One of my top priorities is to feed my kids healthy and well-balanced meals. I started off with Cody (and now Grayson), making their baby food and trying to get them to eat as many healthy foods and “extras” as much as possible. Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron has been one of my all time favorite nutritional books and I have followed her recommendations pretty closely.
However, I feel like as much as I cook, set out fruits and veggies, and offer healthy snacks, I get into a rut with what I am giving him. Sometimes I feel like it is just the same stuff over and over. The other thing I have been wondering is does he have too much fruit over vegetables? Enough whole grains? Too much protein? etc. I decided to pull up the new food pyramid (which is actually a cool plate diagram now) and print that off as a guide. As I went onto their website, I realized how many resources are actually out there and wanted to share them with ya!
- ChooseMyPlate (Below are just a few of the resources I pulled from this site for preschoolers. You can get a ton more info, not just for the kiddos- here is a link for older kids, but for you too!)
- You can get a personalized Chart based on a few criteria you enter in about your child (I like how it tells me their total amounts of daily food groups for the day)
- You can get a print out to help with their daily meal and snack pattern and how to divide their meals into healthy proportions (you can click on each pattern and it will give you sample meals too)
- Here they give you some healthy snacks for kids
- This is a decent chart of feed them this, not that. ie. choose plain yogurt and add fruit vs. buying the sweetened yogurt. (I think if you start them off with the healthier alternatives to things, they never know the difference. If you are trying to stop bad habits, I would suggest changing out one item at a time.)
- This is a nice list as what qualifies as protein. One great tip I learned from Crunchy Savings is to use beans with every meal. Mix it with your meats (ie. for tacos- half beef, half beans) so you are still getting that protein, but also saving money on your meat bill!
- Make their food fun! We have talked about this a lot in our past posts. They are more likely to eat a funny face, than a drab looking plate of food.
- This is a list of things you should/ shouldn’t say to your kids about food. Some are a little lame, but overall helpful.
- One of my favorite lists!! How to get your preschooler involved around the kitchen. I LOVE it! Cody LOVES to cook and since I cook a lot of our meals from scratch, I am grateful that I can get my cooking done and we are spending time together at the same time. He loves helping to set the table and clear it off every night for dinner, and he helps me clean our produce every week. I do try to get him involved as possible. Another thing they really push is to try to eat meals as a family. I KNOW this is hard for a lot of families because of time and schedules, but even if you can get that in a few times a week, it is better than nothing!
- AMAZING resource (not on myplate.gov) with a TON of free healthy printables. You MUST check these out! You can filter them by category, age, and grade and they have everything on there!! Trying using one of your craft times with some of the free printables and teach your kids about eating healthy while they are having fun! I ended up printing some St. Patrick’s Day bookmarks off (which included shamrocks, pots of Gold and green veggies) and let Cody color them. We talked about the veggies and St. Pat’s Day and then laminated them! He LOVES book marks, and we have made them in the past, so this was perfect!
How Cute Are These? Let them cut them out and laminate OR add a cute string to the top!
What I ended up doing was printing off the choosemyplate diagram , the meal and snack patterns and the USAnimals at a glance “Why We Need It, What We Need, Where We Get It” and laminated them. I then stuck it on the fridge. Not only for myself, but also to teach my kids about WHY we are eating healthy and what food does (or doesn’t do) for our body. I really want my kids to be educated on food, labels, and ingredients so that maybe (fingers crossed) they will make wise food choices in the future, as they grow. Obesity in this country and our diets as Americans have just gotten so out of control. It is time to take all the food companies down who are filling our food with junk!! Are ya with me?? Take a stand and get your kids involved in the process too!
How do you get your kids involved in eating and staying healthy??
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