Throughout their development, children go through different eating habits, which adapt to different evolutionary needs at each stage. From 3 years of age your diet should already include all food groups, however sometimes it is difficult to get the little ones in the house to become familiar with all the flavors. We explain the importance of a balanced diet and How to teach them to eat everything.
The importance of a balanced diet
The goal of feeding the preschooler is to ensure a adequate growth and development, taking into account their higher level of physical and cognitive activity, to Prevent nutritional diseases.
This stage also lays the foundations of the eating habits that the child will have during his adult life. For this reason it is very important to get used to maintaining a balanced diet, avoiding foods with low nutritional quality such as sweets or industrial pastries.
Poor nutrition, either due to low nutrient intake or increased needs, has a direct impact on the health of the children, which can lead to poor growth, low defenses or diseases.
A unbalanced feeding It carries a deficit of essential nutrients. For example: Omega 3 DHA is essential for brain development, however 50% of Spanish children eat less than the minimum amount recommended by specialists in infant nutrition. The lack of other vitamins and nutrients such as iron, calcium or vitamin D, can cause anemia, rickets and bone weakness.
Dairy products, a staple food for children
A healthy diet must be varied and include all food groups in small portions, limiting occasional consumption of foods with low nutritional quality and high energy intake such as sweets, industrial sweets or soft drinks.
In the case of schoolchildren dairy deserve special mention, since milk is still very important in the diet of a small child. It provides them with calcium and vitamin D to help them build strong bones and prevent disease. According to pediatricians, 3-year-olds require 700 milligrams of calcium and 600 international units (IU) of vitamin D (which helps in calcium absorption) per day. The consumption of 2-3 dairy products a day contributes significantly to reaching these intakes, especially if they are enriched in vitamin D.
Interestingly, unmodified cow's milk contributes to an excessive supply of protein while it contains a low amount of iron, vitamin D, folates and DHA, among other nutrients that are essential for this stage of the child's development (the contribution of iron and DHA are, in fact, paramount in the child's cognitive development since pregnancy.)
A useful option is to provide them with a milk that contains a lower proportion of protein and an adequate supply of nutrients that the child needs. In this sense, a good milk for growth and development can help children maintain a balanced diet and to reach your nutritional requirements quickly and easily.
This would be an appropriate strategy for all children always in the context of a balanced diet that allows their food tastes to continue to be defined correctly. Growing milk allows us to contribute to the healthy development of our children with a gesture as simple as changing a glass of cow's milk for another of milk adapted to your needs specific.
How can we teach them to eat everything
A good eating habit is based on A positive relationship with food. To achieve this it is important that we do not accustom children to associate food with punishment or prizes. Nor should we camouflage flavors with over-elaborated recipes or industrial sauces that also, in most cases, increase the intake of unhealthy ingredients.
Children need discover the food exploring, touching, smelling ... So it is recommended that for them to accept food, we let them themselves be the ones who take them and eat them without anyone forcing them, cheating them through games, threatening them or blackmailing them.
The little ones relate the obligation to the punishment. Therefore, we often get the opposite effect as desired if we insist on forcing them to eat things they don't like or force the quantities.
Sometimes it is impossible to get a small child to eat a certain type of food. This is completely natural. We all have our personal tastes and preferences, which also change over time. If our child does not like a food, we must respect it and replace it with another one from the same food group whose benefits and nutrients are even.
In the case where the rejection is towards a complete type of food (that the child does not taste any fish or does not like vegetables) we can try to familiarize them with them by involving them in the whole process, from their cultivation to their intake.
By planting a small urban garden or taking them to the market with us and then involving them in the food preparation process, we make them partakers of the whole process and make it easier for them to gradually become familiar with the foods they like least, taking care of them and / or preparing them themselves.
By last, the example we give them At home it is essential to get our children to eat everything and maintain a healthy and balanced diet. If they see us eat everything, and fruits and vegetables are part of the foods that are exposed daily at our table, they will be much more likely to try them as children and include them in their dishes tomorrow.
Images | iStock / gpointstudio / evgenyatamanenko / Sasiistock / Choreograph.
