Healthy Eating Habits For Kids: Developing Healthy Eating Habits
Healthy eating habits for kids begin with a wholesome breakfast and ends with a healthy snack. Kids need lots of positive productive energy during the day to help keep them mentally alert and their body strong and active.
I’m not talking about restless, hyperactive energy, but energy for sports and exercise. Kids are in school for six to eight hours a day and should stay mentally aware for learning and for being productive. Healthy eating will give them that alertness and energy.
Healthy Eating Habits For Kids: Starts in the Home
Healthy eating habits start in the home. If parents eat wholesome nutritious foods themselves, their children will too.
Parents can prepare wholesome meals and snacks ahead of time to ensure their kids will be coming home from school to healthy foods. This will give them a positive mental outlook and productive energy.
Unfortunately, too many kids are coming home to packaged food type snacks and video games. Then parents wonder why their kids are misbehaving in school and are overweight. Sugary food products will totally wreack havoc on a young person's life.
Healthy Eating Habits For Kids: Emotions and Sugar
Have you ever seen a child who is highly emotional one minute and withdrawn and passive the next? This moodiness usually means that something has gone off balance in the body, usually from not eating right.
When kids seem to be on an emotional roller coaster ride, the first place we need to look is at their diet. What are they eating on a regular basis?
Write down all the foods they are eating for a full week. Then take a look at the sugar content of all those foods. You will be amazed at how much sugar they are ingesting in a day.
One can of soda pop is about 10 to 12 teaspoons of sugar. White flour products they are eating also turn into sugar in the body. Kids are really getting overloaded with sugar, and it is messing up their emotional wellbeing.
Healthy Eating Habits For Kids: Self-Esteem and Sugar
Refined sugar is a drug. It absolutely affects the way we feel, the way we look, and the way we behave. Anytime a substance alters our mind in any way it is considered a drug. Sugar has now been documented to affect how we feel about ourselves.
The author, Kathleen DesMaisons, who wrote the book entitled Potatoes Not Prozac, knows very well about how eating too much sugar can produce low self worth in some individuals. Those people, who are addicted to sugar eat it regularly to feel better. Much just like a drug addict who uses regularly to feel better.
When the individual does not get their sugar fix, they might feel highly-strung out, depressed, worthless, moody, and self-critical. To counteract these negative emotions they eat more sugar.
They are self-treating their symptoms with sugar and they don’t even know it. Their way of eating has become a habit, a way of life.
Healthy Eating Habits For Kids: Natural Sweeteners
There are absolutely wonderful wholesome sweeteners on the market that can be eaten daily without any emotional side affects.
However, if a child is obese, overweight, or experiencing sugar glucose problems, any sugar sources, even natural, should be closely monitored. At least until the blood sugar has become regulated and hormones are functioning normally.
Natural sweeteners are those that have not had the nutrients removed. Raw honey that has not been heated over 117 degrees is the most excellent natural sweetener. It is loaded with minerals and vitamins.
Maple syrup, date sugar, black strap molasses, and stevia powder are all natural sweeteners that should be substituted for refined sugar products.
Sources:
http://www.amazon.com/Potatoes-Seven-Step-Stabilize-Cravings-Recognize/dp/0684850141
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon
http://www.amazon.com/Nourishing-Traditions-Challenges-Politically-Dictocrats/dp/0967089735/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228760025&sr=1-1
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