How to Improve a Child's Diet

Teach your child to love healthy food

Does it seem like your child subsists solely on chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese? Do you feel like getting your child to eat something new and healthy is a hopeless cause? Fortunately there are several simple steps you can take to improve your child's diet and eating habits.

Instructions

1. Limit sweets to fruit choices. This will help your child acquire a taste for natural healthy foods. Offer a wide variety of fruits so that your child doesn't become bored. Find fun ways to serve fruit as well. Toddlers will have fun eating small, finger-friendly pieces, while older children might enjoy a fancy fruit salad served in a sundae dish, or a selection of fruit pieces on a long skewer like a shish-kabob.

2. Cut down on fast food. When you serve your child more fresh, wholesome meals at home, your child will begin to acquire a taste to those types of meals over unhealthy, greasy drive thru fare. If time is an issue, use shortcuts such as doubling up recipes on the weekend and keeping extras in the freezer for busy weeknights.

3. Make it a presentation. Foods that are fun to look at will appear more fun to eat. A few drops of red food color and milk becomes "Mars Juice". Cookie cutters can be used to make fun-looking sandwiches. Or make everything in miniature, such as: baby carrots; new potatoes; and mini-meatloaves.

4. Get your child involved. Even a toddler can help out with meal preparation. Assign age-appropriate tasks, from adding pre-measured ingredients, to mixing, to reading you a recipe while you prepare the meal. When kids help out they are more likely to partake.

5. Start small, and don't give up. You don't want to overwhelm your child with a truckload of new food items. Add two or three foods into your current rotation at a time, until they become "normal". Expose your child to a new food several times before you give up as well. Studies show it can take up to ten times of a child trying a new food before their taste buds become accustomed to the food.

Tips & Warnings

• Set an example. When your child sees Mom and Dad consistently making healthy choices, the child will follow suit.

Resources

• Kid-Friendly, Healthy Recipes