Many kids love to eat that junk food, chocolate, lollies, chips or cake. Unfortunately, those foods can be so unhealthy.

The thing is, you don’t want to forbid them from those foods. You don’t want to encourage your children to have a bad relationship with food. Instead, you want to educate them and teach them healthier alternatives. When they go to the school canteen, you hope they make the right food choice, the brown rice sushi roll with avocado, not the dripping, oily lasagne.

Even as adults, we often think having hot fries once or twice a week won’t harm you, but it does. Getting into a bad routine like this can often lead to health problems and obesity down the track. If you or your husband, wife, partner are having hot chips with your dinner, your children will wonder why they can’t too. If you’re having them, why can’t they?

Making the right food choices is the key to success.

I honestly think once you have made a change in your diet, you start to think better. You make healthier choices. You don’t crave hot chips, or oily pizza, you crave nutritious, wholesome food.

Kids wont be kids forever, they will eventually reach the age where they don’t have you helping them make that healthy decision. Now is the time to educate them!

I have listed below 5 healthier alternatives for your kids growing bodies.

1. Chicken Nuggets – Yes they are chicken (although some places you can never be too sure!), but they’re covered in white breadcrumbs, then often deep fried in a high saturated fat. They can contain corn-based ingredients, sugar, and stabilizers.

Healthier alternative: Make your own!

Grab some chicken breast, egg, almond meal, and coconut oil. Cut the chicken breast into nugget size pieces, dip it in egg, place it on the almond meal, and cook in a little coconut oil or your air-fryer!

2. Soft Drink – Most soft drinks are just sugar in a bottle. Not to mention the artificial flavours and caffeine that they contain. This can change the mood of your children. I, for one, do not want to give my children these drinks, they sure don’t need stimulants!

Healthier alternative: Save your money and buy a bunch of bottles of soda water from the supermarket. They are usually less than a dollar and you can add cordial, lemon or natural juices to make it fun for the kids!

3. Hot Dogs – I have spent my whole life wondering just what meat is in hot dogs. I have a feeling no one actually knows, and if they do, they won’t tell you the truth. They are high in calories, saturated fat, sodium, and if you have tastebuds, they are actually pretty gross.

Healthier alternative: Try cooking up some skinless sausages and serving them up on a wholegrain bun, and adding some homemade tomato relish!

4. Pizza – One of the things about pizza is that it can go two ways. Great and expensive or cheap and oily. The kind of pizza you’re supplying to your children is usually the latter. You’re probably ordering from Pizza Hut or Dominos and waiting for it to arrive on a Friday night, the bad news is that you have no idea what goes into it and it’s usually full of sodium, sugar, fat and ten kinds of processed meat.

Healthier alternative: Make your own pizza omelettes. Use the egg as a base for your sundried tomato, baby spinach, feta and bacon pieces. Top it with barbecue sauce and the kids will beg you for another!

5. Sugary Cereals – this one is always getting a lot of attention. Companies market their cereals as “whole grain”, “high in iron”, “high in fibre”, but what they’re not telling you is “high in artificial colours and flavours”, “high in sodium”, “low in protein” and so on.

Healthier alternative: This is very easy. Make a muesli at home with nuts and seeds such as almonds, pepitas, and coconut flakes, put a scoop of yoghurt or some homemade fruit salad. Nutritious, filling and delicious.

Making healthy choices can be easy. It might not be something that happens overnight. It may take your family a few weeks to get used to, but the important thing is, you’re making a change to you and your family’s health forever. There are options out there that will allow you to keep showing your family how yummy food can be, while keeping you healthy!

What are your healthy alternatives? Share with us below!

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