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Feed Your Kids Takeaway Tips
summery
Some takeaway facts to give your children a healthy start in life:
- Don’t give up on feeding them vegetables. Perhaps ask an older sibling to encourage trying new foods with your child and keep repeating exposure little and often - 10 is the magic number.
- Don’t ban anything, it will only reinforce the association with unhealthy foods.
- Use non-food rewards such as sticker charts.
Feed them foods containing natural sugars such as:
- Glucose - Fruits, vegetables, table sugar, honey, milk products, cereals
- Fructose - Fruits, vegetables, honey
- Galactose - Milk products
- Sucrose - Fruits, vegetables, table sugar, honey
- Lactose - Milk products
- Maltose - Malt products, some cereals
Don’t make the mistake of feeding them the same portion as you would yourself. Here’s a guide to how many calories per day your child needs:
- 1-3 years: (boys) 1,230 - (girls) 1,165
- 4-6 years: (boys) 1,715 - (girls 1,545)
- 7-10 years: (boys) 1,970 - (girls) 1,740
- 11-14 years: (boys) 2,220 - (girls) 1,845
- 14-18 years: (boys) 2,755 - (girls) 2,110
Your child’s lunch should contain 1/3 of their daily calories. In simple terms a 5/6 year old should be getting a plate with following proportions of food: ½ plate of fruit/vegetables, ¼ of protein (for example, either meat or cheese) and ¼ starchy food such as pasta.
- For an extra edge in the morning make sure you eat a breakfast of complex carbohydrates- wholemeal breads and cereals, beans, and eggs.
- Parents play a direct role in children’s eating patterns. Set the example by eating at the table with your children and save the TV until after dinner.
- Avoid supersize, king-size or 25% extra food.
