Teaching Your Child Healthy Food Choices

Navigating the current market of over-processed snacks and sweets while finding the time to prepare good, wholesome meals can be difficult for any family. It can be easy to fall into a pattern of fast foods and sugary snacks, which can lead to health issues and ultimately affect your child’s success in school. Instead, teach your children to choose their food wisely and treat their bodies like temples with these tricks that’ll make smart food choices fun.App That MealTap into a resource your child will love, and make hunting for healthy food a fun game. Fooducate is a free mobile app you can download from the iTunes store that allows you to scan barcodes on food and receive a letter grade telling you how healthy it actually is. Then, next time you go to the grocery store, let your child choose their ‘A+’ snacks.Take It SlowThanks to the Internet and instant communication, we, as a society, continue to move at faster paces. Don’t bring this habit to the dinner table; instead, carve out 30 minutes of your day to sit and enjoy a meal with your child. Encourage them to slow down between bites and savor their food. Giving the body at least 30 seconds between bites allows the stomach to signal the brain that it’s full, so your child eats just the right amount.Turn Marketing Tricks into a GameManufacturers market to kids because it works. If your child is picking out his or her own food at the grocery store, you’re likely buying an item for the characters on its packaging, and not for the food that’s inside. However, you can teach your child to recognize these marketing tricks and dismiss them with a game. Re-imagining car ride games are great for this, like I-Spy or “Punch Buggy.” For example, if you’re the first to spot a food ad with cartoon characters or bright colored packaging, snap your fingers. Find Its Family TreeYet another game you can use to teach your children about real food versus manufactured and processed food is playing, “Who’s your mama?” Going into your fridge or pantry, you can take turns with your children choosing different food items and asking where they came from. For example, bananas come from trees, potatoes grow in the ground. If it’s easy to tell where it comes from, it’s a real, wholesome food. If it uses ingredients you can’t pronounce, then its “mama” is a factory, and it’s a processed food. It’s not easy to change a lifestyle of bad food habits, but it’s important to teach your child good practices to respect and take care of their body. Incorporate these fun games into your everyday routines with your family, and teach your children life-long health food habits to put them on the road to a healthier, happier life. At our Polk County Catholic schools, we foster an atmosphere of care and an environment of high expectations and effective discipline. To learn more about our Catholic schools in Polk County, contact us at 407-246-4800.