you ensure that every fruit has at least one health benefit attached to it.

• Additional Tips

• Introduce new types of fruits, vegetables, and other foods slowly. Introducing many varieties of food all at once may overwhelm your child and make your child lose interest to learn.
• Use sweeteners: sprinkle a small amount of sugar on foods your child avoids or mix candy with fruits to encourage your child to consume fruits.
• Consider making healthy soups that are made from highly nutritious and healthy foods.

Conclusion

Identifying an effective way to teach your child about balanced diet will help you keep health problems at bay. Often times, teaching and encouraging kids to eat a balanced diet can be an uphill task. However, if you adopt the right ideas that are motivating for your kids, you will get your kids eating a balanced diet sooner than later.