Growing Healthy Kids
By Danna Demetre, RN and Patti Milligan, RD, MS

back to articles

Parents and children both have their own unique responsibilities when it comes to mealtime. A child’s responsibility is to chew and swallow. The parent’s responsibility is to provide a variety of healthy foods in a relaxed environment. When these lines are crossed or confused, meal times can become very unpleasant.

It is important for parents to realize that every eating experience is an adventure for your child. There are many skills required for young children to master eating from grasping a fork, to capturing a roll away pea, not to mention simply getting something slippery or a little scary looking into their mouths and ultimately swallowed. And, young children engage most of their senses (smell, touch, sight, and taste…sometimes even sound) when they are discovering and eating foods. They love to feel it squishy or crunchy in their little hands and often will play with it before it enters their mouths. Of course, we should accept that of our 12 to 24 month child. At six years old, food experiments at the dinner table are unacceptable.

Parents need to slow down and approach meal time with the same wonder, amazement (and some times fright) as the child experiences realizing that it takes at least eight exposures to a new food before a child can actually develop a positive “taste” for that food. The taste buds actually grow and mature as they are exposed to a variety of new tastes and textures. Unfortunately, most parents give up after one or two negative experiences, throwing up their hands and exclaiming, “Johnny just hates vegetables.” But, the truth is that Johnny never really got a chance to develop a “taste” for those veggies. Mom or dad caved in to his initial negative response and Johnny is ultimately the loser as his little body is short changed by never receiving all the incredible nutrients God power-packed into many healthy foods.

There are four types of taste buds: (1) Sweet (2) Sour (3) Salty and (4) Bitter. The sweet taste buds are strongest at birth and also surge in puberty, especially in girls. If we do not foster development of the other kinds of taste buds by introducing foods that promote their growth, our children will never learn to enjoy a wide variety of healthy foods. So, how DO we get our kids to even try these foods that challenge their “sweet sensibilities”? Creativity, persistence and patience are essential. The objective is to find something that will motivate your child to at least put the food in their mouths. To follow are several ideas to help you in that quest.

Give them creative motivation
If your child is into dinosaurs, then talk about foods such as asparagus or broccoli being “dinosaur” food. Tell them that one reason dinosaurs were so strong was because they ate lots of green foods. (Hopefully, they won’t ask you if that’s why they are extinct also!) Talk about how some foods build muscles (boys love that), make their hair shiny or give them lots of energy to run faster and jump higher.

Give them yummy condiments
You don’t have to be a complete purest. Realizing that your child’s sweet taste buds are the most developed, you may want to add a slightly sweetened dip for fruits and veggies that are still not on their “favorite list. Some kids simply want a flavor they recognize such as butter or chicken broth to flavor some foods. Most active children can handle those few extra calories that help them enjoy the foods they need most but are resistive to trying.

Dealing with the Veggie Rejecter
You may have a child who clenches their teeth and begins a forceful “standoff” anytime veggies are even mentioned. Take heart. There are five fruits that provide very similar nutritional value to many key veggies. They include kiwis, mangos, cantaloupe, strawberries and apricots. You can also sneak carrot juice and “super green” supplements into fruit smoothies or protein shakes and they won’t even know it! And, don’t ever stop offering and “bribing” your kids to eat veggies. Research shows that children who are introduced to vegetables early in life will return to them in their teens and adulthood.

The “Big Five” Nutritional Roadblocks
#1 Too much juice
Train your children from an early age to quench thirst with water. When juice is given, dilute it with water and limit it to 6 ounces per day. Rather than juice, whole fruits will provide fiber that slows the release of fruit sugar into the bloodstream.

#2 Too many hydrogenated fats
These fats found in most margarine and processed foods are known to limit nerve transmission and ultimately lead to cardiovascular disease. Evaluate how many foods you give your family that are coming from bags and boxes. That is where you will find most of your troublesome foods. Try to increase both snack and mealtime foods that are found in the perimeter of your grocery store in the produce, dairy and meat/poultry/fish sections of the store. You know, foods that are closest to the way God made them originally!

#3 Too much sugar and soda
Children love sweet tastes. But, we need to be very selective and wise as to just how much they are really ingesting. As noted above, using sweet tastes creatively and in combination with healthy foods is ideal. Besides the hidden sugar found in juice, too many parents think it is “normal” to provide some candy, cookies or treats to their children every day. If that is your habit, it will be theirs as well. We all enjoy a little sweet…but keep it to a minimum. In addition to being very high in sugar, soda pop also is high in phosphoric acid (bad for the bones) as well as tin and aluminum. However, offering your child diet sodas as an alternative is an ever more scary alternative since sweeteners such as Nutrasweet have been shown to cross the delicate “blood-brain barrier” and impact cognitive function. Consider one soda a week as a healthy compromise for older children who are likely to get tempted and exposed to sugary drinks sometimes on a daily basis. Most people don’t realize that a moderate sugary treat can actually diminish immunity (by impacting white blood cell production) for several hours after ingestion.

#4 Too little fiber
Read the labels on your bread, cereal and cracker packages. Look for good sources of fiber with listings of whole grains and minimal preservatives. For bread, try to find 2 to 4 grams of fiber per slice. For cereals look for 4 to 6 grams per serving. And, on the subject of cereal…don’t cave in! Most children’s cereal are so low in fiber and high in sugar it is like starting your child’s day with a bag of M&M’s. No good mom would do that, would she? Buy one favorite sugary, sweet cereal and let your child have a small bowl once a week as DESERT!

#5 Too little protein early in the day
Good sources of protein at breakfast and lunch are essential for high energy and diminished sweet cravings (this goes for you also, Mom). Eggs, protein shakes, quality peanut butter on whole wheat toast are all great sources of protein that will get the whole family off to a healthy start. The protein you plan for dinner is less important than what you serve for breakfast and lunch. Get creative and find fun and healthy ways to increase protein early in the day. Nuts, string cheese and chicken strips are great choices.

Taking responsibility with grace
It is essential that as parents we realize that we are laying a nutritional foundation for our children that will impact them for a lifetime. If we get lazy and follow the course of least resistance by caving in every time they respond negatively or live such a busy lifestyle that we visit fast food restaurants more than grocery stores, our children will inherit poor attitudes and habits that will impact their health and wellness for decades. On the other hand, we don’t have to be “food Nazi’s” either. Find the balance between excellent nutrition and practical enjoyment of food. Start wherever you are in the “nutritional spectrum” and slowly notch up the quality and consistency of healthy foods a little each week. You will be amazed over the course of a year how much your family’s nutrition can change and they may not even miss all the “junk” foods that have slowly disappeared from your fridge and pantry.

back to articles