Getting Kids to Eat Healthier

The unrelenting challenge of getting your children to eat healthily can drain your system. It can make you throw your hands up in the air and just give up. You can fool yourself into thinking that because children have a young and quick metabolism, that junk food won’t have too much of an effect on their bodies. But, it will. So, you can’t give up. Instead, rather than fighting harder, you need to start fighting smarter. Making healthy food fun is much easier than you think it is.

Natural ice cream
If you’re an avid chef, you will want to know how to make all the essentials we have in our cupboards and fridges. One of them is ice cream. Children absolutely love scoopfuls of ice cream after dinner. Well, how about you learn how to make healthy ice cream at home? This will be fun for you and the kids but the best part is, you have full control over what goes in the ice cream and hence, their stomachs. Buy fresh fruit such as strawberries, bananas and peaches, so you can chop them up and add them to the ice cream. Use low-fat milk and try to limit the amount of sugar you put in. Rely on the natural sweetness that ripe fruits will add to the mixture.

A menu service
Children partly don’t want to eat healthily because food gets put in front of them. They have no choice what they have to eat before they go to bed, until. Why not make a restaurant for them at home? Using a free menu template you can create a bright and child-friendly menu for your children to choose their dishes from. The sections for starters, mains, sides and drinks are clearly spaced apart. You just need to write your own titles to the dishes and brief descriptions to go with them. Of course, almost all the options you should have will be healthy. You get to create your own characters or if your children like certain cartoons on television, you can print off images and stick them to your menu. Go one step further and laminate the menu so it looks professional. Then when your children sit down for dinner, give them a menu and let them choose what they want to eat.

Make a face
If you made faces with healthy food, you could be onto a winner. Let’s say you make your children a bowl of bland bran flakes. It’s high in fiber and good for their digestive system, but it’s boring to a 5-year-old. If you cut a banana in half and use it as a smile, then place kiwi slices as eyes and a juicy slice of apple as the nose, your child is more likely to wolf down the plate. The same goes for pancakes. You can add slices of fruit to create a face of some kind, to entice your child to have something healthy along with something sugary and full of carbs.

It’s tough getting children to eat their fruit and vegetables at the best of times. But let’s start using our wits instead of the tone of our voice, to make children see healthier options as the fun way.