Keeping It Fresh:

Building Healthy Habits For Children And Teens

With childhood obesity in the UK at an all-time high, many parents are wondering how to encourage healthy food habits and an interest in home cooking.

Building healthy food habits helps to keep children healthy both physically and mentally, reduces the risk of malnutrition, and gives them the skills for maintaining a healthy diet later on in life.

But with little ‘picky eaters’, food fads circulating schools, and increasingly busy parents, it may be difficult to know how to start. Television and peer pressure can impact a child’s willingness to eat healthily, with many healthy foods being stigmatised by other children in schools, while junk foods are promoted in the media.

Children, like anyone else, will have their own preferences for certain foods depending on taste and experiences. An overall emphasis on a healthy diet, instead of focusing on certain foods, can help children to maintain a healthy diet without force or limiting their independence.

Building Positive Attitudes Towards Food

Mealtimes are about more than just eating. Meals provide a sense of routine, and security, and help to build relationships with family and friends. By keeping a balanced diet at home, you can help your child to build positive associations between healthy foods and feelings of happiness and security.

• Role modelling: Children and teens mimic the behaviours that they observe at home and in the wider environment. Role modelling healthy eating behaviours helps your children to adopt healthy eating strategies themselves, and helps them to feel secure in their diet. You should aim to eat regularly with the family, and include a variety of fruits, vegetables, wholegrain and healthy sources of protein such as lean meats, beans, and pulses.

• Packed lunches: Packing a lunch for work with your child can help them to observe your food choices and to make their own lunch for school, which helps to empower them in making their own healthy food choices.

• Eating as a family: Eating family meals together is essential for a child’s mental and physical wellbeing. Most conversations happen over family dinners, and eating together can help you to monitor your child’s wellbeing and eating habits. Social interaction helps to reduce feelings of stress, boosts mood, self-esteem, and social skills, and gives you the opportunity to catch up with your child about their day without the distractions of television or games.

• Limit negative self-talk: Negative comments around body image and calorie counting can contribute to unhealthy eating habits later on. Avoid dieting talk around your children to ensure that they keep perspective on food and on the importance of maintaining a balanced, healthy diet.

• Make the dinner table a ‘safe space’: Providing a supportive atmosphere at the dinner table helps your child to build positive associations with food, and gives a sense of safety and security. If there are regular conflicts at the dinner table, try to have conversations after dinner instead of over food.

• Respect your child’s independence: Forcing a child to eat foods that they don’t like may result in them rebelling or cause interpersonal problems. If your child is a ‘picky eater’ try to provide them with a choice of healthy foods so that they can make their own decisions about what they do and don’t want to eat. Children should not be forced to ‘clear their plate’, as this limits their ability to sense when they are full, which may lead to overeating. Instead, encourage them to eat healthy, nutritious food and allow them to leave the table when they have eaten enough.

Encouraging Good Choices

• Home-cooked meals: Takeaways and instant meals have high levels of fat, sugar, and salt. Homemade foods, on the other hand, provide high levels of nutrition and allows you to cook healthier options. Making food from scratch also helps to encourage healthier habits in the long run. If your child observes cooking as a part of their daily routine, they are more likely to be interested in cooking themselves, and make their own meals as they get older.

• Engage the youngsters: Try to involve your children in cooking where possible, as this will teach them the skills for later life while providing a bonding activity which helps them to build positive associations with healthy eating.

• Make healthy foods interesting: You may find it helpful to disguise healthy foods in meals, like for example, by mashing carrots with potatoes, or by adding vegetables to soups. If your child will eat healthier foods, keep it interesting using visual stimulation, such as making ‘smiley faces’ or cutting veg into interesting shapes.

• Don’t reward children with food: Using food as a reward or bribe can lead to children associating food with comfort. This can lead to poor food choices and overeating in later life. If you need to use motivation, try providing children with more time to exercise or play instead.

• Keep healthy snacks on hand: Children are more likely to snack healthily if there are readily available nutritious foods. Swap sweets for fruit, crisps for nuts, and add a healthy treat such as a fruit roll-up to keep it interesting.

Food Without The Fuss

Children can be sensitive to new sensations, and may find it difficult to try and like new foods. Here are a few ways that you can help to broaden your child’s palette without putting them off.

• Don’t overload them: Offer only one new food at a time to prevent your child from being overwhelmed. You should offer this food only when a child is hungry, as this will improve their appetite, and food always tastes better if they have worked up an appetite first. And limit snacking throughout the day to help your child keep a healthy appetite during meals.

• Combine new foods with old favourites: This helps to keep meals feeling comfortable and familiar while introducing new dishes, meaning your child will feel secure when trying something new.

• Involve your child: Allowing your child to make their own choices means that they are more likely to eat it, and helps them to feel confident and empowered when choosing foods. Making their own choices from a range of foods also helps to keep mealtimes fun and engaging.

• Be aware of textures: Many children are sensitive to textures. For many children, this is a natural adaptation, which would historically have prevented them from eating food that has gone off or which was poisonous. In the modern-day age, however, where we have ready access to safe foods, this may present difficulties in trying new foods, particularly for children with sensory issues. Get to know your child’s likes and dislikes, and serve them foods which match the flavour and texture profile they enjoy. For example, if your child does not like ‘mushy’ foods, avoid mashed potatoes, and instead give them baked or whole new potatoes.

Healthier Junk Foods

If your child is used to junk foods, or is encouraged by others to eat unhealthily, you may need to find healthier versions of their favourite snacks. Here are a few ideas for some simple swaps:

• Swap ice cream for frozen yoghurt: Frozen yoghurt is easily made at home in ice pop trays. Involve your children in making ice pops by adding yoghurt and fruit and putting them in the freezer.

• Swap deep-fried foods for baked or grilled foods: You can reduce a lot of fat by swapping fried foods for baked or grilled foods. Instead of giving your child fried chicken or processed meats, include a piece of roast chicken or beef in their sandwich for low-fat protein.

• Biscuits and sweets: Find a healthy version of biscuits and cakes to include in your child’s lunchbox. This may be a slice of malt loaf, homemade banana bread, fig rolls, or fruit roll-ups.

• Crisps: Opt for baked or air-fried crisps where possible, or make your own in the oven.