Category: For Kids

Patience, perseverance, and a little bit of creativity will go a long way in making your kids eat healthy food for children. It is not surprising that your little ones are perhaps the most notorious picky eaters to date. Children prefer to eat unhealthy food options if you tolerate them. However, that shouldn’t always be the case. Now is the best time to build a solid foundation for proper nutrition by teaching and encouraging them to eat healthy food for children. Always remember that healthy food for children consists of a variety of food combinations from the four major food groups. As long as you are able to strike a balance with all the food groups – dairy, meat protein, fruits, vegetables, and grains – you’re all set. Here are some useful tips to get you started.

Introduce New Food Flavors One Step At A Time

Don’t allow your children to get in a food rut. Avoid serving them the same meal over and over again. Start by browsing or reading through recipe ideas from books, magazines, and even online. Gradually introduce new food flavors, pairings, and recipes each week in combination with their favorite food. You can start with greens. Dice new vegetables and incorporate them with their favorite food like pasta, soup, omelet, or casserole. Just make sure to mix it up every week by introducing new ways to cook veggies with their favorite meals.

Involve Your Kids in Food Preparation

The next time you go to the supermarket, bring your kids along and encourage them to choose their own fruits and veggies. In cooking healthy food for children, invite them to help you with the preparation. Nothing too high profile. You can ask them to wash the produce, stir the soup, or even help make fresh pasta at home. This is an excellent way to make your kids appreciate the fun side of cooking and eating, while also teaching them basic cooking skills. Studies have shown that children are more likely to eat the food that they helped prepare.

Do Not Radically Eliminate Desserts or High-Fat Foods

The key to healthy food for children, just like adults, is moderation. There is no need to completely ban ice cream or fries from your kids diet. If you do, it will only make them want more of these foods. What you need to do is make sure they know what’s good and bad for them. There’s always a room for sugary desserts or oily foods every so often. Teach them the value of small portions for these kinds of foods, or better yet find healthy alternatives that would still allow them to enjoy the same flavor without compromising the nutritional value.

Be Creative in Plating and Serving

We all know how children are enticed by anything visual especially colors. Apply that in food. Have as much color variations as you can when serving them their meals. You can even go as far as creating art pieces with their fruits and veggies. Invite them to join you in making the most visually appealing meals. Fruits and vegetables are already colorful ingredients. All you need is some creativity in plating and serving. Kids love dips. Why not create a delicious, low-fat veggie dip that will entice them to eat their greens and fruits.

Do Not Bribe Your Kids Into Eating Their Veggies

Contrary to popular belief, bribing kids to eat their vegetables can do more harm than good. Do not bargain with your kids with rewards such as having a full-on sugary dessert after eating vegetables etc. This will only heighten negative food associations where vegetables are requirements and desserts are fun, delicious rewards. Children tend to bring these negative associations with them towards adulthood. Just encourage them to eat one bite. Do not give up. They may not like it immediately but that doesn’t mean they are going to hate it forever.

Be A Role Model of Healthy Eating

This is a critical aspect of teaching your kids to eat healthy. Set a good example for them now as they are most likely to remember their parents words, attitudes, and habits about healthy eating. Let them see what they are missing. Eat your fruits and veggies; and let them know how delicious and nutritious it is. You can go overboard and use your acting skills if you want. Children are observant and keen about the elders around them. Be that fun-loving, healthy eater they would want to emulate as they grow older.

How you support your child’s brain development during his early years will have an impact on his health later on. There are indeed a lot of responsibilities attached to being a parent. One of these is to provide nutritious meals to your child and family every day. This is very crucial when your child begins to attend school and learn more about the world.

During the early years, you must give your child proper nutrition to boost brain development. You must prepare meals loaded with EPA, ALA, DHA, fiber, vitamins and mineral to support proper brain functioning. Foods containing these essential nutrients will include oats, berries, beans, fatty fish, whole grains, milk, eggs and green vegetables such as broccoli.

Most of these types of brain food for kids aren’t pleasant to the little ones. You might experience some trouble getting your kid to eat what is nutritious just because they do not like its taste or appearance. Experts have shared some tips on how you can easily provide nutritious meals to your child.

5 Tips To Preparing Healthy Meals For Your Child

Make the food eye-catching – Children are usually eating with their eyes first. Thus, you need to be very creative in preparing their food. Add artistry to the food you are serving to them. They will definitely have a bite if they are pleased about what the food looks like. You can actually try bento making or turning everything into cartoon characters or cute little shapes that your child admires.

Add chopped vegetables and berries to patties and meatballs – This is an excellent way of concealing healthy ingredients into food that your child loves. This trick will guarantee that the necessary nutrients are present in what your child is eating. Moreover, this can enhance the meat’s texture and save you a lot of money since you won’t use as much meat.

Make sure that everything is cut into bite-size pieces – Your kid can easily pick things out and eat them if they are small enough to just easily be popped into the mouth.

Make homemade dips and sauces – You can use pureed beans and vegetables to make dips and sauces. A smart technique against the little one who have texture issues is mashing the ingredients.

Make a sandwich spread out of salmon – To create a nice sandwich filling, you can add salmon to aromatic herbs and veggies with mayo. If your child does not like fish because of its fishy taste and smell, the other ingredients can actually mask this unappealing taste and smell.

Healthy foods for kids is one of the best ways to witness brilliant behavior from your children as well as improving his or her current health conditions. A superb diet rich in vitamins, minerals and other vital nutrients can increase their energy, your own tolerance and general behaviors. And in most cases decreasing the possibility of child tantrums!

Our diet whether young or old ultimately determines our performance during any given day. For example if you are more likely to eat junk food such as deep fried fish and chips or potato chips and chocolate you are more likely to suffer from fatigue and tiredness as opposed to someone who consumes more fruits, vegetables and lean meats. It can also determine the condition of your skin and it may also contribute to the way you learn new and recall old information. Our diets are very important indeed.

The best way to introduce your child to healthier foods is to introduce them slowly. If your child is not accustomed to eating more fruits and vegetables, start slow and gradually add more vegetable whilst reducing the amount of high fat and sugar foods. Bags of crisps can be easily replaced with fresh or dried fruits, wholemeal or wheat sandwiches, raw carrots, apples and celery.

Admittedly your child may not initially be too impressed with the change however as mentioned earlier make the changes slowly. Most fruits if not all of them are healthy for children. You only have to do a simple Google search to become familiar with the benefits of children eating fruit. If your child does not like eating vegetables you have the option of preparing meals such as spaghetti bolognaise, vegetarian pizza or pita breads. For some unknown reason my kids never to seem to notice the veggie content. Whilst this is not an honest approach, it is a start. You can also encourage your child to eat more healthily by starting a small veggie garden. You’ll be amazed how much they enjoy growing, harvesting, preparing and eating their own produce. It is a great learning experience for both parent and child.

Make a point of everyone becoming healthier. Ask the kids if they know what healthier foods are compared to others. The more interest you put into the subject the easier it will be. Children naturally copy their parents, it is mother nature at work. The more you encourage and practice what you preach, the easier it will be. Try and encourage a little exercise too. Fifteen to Twenty minutes 3 days per week will do wonders for you all. If you or your children have any health conditions you must check with your doctor before you make any changes through nutrition and exercise.

Kids who bike need as much power food as possible. This is to keep their bodies strong and growing, even with all of the exercise from cycling. As parents we are fortunate enough to be able to provide our children with delicious, nutritious and healthy foods. Dietitians agree that there are certain power foods that your children should be eating regularly. If you have kids who bike, make sure that they get their full of these fantastic foods.

Blueberries: Blueberries are one of the easiest foods to get your children to eat. They’re extremely fun to eat for children, since you can just pop them into your mouth. The lucky thing about blueberries is that they are one of the healthiest fruit. These berries are action-packed with antioxidants. These antioxidants help protect the heart against any heart disease or diabetes. Blueberries even help improve brain function. You can use blueberries in smoothies or on top of their breakfast cereal.

Tomatoes: Tomatoes are full of lycopene. This substance helps protects your body from many cancers. The fantastic thing about tomatoes is that once they are cooked they are even healthier. You can make tomato soups, pizza with loads of tomato topping and other creative tomato dishes.

Cabbage: There is nothing better than a cold cabbage salad on a warm summer afternoon. Cabbage, kale and broccoli all have phytonutrients which help prevent cancer and improves your digestion. Cabbage is extremely easy to prepare.

Cocoa: Cocoa has high concentrations of flavonoids; which help stabilize blood pressure, boost oral heath and even boost the heart. Flavonoids help protect your skin from sun damage. The only trick is that you need to find cocoa that is at least 70% pure cocoa. You can make biscuits, cakes and a variety of sweet, health treats for your children with cocoa.

Low-fat Greek yogurt: Greek yoghurt contains a lot of healthy bacteria which helps boost your immunity and even helps you with digestion. It is also much more healthier than normal yogurt. Regular yogurt has much more sugar and less protein. Low-fat Greek yoghurt has two to three times more protein then normal yogurt.

Power foods for kids who bike are essential for a healthy child. The fantastic thing about these foods are that they can all be prepared in a kid-friendly fashion. You can find thousands of recipes online that help you transform these foods into completely delicious dishes.

Kids who bike will love these power foods!

Melanie Thomas (CEO Melrose Kids Ltd) is a mother of two boys and lives in London, England. Melrose Kids Ltd is the official distributor of Strider Sports products including the Strider PreBike in the UK and Ireland.

Are you looking to sneak in some healthy foods for kids? While raw carrot slices with ranch dip or peanut butter-covered celery might appeal to adults, children will turn their noses up at such snacks. What can you do to make sure you’re serving healthy foods for your kids?

First, children do not want to ingest anything that “doesn’t look right.” Even if you know they will love it, they will not take a nibble at anything that is the wrong color or consistency. Fruit ranks high as one of the healthiest snacks a kid can eat. But many other foods will fill their tummies without the calories, fat and sugar they do not need.

Try the following:

Baked potato or tortilla chips. Fried chips have half their calories in fat, while baked chips only have about 10 percent of their calories in fat. You can even opt to make your own chips at home for a very healthy snack.

Fruit bars. Fig Newtons and raisin biscuits provide potassium and fiber, while being low in fat. Once again, if you make your own fruit bar, you can control the ingredients or even substitute things like eggs for egg whites, or use apple sauce and honey, instead of sugar.

Frozen fruit bars. These healthy foods for kids have real fruit chunks in them. During a hot summer day, this frozen treat is both fat-free and delicious.

Fruit juice. Good old-fashioned juice, with no sugar added, is refreshing. You should only get juice that is 100 percent fruit. Otherwise, you might end up with a beverage with as many calories in it as a can of soda pop.

Fruit smoothies. A personal favorite, fruit smoothies are a nutritious, delectable snack. I like to throw orange juice, banana and blueberries into my Magic Bullet for my toddler. I also sometimes add yogurt to make for a filling drink.

The bottom line: healthy foods for kids cannot look healthy. Be creative, and grab some kid-oriented cookbooks, so your child can help you prepare his snacks. Being involved with the prep work makes a child feel satisfied with eating his very own concoction.

Training your kids to eat healthy is indeed a challenge for most parents, as they are often influenced by TV commercials about fast foods and other influences that may become more appealing to them.

Putting more vegetables and fruits in their diet will truly make a difference in their growth and in their eating habits. Training them to eat healthy at an early age will also lead them to lesser health problems in their adulthood.

If you want to start with healthy foods for kids, you can select vegetables and add them into their everyday diet. You can also serve them in variety of ways to make them appealing. Fruits and vegetables add a variety of colors and textures to recipes and meals, so you may want to take advantage of that too.

Starting out with the healthy foods for kids, vegetables and fruits, chicken without the skin, wheaties and whole grain, skim milk, frozen yogurt or non-fat ice cream are some healthy foods that you can serve your kids. You can also make your own recipes and make sure you include the healthy ingredients on it.

Breakfast is important not only for adults but for children as well. You can serve them breakfast that is high in fiber, and most likely, you will get this from vegetables as well as in whole grain bread. Cereals and low-fat cheese and skim milk are also good choices for breakfast. You can also give them the fresh fruit rather than canned fruit juices to get the most nutrients out of it and less the artificial coloring.

A healthy sandwich for lunch is also good for the kids. You can use whole grain bread or whole grain crackers. For your tuna salad, you can also cut and mix vegetables like carrot, celery and green peppers. You can also use fat-free mayonnaise together with chunks of chicken and don’t forget to add the carrots, raisins or almonds for your chicken salad. Peanut butter and jelly are also good choices for sandwiches, or you can serve them with your celery sticks. You can always make healthier sandwiches by adding more vegetables in it and serve it with fresh fruit.

At times, you may need a lot of patience to make your kids love vegetables, so make sure also that you are letting them see that you are also eating them. You can also put a bowl of veggies and fruits like grapes or carrot and celery sticks nearby when they are playing so they will be more exposed to these kinds of food.

Organic fruits and vegetables are also healthier choices for your kids. Aside from being free from pesticides, they also have higher nutrient contents and antioxidants. Keep in mind too that if you want healthy foods for kids, refrain from bringing them to fast foods, of course this part may be quite difficult with all the colorful TV ads, but there is always a way to explain. You can also be creative. If they just love those chicken nuggets at the fast food, you can make your own at home less the fat and too much salt. You can grill chicken breast, cut it into smaller bite sizes and make a healthy dipping sauce.

You can actually make your own healthy foods for kids at home like making a healthier pizza and getting those carrot and celery sticks instead of those salty French fries. 

I am often asked when is the right time to start cooking with children and my response is simple. Now. It is like the old saying, “When is the best time to plant a tree?, thirty years ago; when is the second best time?, now!” Similarly, it is ideal to start an interest in food and being in the kitchen when children are really young – but if you have not done that, and indeed many of us have not, now is certainly the second best time.

I am not suggesting you swing into a major campaign to make them totally competent cooks. But I am saying, if there is any glimmer of interest then encourage it. And if there is no interest, then look for ways to create it. It might be something as simple as involving them in deciding to have for dinner or asking them to stir or cut something while you fix their favorite meal. Children need to feel confident to cook in order to reach the ultimate goal of healthy food for kids, cooked by the kids.

From my perspective, as a parent I want to give my kids as many advantages in life as I can. I want my kids to be able to cook because success in any skill builds self esteem and cooking is absolutely no exception. I believe that imparting food skills also fosters personal responsibility so I feel confident that they will be better equipped to look after themselves. They need to be able to cook easy kids recipes.

Cooking is one of those essential life skills – it is like riding a bike, once they have ‘got it’ they are away. Cooking with children may better be described as ‘assembling’ – but that too requires skill. There is little point in expecting children to start from scratch when there are so many fabulous products available. Easy cooking for kids means they still need the basic food skills – how to chop an onion, bake a potato, make an omelette and so on.

An even more compelling reason is that teenagers that can cook are far more likely to make better food choices and hence healthy meals. Of course, an added bonus if your teen is able to cook a meal then you are able to get the odd night off!

My children like it when I give them some space, freedom to choose what to cook and let them go for it! I think this is good part developing independence. Although they usually like it if I am around so I can answer any questions. If you think a meal is too much, involve them to stir frying vegetables or mashing potatoes. Step one has got to be interest, before you can move on to engagement and participation.

I have found with many parents that deal-making works well. Along the lines of “If I do this for you, could you possibly make dinner”. You may be surprised to find how teenagers respond to this, many are masters of negotiation in other things so they will quickly work it out. My son used to cook a meal in return for money to go to a movie, and my daughter would cook us a fabulous meal if she wanted to borrow the car!

I laugh when my children say one of the main reasons they wanted to be able to cook was because it gave them leverage. If that is what motivates them, then that is fine. After all, I am teaching them a skill for a lifetime and they are getting what they want – a win:win for everyone.

Glenda Gourley is a food and nutrition educator who has a passion for getting kids into the kitchen cooking and having fun. She has developed a strategy specifically for teenage children. Her website

is designed to help parents and teachers to teach kids to cook: from this site you can access the site hosted by her teenage daughter Claire, which aims to inspire kids to cook with easy, fun, healthy recipes. Together, Glenda’s experience in practical food skills and nutrition education, combines brilliantly with Claire’s ability to motivate and engage teenagers.

Parents constantly make every effort to give their kids the best start early in life. Their goal is to provide them with the nutrition they need to grow healthy and strong. However, kids just want what tastes good in their palates. Nutrition is not in their vocabulary yet, which is why most parents are in constant “battle” with their kids to make them eat the organic healthy foods parents believe are good for them.

Organic foodsare in general healthier and more nutritious than non-organic foods. Nutritional research reveals that, on average, organic food has higher levels of vitamin C and essential minerals. And according to Welsh research, organic milk has 64% more omega 3 fatty acids (FAs), most behavioral problems in children being alleviated when parents switch to organic milk, and that organic milk (compared to non-organic milk) may help lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

So this leaves us with the question, what are the some organic healthy foods for kids?

First, take the food for health food pyramid as your guide. All the types of healthy foods you want to give your children are there. When you go to the organic food section in the grocery store, you will notice that some of these items are labeled organic and non-organic. In order for you to know you are truly buying organic foods, look for the USDA Organic seal. This seal certifies that the food product is at least 95% organic and that the farm where the organic food is cultivated or raised has been inspected by a USDA staff to ensure that the state organic rules are strictly followed.

The second most important thing to be aware of is the look and feel of the organic foods you are buying! Here are a few tips to help you choose the right organic healthy foods for your children:

A dead give away is the difference in color and texture of fruits and vegetables. It is natural for organic fruits and vegetables to not appear as colorful as inorganic ones. Many chemicals and artificial processes are used to make non-organic fruits and vegetables in the grocery store look extremely vibrant. Another way to ensure you’re giving the right organic healthy foods to your kids, check that all organic fruits and vegetables are firm and free from blemishes and bruises.

Also ensure that organic milk is not as white and creamy as inorganic milk and is packaged in bottles or UTC cartons. Fish should be in its natural form, with fins and scales, and harvested from mercury-free environments.

Give your children fresh fruits for snacks and more vegetables in their meals. If possible, serve as little meat and animal food dishes. Remember, organic healthy food is best. Start encouraging them to eat more raw food, because cooking and most food processing methods destroy more than half of the nutrition in food.