Hello!

41 Comments

What your child eats now can affect their health for years to come.

Many adults ignore healthy eating campaigns and constantly feed their children sugar, chocolate, lollies and fatty foods because they are afraid of emotional retaliation and sudden outbursts if they don’t give in.

Allowing your children to dictate what they eat will adversely impact their health.

The following tips for healthy snacking will help get your family on track to a better and healthier future:

1. Be a role model

Like other aspects of parenting, being a role model will affect how and what they eat.

If you eat fatty foods and sugar, your child will want to as well. Throw out food that you think could make your child unhealthy. If you must indulge yourself once in awhile, keep these snacks well hidden and only eat them when your children are not around.

2. Make eating a game

Children love to play games, and creating an eating game can get them to eat anything.

These games should often have prizes at the end that encourages your children to eat vegetables and fruits. Mix snacks such as trail mix are also good sources of fiber and should be given to children along with the fruit and vegetables.

Some of the basic games can include the “clean plate club” or “hide and seek”.

The “clean plate club” is a fictional club that children join if they eat all of their food. Once their done, you inform them that they are now a part of this “club” for the remainder of the night. Give them a small prize and then start the game again the following night.



3. Enforce snacking rules

If you want your children to eat healthy, you must enforce basic healthy snacking rules throughout your home:

  • Hide any snacks that you don’t want your children to see.
  • Constantly remind your children about snack time, and help them prepare healthy snacks throughout the day.
  • Each snack prepared should have the same type and amount of nutrients. Try to make the larger meals only slightly larger than the snacks you give them.

4. Use peer pressure to help your cause

Instead of only one person that is eating healthy, have your neighbours and their child join your children when eating these snacks. The peer pressure each child will feel when eating healthy will help them forget about fatty foods and sugar for the day.

5. Reward good eating habits

Informing them why should children eat healthy will help them to better understand why they must eat the food that they do, and once they begin to eat healthy snacks in between meals on a daily basis, you can reward them with a small lolly a few times a week and show them how to take care of their teeth.

When trying to get your children to eat healthy snacks, the most important thing to remember is respect. If you respect your children, they will respect you and follow your instructions without hesitation.

This healthy eating process will likely take a few months to get started, but you’ll begin to see the fruits of your labour once you implement the rules in your home.

Do you try to establish good eating habits in your kids? Please share any tips you have in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com
We may get commissions for purchases made using links in this post. Learn more.
  • These are definitely the tips we want to emulate when we get to this stage. Trying to avoid sugar and fast foods so he doesn’t get hooked early.

    Reply

  • With my youngest I used to get her to help me make the soup. We named it after her so when we would have it she was always so proud and it make her eat more.

    Reply

  • I try to with my nephews but it is a matter of lead by example and them being so spoilt. I feel really bad for them as they are always mentioning ‘fat’ and ‘skinny’, they snore from their weight and I think they will be really sick adults. It makes me sad.

    Reply

  • School de railed my healthy eating crusade. As soon as they got to school and saw the crap the other kids had in their lunchboxes, they were uninterested in what I had packed in theirs. And parents still pack a lot of crap in lunchboxes. I wonder if they think of their child’s future health at all or are they simply ignorant of healthy eating?

    Reply

  • An interesting mini article. Thanks for posting.

    Reply

  • Great! That’s interesting! Thanks for sharing this!

    Reply

  • Great read! Thanks for the tips!

    Reply

  • Thanks for the tips.

    Reply

  • this is just so great

    Reply

  • I’m very lucky that my 5 children like to eat fruit & vegies :)

    Reply

  • I don’t restrict what my son gets to eat. So he has tried everything. Don’t know if it’s good or bad but he loves his fruit and veg.

    Reply

  • I don’t know if I agree letting the children play with their food or giving rewards for eating – I can understand the concept but children sometimes just need to eat the food without making it “fun” and interesting. If children are given only healthy food if they are hungry they will have no choice but to eat it.

    Reply

  • Thank you for these very helpful hints and tip on healthy snacking incentives.

    Reply

  • Yep….brilliant tips in here. I tend to make up a lunch box every morning (even if the kids are at home) and they know they have to eat what’s in there before asking me for anything else. I pack healthy snacks, fruit, yogurt etc in there.

    Reply

  • great to read these fantastic

    Reply

Post a comment
Add a photo
Your MoM account


Lost your password?

Enter your email and a password below to post your comment and join MoM:

You May Like

Loading…

Looks like this may be blocked by your browser or content filtering.

↥ Back to top

Thanks For Your Star Rating!

Would you like to add a written rating or just a star rating?

Write A Rating Just A Star Rating
Join