7 Incredible Healthy Tips For Kids: Dealing With Child Obesity
- Childhood obesity and illnesses are on the rise, learning healthy tips for kids can ensure that your child is healthy and happy.
- Many of the kids’ foods today are incredibly unhealthy with no real nutritional value. Even foods that have added vitamins are often packed with sugar, excess sodium, and harmful fats.
- Learn about nutritious foods for kids so that they can grow up disease-free with little to no risk for adult diseases.
We cannot control the air we breathe, but we can certainly control the food we eat and what we decide to put inside our bodies. Our food and external environment is like a language which speaks to our bodies. Our gene expressions are changing as per the commands that it gets from the food we eat and our thoughts. Your ultimate age, as well as the age of your kids, is actually in your hands. You can decide how long you live and how healthy you want to be.
Why Our Kids Are Sick
Maybe your kid is perfectly healthy, but if you look around, there are more and more kids with health problems, some that we have never even heard of before. For me, a healthy kid is a kid that is happy, positive, and calm. Diet has such a profound effect on kids’ behavior that we cannot even imagine it. My girl is happy and calm generally. If she is throwing tantrums, or let's say it is a bad day for her, I literally go back and see what she ate since that morning.
So, if you want to have healthy children, you have take care of the following:
- You eat and think healthy so that the bad genes in your body never turn on and never transfer to your kids.
- If you already have a kid who has any mental or physical issues, you need to correct his or her diet and speak to them positively so that their bad genes never turn on.
Childhood Obesity Is A Big Problem
In the last few decades, childhood obesity has shot up. Due to safety concerns and the rise of technology, kids no longer spend as much time playing sport or playing outside and most TV adverts for junk food are aimed at children. Due to the abundance of foods around, our kids snack a lot. They need food every hour. But this is not a sign of a healthy kid.
When all the kids in the school are snacking at 09.00 am, my girl doesn't need a snack. I prepare meals for her consisting of healthy fats and proteins. If kids are satisfied with the food, they can put all their energy into playing and learning and not thinking about food all day.
Most Junk Food Is Made To Appeal To Kids
There is another problem. Why does our society associate kids with chocolates? Their growing bodies do not need sugar. But to raise my girl in this society where everyone offers her chocolates, including my own husband, is so challenging for me. She is 2 years old as of now and I never ever gave her so much sugar. The problem is not the cacao in the chocolate. Cacao in moderation is healthy actually. The problem is the sugar.
Kids’ chocolates and kids’ foods are extra filled with sugar, which is very unfortunate. So next time, when you visit a family with kids, please do not buy chocolates for them if you really love those kids. Not only does it increase the likelihood that they will develop dental problems, but it pushes their blood sugar up which increases their risk for type 2 diabetes, perhaps not in childhood but definitely in adulthood.
It’s not just chocolate, but packets of chips, biscuits, sweets, and cakes that are the problem too. Even fast food is made to appeal to kids by including toys with meals. These fast foods are often full of processed carbs, excess sodium, sugar, oxidized fats (trans fats), and contain very little vitamins, minerals, and fiber. How can our kids grow up healthy and strong when their bodies lack the nutrients they need to do so or are constantly fed foods that only make them sick in the long run?
A Lot Of The Recommended Nutrition For Kids Is Wrong
I have been on a low carb diet (ketogenic) for 10 years now. I even continued my low carb lifestyle even when I was pregnant. To check whether I was doing right or wrong, I read book after book about the development of the fetus. The human body needs just 1% carbs to grow. I get this from my vegetables. I did not eat any grains during my pregnancy. Also, your kids do not need grains.
For their developing brains, they need healthy fats, proteins, and vegetables. In this study, obese adolescents experienced safe and healthy weight loss on a ketogenic diet unlike the kids on the restricted calorie diet. Kids don’t need restricted calories, just healthier foods.
“Healthy” Foods Are Not Always Healthy
Grains are often hard to digest and lack the nutrition that vegetables and protein have in abundance. This can cause digestive problems and inflammation early on. When you look at food for babies and children, you see aisles full of colorful boxes and containers with cute pictures on them filled with grains, not even in their healthier whole form, but highly processed. These foods are then packed full of sugar to make them taste better and vitamins and minerals are added to make parents think that these are healthy foods.
Many of the vitamins and minerals that are added are not even in the correct form the body needs. The same happens with generic vitamin supplements for adults as well as children.
The Dangers Of Crops Treated With Pesticides
Dr. Stephanie Seneff clearly states that by 2025 every second kid will be Autistic. She is a senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and has done a lot of research on nutrition and health. In this case, the glyphosate herbicide used on round-up ready GMO (genetically modified) crops can have detrimental consequences for children.
These crops like soy and corn as well as some of the other GMO grains are commonly stocked in supermarkets and are main ingredients in many of the junk foods and some “healthy” food for kids too.
Pesticides of all kinds used on crops like vegetables and fruit have an effect on the development of fetuses and kids and even their mothers. The CHAMACOS Cohort Study shows these findings in detail. Even healthy foods like vegetables need to be chosen carefully. Organic is almost always the best option. If you cannot afford to buy all your produce as organic, check out the worst culprits here and at least buy these organic. All your produce should be washed thoroughly anyway.
Healthy Diet For Kids
Follow these healthy tips for kids to make sure they get all the nutrients they need for good health like protein, calcium, vitamin C, iron and vitamin D. If possible, let your kids play outside in the sun for a few minutes to ensure good vitamin D levels. Sports and being active should be encouraged too.
- Add Saturated Fat: Saturated fat is a healthy fat and the research proves it. Add coconut oil in their food if there is no meat so that they will be full of energy and stay fuller for longer. Choose free range meat, eggs, and chicken to avoid antibiotics and poor quality meat. Raw dairy is also a good source, only buy from reputable farms.
- Replace Sugars And Sweetener: Raw honey, maple syrup, Dates, and fruits are a good way to sweeten foods, including smoothies. Only use these in moderation as they are still sugar. Also, do not feed honey to children under 1 year of age.
- Add As Many Veggies As Possible: At least half their plate should be vegetables. Leafy greens, colorful veggies, and even sulfur-rich veggies like cauliflower and onion. Some kids may not like veggies but if you let them help you prepare the food they will be more likely to eat it just as when they see you enjoying it.
- Omega 3: Omega 3 is essential for healthy, growing brains. Including leafy greens, walnuts, flax seeds, and fatty fish like salmon and sardines in their diet will help a lot. Stay away from crumbed fish. A krill oil supplement can also help with their omega 3 levels.
- Only Serve Real Food: All food should look as close as possible to its original state as it comes out of the ground. Whole foods are the healthiest way to eat. When foods are processed, often the goodness is removed only to be replaced with bad things like sugar or excess sodium.
- Limit Snacking: Do not give them a snack every hour. Their main meals should be filling enough to keep them going until the next meal.
- Limit Grains: When your kids do eat carbs, make sure it is from vegetables, including starchy vegetables like carrots and sweet potato. If grains are given to your kids, make sure that they are organic gluten-free whole grains. While wheat products are everywhere, it is hard to digest and often GMO.
If you have had an overweight child, please share your story with us. Do you have tips and tricks on how to get kids to eat nutritious food they weren’t used to?
