If adults have a hard time staying healthy, so do kids. Coming up with healthy kids meals so that they stay in tiptop shape is a common challenge for parents. Here are some tips which can help you come up with delicious and healthy recipes.
The first on the list is to always have a plan for the week. If your kid is just starting with his diet, make exceptions for certain days of the week. You can give your kid the regular favorites once a week, in moderate portions. For example, start the week with a healthy soup and salad for the first three days and then reward him with pizza at the end of the week. This way, he doesn’t feel deprived and can still eat the foods that he constantly craves for.
Ask your kids to prepare the meal with you. Make cooking an enjoyable activity and so they differentiate the healthy and not-so-healthy foods. By letting them help prepare the meals, they appreciate food better because they cooked the food themselves.
Among the healthy kids meals, the safest is usually pasta. Kids love to eat spaghetti. The alternative you can do is to cook pasta the healthy way. Use olive oil instead of the regular oil, and use whole-grain so it’s more nutritious. Replace meat with chicken or shrimp so that the pasta still tastes good. If your kid can eat pasta with purely veggies and tomato sauce, this is so much better.
For dessert, the easiest recipe you is the fruit bowl. You can never go wrong with this because it’s easier to feed kids fruits rather than veggies. This is because fruits are sweeter so kids like them better. Fruit cocktail can be used minus the syrup, or use fresh fruits. Healthy combination’s of apples, bananas and pineapple for example make a nutritious fruit bowl.
Kids love to eat cookies too. Replace fatty chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal is fiber and this aids in your child’s digestion and metabolism. Instead of munching on chips and junk food that contain no vitamins and minerals, they could use a piece of cookie or two.
Breakfast is considered as the most important meal so it’s always best to make sure that your kid eats a healthy breakfast before sending him off to school. Instead of the usual bacon and eggs, why not replace it with wheat bread and peanut butter and jelly? Kids love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and they compliment wheat bread too. For the cereals, choose non-fat milk instead of full cream milk. Use freshly-squeezed orange juice instead of packed juices in groceries. These juices contain sugar and other preservatives so they are slightly unhealthy.
Preparing healthy kids meals need not be a tedious task for parents. In fact, this can even motivate adults to eat better and set examples for the kids. Studies have even shown that kids who are aware of their health at such a young age can help prevent smoking, drinking and using drugs.