No parents want to allow their toddlers to consume even slightly contaminated food. They try to eliminate food products that can deliver even a small risk to the children’s overall health. However, eventually parents become less or unrestrictive when it comes to choosing foods for their children. In many fast food restaurants, we find children happily eat fried and high-oil meals. Their daily intake could contain plenty of sugar, salt and fat. As a result, many children despise vegetables and fruits; so they get limited nourishment from their food. In fact, children’s body could use more vitamins to digest a burger; than getting extra amount of nutrients from the burger. There are many similarities of healthy diet for adults and children; although children can obtain slightly more saturated fats and cholesterol; which will be used up in the growth process.
Children should also consume a wide variety of food, so they can obtain enough nutrients. We should be aware that modern children diet could be consisted of limited ingredients. Before giving our children munchies, we should read the labels and it is important to make sure that they don’t contain bad ingredients; such as additives and high amount of sugar. As children are more accustomed to junk food, their diet during adulthood can become much more restricted. Parenting has become a more challenging task, because tasty, low-nutrient foods can be obtained easily at lower prices. Parents should try to put the necessary into assisting children to develop proper eating habit and this will be repaid many times over.
Even if children consume a lot of food, they could actually have malnutrition problems. As an example, scurvy is an old disease that affected sailors who consume poor preserved diet during long voyages. However, it could happen on children, if they don’t eat enough vegetables and fruits to get their daily allowance of vitamin C and other nutrients. Poor nutrition could bring multiple bad results. As an example, osteoporosis or brittle bone can be caused by poor nutritional intake during childhood. In this case, our bones could begin to get more fragile and thinner; causing it to break easily. Children should be give full fat milk at moderate amount. Dairy fat and protein are essential for growth process; but they shouldn’t consume too much of them.
Fortunately, children love to drink fruit juice. However, packaged fruit juices could be loaded with so much sugar and various additives. In this case, fruit juice from fresh sources is a wonderful source of vitamins. If only packaged fruit juice is available, we should dilute it with water, to reduce the sugar content and acidity level. It means that that the packaged fruit juice can be consumed at longer period of time; instead of in just one sitting. Diet control should be implemented starting from breakfast and with good meal at the start of the day, children could concentrate better at school. They will have better and improved overall health.
