Encourage Healthy Eating Habits

Packing a healthy school lunch can be a fun and money-saving family activity. Involving kids in the decision process helps them learn to make healthy eating choices and also feel more enthusiastic about their lunch options. Children are more likely to eat meals they help prepare. Since weekday mornings can be a crazy time crunch, pack lunches the night before. Have your child choose a few healthy items, such as pretzel sticks, popcorn, snap peas, fresh strawberries or pudding.

Parents and caregivers play a key role in helping children learn the fundamentals of healthy living—eating well and staying active—whatever pressures they face outside home.

Child nutrition specialist Dr. Daniel Raiten at the National Institute of Health says that one of the most important strategies for parents to help kids stay healthy is to foster good eating habits at home. Raiten talks often to kids in schools and finds that few understand what a healthy “diet” means.

“Most think that diet is a verb— what you do to lose weight,” Raiten says. “I tell them that diet is the mix of foods that gets into their body, and healthy nutrition is the end result of eating good food in a healthy diet.”

Try to help children see healthful eating as a natural and fun part of every day. “My own kids help me cook,” Raiten adds, “and we sit down and eat our meals together every night.”

Another way to encourage healthy eating is to sample a variety of fruits and vegetables from the grocery store or local farmers market. Chances are that even “expensive” produce is still cheaper than most processed foods on supermarket and convenience store shelves.

Teach your kids how to be smart shoppers. Enlist them as food detectives at the grocery store. Set some standards for healthy foods and show them how to read Nutrition Facts labels, which list the nutrition content of pre-packaged foods. Then let them choose a few items that make the grade. Make eating healthy a family affair!