Food, glorious food!
Most of us spend a great deal of time thinking about food, and one question that plays a lot on the minds of parents of young children is: how am I going to get my child to eat healthily? Nutrition is vital to the healthy development of young children; their bones, muscles and brain absorb nutrients at an amazing rate to keep up with the growth and development that is taking place. Yet it is not always easy to get them to eat their vegetables. So what can we do, in this fast paced, time deficient age, in order to ensure our precious children are getting the nutrients they need to ensure a healthy future?
Make time for breakfast
The first and, perhaps, most important rule to remember is that breakfast is imperative for a healthy start to the day. Making sure that your child eats a nutritious breakfast will ensure that they are able to cope mentally as well as emotionally with the day ahead.
For older children stick to options such as sugar free cereals with milk, drizzle a little honey over the top rather than offering sugary cereals or adding sugar. Pretoria based nutritional therapist, Debbie Langley, recommends that for younger children, or those intolerant to dairy products, Jungle Oats is a great way to start the day and to make it more fun to eat you can add banana or raisins for a great fruity taste. Debbie says that, though breakfast is very important, children often have to leave home very early for crèche, long before they have worked up an appetite, so make sure you pack those all important breakfast options to go. Or alternatively, Debbie recommends a fruit smoothie, made from fresh fruit and a little fresh fruit juice, to drink if it is too early for breakfast.
For a great, healthy morning smoothie try this recipe:
Mango and Banana Smoothie
1 Mango, peeled, pitted and roughly chopped
1 banana, peeled and sliced
Half a cup fresh 100% orange juice
50ml crushed ice
Add all the ingredients together and blend. Choose different fruits each day for variety, or substitute the fruit juice and ice for a fruit flavoured or plain yoghurt to add a bit more substance.
‘Children who resist eating what is provided at breakfast must be offered healthy alternatives,’ advises Debbie. ‘If your child demands Coco Pops instead of what you have made for them, tell them firmly that if they don’t want what is on offer they can have a banana or an apple. When they are hungry they will eat!’ Other interesting and nutritious alternatives such as baked beans on whole wheat toast or a hard boiled egg may even become a firm favourite. Or offer one of these healthy muffins with some cheese on it as a change to the usual boring breakfast your child may be resisting.
Clinical Psychologist Robynne Thomson, who practices in Glenwood, Durban, confirms that a common area for a battle of wills is over food: ‘Children between the ages of 18 months and 3 years have the major developmental task of becoming toilet trained, and of gaining control over their bodily functions. According to Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development, this increase in physical self-control and independence leads to an increased striving for psychological and emotional self-control and independence. Children at this age are, therefore, learning to assert their 'will' or the control that they have over their environment. It is for this reason that many parents experience the phenomena referred to as the 'terrible two's', which is characterised by children learning to say 'NO' to all sorts of things, including food choices. This is a normal and important developmental phase and needs to be negotiated without making the child feel ashamed about his or her increasing attempts at independence,’ says Robynne.
Adopting a middle-ground parenting approach, based on a willingness to allow your child some choices whilst consistently sticking to important ground rules, will lay the foundation for a peaceful dinner table environment. It is probably unrealistic to think that one might be able to avoid this battle of wills completely. However, there are steps that parents can take to negotiate this phase in such a way that the 'battle' is minimized.
Robynne recommends the following ‘tools’ to help navigate this path to healthy eating:
1. Choose your battles wisely. Food battles can take place over such things as what, when, how much and where your child eats. Try not to fight all the battles at every mealtime.
2. Once you have chosen your battle, stick to your guns. Your child will realise that there are limits to his 'will' or his ability to control his environment and that there is not a lot to be gained by continually pushing these limits. This should be done in a gentle and but firm manner, leading to reduced conflict in the future.
3. De-Escalate the conflict. Take some of the heat off the argument by making dinner times fun. You can:
Encourage your child to help you in the preparation of her meals where appropriate.
Use food of different colours and textures and allow her to touch and smell her food in order to explore it with all of her senses.
Instead of glaring at each other over the dinner table, put a blanket on the lawn and have a picnic
Allow your child to feed herself, even if it is messy and frustrating to watch! Some of the battles around food at this age are about feeding, rather than eating.
Leave as much time as possible for meal times so that you can eat together in a relaxed and companionable manner that fosters good communication.
Kids in the Kitchen
To get your children interested in their food try these two simple, colourful meals that they can help you prepare:
Fresh veg and chicken pasta salad
· Pasta shapes
· grated carrots
· baby corn
· tomato
· cucumber
· chicken breasts
Cook and chill the pasta shapes and chicken breasts. Set up your little helper at the sink to wash the veggies while you do the chopping. Allow him to scrape the chopped veggie pieces from the chopping board into the salad bowl. Once that is done, give him the cold chicken breasts and ask him to tear them into strips. Add this to the salad bowl. Allow him to add the chilled pasta to the salad and mix. Add a dressing of your choice.
Meal on a stick
1 pack of kebab sticks
Smoked Vienna sausages
Cheddar cheese
Apple
Cherry tomatoes
Baby corn
Chop all the ingredients into bite size pieces and put them in separate bowls. Get your little helpers to spear a colourful pattern of each of the ingredients onto the kebab sticks. Somehow food always seems to taste better eaten off a stick! Serve chilled with hummus or cottage cheese.
The right to choose – the healthy option
Remember that foods that sustain energy are important for you child throughout the day. So make sure that the right foods go into the lunch box. Allowing your child to choose from a variety of healthy options while shopping for their lunch is a great way to encourage them to eat the food you give them. Children love to have a sense of control over their lives and are more likely to eat something healthy that they have chosen themselves than something they are just given. Debbie recommends fresh fruit and vegetables as the main basis for the lunch box. ‘Whole wheat bread or pasta and a little bit of protein must compliment the main component of fresh fruit and veggies!’ says Debbie. Other healthy lunch options include, tasty fruit flavoured yogurts, hard boiled eggs, and whole wheat sandwiches with peanut butter, cheese or hummus. Many nursery schools do not allow food items such as nuts, yoghurt and carrots due to food allergies and a choking hazard, if this is true of the school you send you child to, opt for soft, cooked vegetables rather than carrots and dried fruit or rice cakes to snack on. The more often children are exposed to nutritious foods the better the chance they will start to enjoy them.
Try not to get into the habit of giving your children a packet of chips as their ‘treat’ for lunch every day, they may fill up tummies and taste good, but they offer no nutritional value and in many cases can harm your child’s concentration, mental alertness and digestive system. If you need to add a packet of something to your child’s lunch offer alternatives such as pretzels or baked snack biscuits as an occasional alternative
Snack attack
During the days that your children are at home, specify snack times and have certain rules about them. For example the mid morning snack can be a choice of whatever fruit you have available. Always make sure you have more than one option so that they can choose. A mid-afternoon snack could be a choice of whole wheat toast, rice cakes or cracker bread with their favourite topping such as cheese, peanut butter or hummus. If your child refuses the healthy options, nutritional therapist, Debbie Langley advises that changing the shape of the food can make a huge difference. Your child may not eat an apple, but will happily munch on star shaped pieces or wedges of apple. ‘Shape is a huge thing for this age group,’ says Debbie, ‘quite often offering an interesting shape of a food they usually won’t eat will quickly get them interested in it’. If that is what is done, you will find that very quickly your children come to expect a piece of fruit when they are hungry in the morning, rather than a packet of chips for example, and this also sets the foundation for good eating habits as they get older.
Raw fun
Make supper a fun meal. It is the time when you get to sit down with your children while they eat and find out about their days. Colourful, interesting food is quick to prepare and very nutritious. There are many ways to hide vegetables in the food that you are cooking for the family but, often, the more discerning and ‘picky’ child will notice and go to great effort to pick out the ‘green bits’! So don’t hide their vegetables. But don’t cook them either. It’s important that children learn to enjoy the tastes of healthy food, so introduce them to your child early on and continue bringing rejected items back to the table so he gets used to the fact that it’s part of your family’s food repertoire and will be prepared to keep trying different items. Where possible, and once they are old enough, offer your child raw broccoli, carrots, tomato, cucumber, baby corn and any and every other vegetable that is brightly coloured and crunchy. Create or buy a sauce for them to dip in and add pieces of fish or chicken or whatever meat you are cooking for a bit of protein. Dips that children love, according to Debbie Langley, include options such as hummus, avo dip, pesto, olive and bean dips. Raw vegetables contain more nutrients than cooked ones and your children will have great fun with the colours, shapes and textures. Also call the vegetables by their name rather than their group. Many children will quite happily eat a carrot or piece of broccoli but not, oh horrors, a vegetable. To round off the meal add a portion of whole wheat pasta which, Debbie says, is a firm favourite with almost all small children, and a small portion of protein such as chicken, cheese or beans.
I’m thirsty!
The World Health Organisation specifies that babies need not drink anything other than breast milk or formula and water. So from early on it is possible to encourage your children to choose water as their drink of choice. The nutrients they get from even fresh fruit juices are minimal and better obtained from actual pieces of fruit. And if water is what you offer them, water is what they’ll drink. Debbie Langley advises offering water with pieces of lemon and orange in it, both to add flavour and to make their drink look more interesting. Fizzy drinks may taste nice, but they do very little to re-hydrate a thirsty child and, in fact, contain so much sugar and other additives that they do more harm than good. Unfortunately many people’s attitude towards parents who encourage their children to drink water is ‘shame, give her something tastier’, but if the child has grown up drinking water she’ll enjoy it anyway. Think how much easier you would find it now, as an adult, to drink the specified 2 litres, if water had been your first option since childhood!
Treats
There is a lot more to food than just providing the nutrients we need to grow, develop and stay healthy. It is important to enjoy food and to have a good attitude towards it. Debbie believes it is important to offer treats and rewards for children but warns that it is better not to make them food rewards. ‘It is much better to offer a bouncy ball or stickers or other small token to a child to reward them for their behaviour or for eating all their veggies, rather than saying “if you finish your food you can have a chocolate.”.’ If your child seems to have a ‘sweet tooth’ Debbie recommends offering dried mango or apple as a healthy alternative to help curb that craving.
Developing a positive relationship with food is very important to ensure that good eating habits are the foundation on which children can build their tastes, preferences and choices and encourage healthy eating for the rest of their lives. For more information on good nutrition for your whole family, visit Debbie Langley at http://www.debbielangley.co.za/
