Teaching Kids About Healthy Eating

Teaching kids about healthy eating early on is important, because otherwise, they may associate healthy eating with unpleasant tastes. There are a lot of children that do not want to eat healthily, because they learned that unhealthy food tastes good, and healthy food tastes bad. This makes it difficult for parents to teach their kids to eat healthy, and may snowball into more unhealthy eating practices. Because the parents first and foremost want to make sure that their children eat, they will break down and feed them unhealthy food, further teaching kids to not eat healthily. This can result in permanent unhealthy eating habits as the kids get older.

Teaching Kids to Eat Healthy

In order to teach your kids how to eat healthy, you have to do it as early as possible, right from birth. Also, as they get older, you need to introduce new healthy foods to your child at every opportunity. There is always a way to make healthy food look and taste good to teach your kids the value of healthy food. Getting kids to eat healthy store bought food is nice, but making healthy food at home is even better. An effective way to teach your kids to eat healthy is to make food visually appealing. Ask your child what kind of food they like, and get a lot of input so that they eventually get to the healthy stuff. Then you can incorporate those health foods into your recipes. Make sure that as you create these meals, you make the end result look good, as it will have a psychosomatic effect on the child, making them think it will taste good, and as a result they are going to be more amicable to it.

Hiding healthy food in your children's meals may have a subconscious effect on teaching your children to eat healthy, but it is not as effective as associating good tastes with healthy food in a more conscious way. I will share some different healthy meals and snacks along with drinks that will be fun for you and your family to try.

Healthy Eating Recipes for Kids

This is a great alternative to ice-cream.
Take any of your Childs favorite fruits and cut them up.
Put in Cone
Coconut flakes or pieces of grated coconut and strawberry puree make a great topping.
Done!

Sunny Orange Lemonade
• Ingredients
  • 4 1/4 cups water
  • 3/4 cup lemon juice
  • 3/4 cup orange juice
  • 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
  • 1 teaspoon grated orange peel
  • Lemon slices
  • ice cubes
  • 1 cup sugar
• Directions
  1. In saucepan, boil 1 1/4 cups of water and sugar
  2. Reduce heat after boil
  3. Let sugar water simmer for 10 minutes
  4. Transfer sugar water to a pitcher
  5. Add lemon juice, orange juice, grated lemon and orange peels.
  6. Cover and allow mixture to refrigerate an hour.
  7. Stir in the remaining 3 cups of water.
  8. Serve over ice. Garnish with lemon if desired.

Veggie stuffed quesadillas
• Ingredients
  • 2 small sweet peppers, red or green, cut into thin strips
  • 1 small red onion, cut into thin strips about an inch long
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 2 tablespoons cilantro or parsley
  • 1/3 cup low fat cream cheese
  • 5 tortillas, 6 or 7 inches
  • (optional) Salsa
• Directions
  1. Use large non-stick skillet to cook onion and sweet pepper with 1 teaspoon of the oil.
  2. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Peppers and onions should be tender with crisp edges.
  3. Add chili powder and cumin, stir for at least one minute.
  4. Add parsley. Stir.
  5. Spread cream cheese on tortillas. Cover half of the surface area on one side only.
  6. Top tortillas with cooked peppers and onions. Gently fold tortilla in half over pepper mixture.
  7. Place folded tortillas on large baking sheet.
  8. Brush leftover oil on tortillas.
  9. Bake at 425 degrees for 5 minutes.
  10. Cut quesadillas into wedges.
  11. Done!

The Secret to Teaching Kids to Eat Healthy

Basically, the secret is that if you surround healthy food with notions of pleasure and fun, you can condition your child to actually like healthy food. Making the food preparation process fun, making the final result look visually appealing, and showing your kids that you enjoy the healthy food are all ways to persuade them to believe that this healthy food is pleasurable to eat. Once they are convince, their beliefs become reality!