Kid healthy Foods

Nutritionally rich foods are being displaced by nutritionally poor foods says safefood.

17th February 2006: Earlier today, safefood launched a new component to its website to support parents to help improve their children’s diets. Results of the National Children’s Nutrition Survey, conducted by the Irish Universities Nutrition Alliance, reveal that almost 20% of calories in children’s diets come from treat foods. Furthermore, the survey revealed that 20% of boys are either overweight, or obese, and 23% of girls are overweight, or obese. The development of this informative and practical website is another step taken by safefood to address the potential health problems caused by poor diets.

Treat foods can be high in fat, especially saturated fat, which can be detrimental to children’s heart health in the long term. The safefood website, for both parents and children, aims to help reduce treat foods in their diet. It focuses on practical and realistic healthy eating advice for parents. It also contains a children’s section with an interactive element, which aims to makes learning about food and nutrition fun for this age group.

To protect children’s health in the future, the website has several sections, which arm parents with the knowledge to reduce treat foods in their child’s diet, and also provides practical alternatives to typical treat foods. Parents can access information on balanced lunch boxes, a food diary to assess their own diet, after school-eating tips, on-the-go eating and also simple shopping tips. The website also endeavours to bring nutrition alive for children, through its interactive elements with games and quizzes.

Dr. Cliodhna Foley Nolan, Director of Human Health and Nutrition with safefood said, "Too many treat foods are being consumed by many children and these nutritionally poor foods are displacing nutritionally rich foods. The new section of our website is the second phase in our campaign to encourage parents to rebalance their children’s eating. At the moment, children are eating too many treat foods and not enough essentials, like fruit and vegetables. Treat foods, such as crisps, chocolate, biscuits, cakes, sweets and fizzy drinks can be high in fat, saturated fat or sugar. Over-consumption of these types of foods may lead to health problems in the long- term. We are not saying that children should cut treats out altogether, we just want them to reduce the number of food treats they eat to a sensible level."

The tips and advice provided by safefood on the new web section really concentrate on tackling the daily challenge for parents to make healthy food choices. The lunch box section, for example, generates a weekly menu of balanced and healthy lunch box ideas, which can be changed to suit a child’s likes and dislikes. The shopping section covers what is important when reading nutrition labels so that is can be done quickly, and gives coping strategies to deal with pester power.

Obesity in school aged kids is out of control. It is the parent responsibility to establish limits and control the amount of food the child eat, children lack this ability.

Here are some tips that will help you keep track of your child's food and eating regimen and help him fight childhood obesity. By eating poorly and not having good eating habits will effect the eating habits of your child and will lead to being lazy and becoming heavier and unhealthy. Your entire family will benefit from eating healthy eating and physical activity. As a parent you need to take a role in trying to create good habits and help your children establish healthy eating and exercising rituals, this will help in the long run.

Child obesity has lead to a number of other health related issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease from the combination of improper nutrition and lack of exercise. For the sake of her child's health both as a child and throughout his or her life, breastfeeding is the very best possible thing you can do when your child is young. A recent study in obesity suggests that children who are breastfed by their mothers during the first year of life are less likely to develop obesity as they get older.

If you are concerned about your child possibly being overweight then you need to decide whether the excess weight is part of a growth pattern that may change over time or whether there is a weight problem. Forget all the drugs and diets, feed your children healthy food and monitor what they eat, this will help your child in the long run.

It is important as parents that we take more responsibility to ensure healthy living for our children and to ensure they eat enough so they are healthy and they grow up eating healthy foods, we must understand what is healthy weight and what is weight that is leading to becoming obese. Yes they need to eat enough to be healthy and to grow properly, but we must know where to draw the line between what is a healthy weight and what is excessive weight. As parents, we can not take the stand that it is healthy for our children to be round and plump.

One reason: children have increased the amount of calories they eat each day by as many as 300. Did you know that more than 60% of American youth eat too many fatty foods, and less than 20% eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables per day. A journal is just a tool for you to help your child eat better.

Many of the foods children are eating today are fried or fast food type. To keep your children healthy and at an acceptable weight make the meals yourself so you know what you are putting into the food, you are able to control the portions of food and include healthy types of food like vegetables, fruit and many other types of food.

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