July 18th, 2010 
admin Childhood obesity is a big problem of our times. If you want your child to have healthy eating habits, here are a few things you can do.
The first thing you can do is to monitor everything your child eats. You can do that by writing down all the meals and snacks your child eats every day. Keep the journal for a week or two weeks to have a thorough understanding of every intake. This will help you understand the amount of food your child eats, the habits the child has developed and also it will help you change things. This means that when it is time to educate your child on healthy eating, you can take examples from the journal. For instance, tell the child that instead of picking up a bag of potato chips for snack, he could have made a fruit salad or some dried fruit instead. These alternatives are tasty and very healthy. Your child might not like snacks so much, but eat them because he doesn’t know the alternatives.
The one thing you can do right away is to stop buying junk food. Junk food has many disadvantages. First of all it is expensive and unhealthy. Secondly, it teaches your child to seek ready made food every time he wants to eat something. This will become a bad habit that can last all his life and when the child will be old enough to understand that it is not good, he will have difficulties changing it. Another thing you should know is that many juices that are in the super market are also not a healthy choice. These juices don’t contain any fruits and no vitamins or other nutrients. Most of the time, they are concentrated. There are also juices that are not juices at all. They are plain water with flavor additives. The most important thing to understand here is that the added sugar that they have is very harmful for the child as it exceeds the amount of sugar allowed on a daily basis. A good way to prevent this is to buy a juice machine. You can get one at any department store and it is very easy to use. Your child can also use it to prepare juices from the fruits you have in the house and experiment with the flavors.
Another thing you can do is to serve the meals in the dining room or kitchen. You should avoid serving meals in the living room in front of the television as this habit makes children eat more. Serve the meals in the kitchen and make sure you keep a schedule so that your child knows when it is lunch time and can expect it. You should also make sure to serve meals in hours that are proper for a child and not to let them starve before they can have lunch, just because you arrive late from work. If your child asks for a second portion, make sure you serve one. But do a small trick. Allow a second portion of vegetables or salad. For example cook steaks with boiled corn and carrots and not potatoes and if the child is still hungry after eating, serve more corn and carrots.
The last thing to pay attention to it to keep steady time for all meals. Your children should know that this lunch and dinner. This will help them to eat less snacks in between.
Brent McNutt has contact with on-line medical workers. He is an avid writer for UniformHaven.com, and they offer Urbana Scrubs.
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