Healthy Eating Habits for Children

Children’s healthy eating habits are reinforced when practiced both at home and in childcare centers. As a childcare professional, some factors to ensure are:

• Meal-times at the center must be supervised, informative and relaxed
• Children should be taught the importance of hand-washing before and after eating, as well as being encouraged to brush their teeth
• Table etiquette such as serving, seating, sharing, good manners, use of cutlery and utensils, correct handling and eating of food should be taught
• Serve 5-6 small meals a day if possible. This prevents overeating and allows you to add variety to meal-times.

Developing Children’s Healthy Eating Habits
Children learn from observation as well and will follow examples set by parents, childcarers and family members. Follow these tips to encourage child healthy eating habits:

• Making learning fun or allowing children to participate in planning their own healthy meals and snacks is a fun way for them to learn and absorb healthy eating habits for a lifetime.
• Restrict unhealthy snacks and food items such as chocolates, candies, fizzy drinks and fast food, and replace with fruit platters, frozen ice candies made of natural juice, fresh juice and milk, and crispy fresh veggies.
• Discuss healthy and unhealthy foods and teach children to differentiate between the two
• Older children can be taught to read labels and understand how ingredients make food healthy and unhealthy
• Avoid storing unhealthy snacks and rewarding good behavior with candies

Health and Child Healthy Eating Habits

Along with teaching children healthy eating habits, child carers can introduce other informative topics related to good health and healthy eating habits for children.

• A trip to a supermarket, farmer’s market or strawberry-picking day will allow for fun and learning
• Call in a child dietitian to discuss healthy eating habits for children and issues like obesity in a simple, engaging way
• Fitness goes together with child healthy eating – encourage outdoor activity and exercise as often as possible
• Parent-child sessions are usually good opportunities for you to interact with parents and discuss nutritional and dietary plans for children

Childcarer’s Guide for Healthy Eating Habits for Children

In addition to teaching child healthy eating habits, childcare centers have to follow safety and health precautions for storing, heating and serving. Safety guidelines and regulatory acts are in place for registered centers, and professionals should be aware of this. In addition, childcare workers should be taught basic first-aid procedures in case of food allergies, anaphylaxis, and choking and upset stomachs. It is important to talk to parents of children to understand the dietary requirements, cultural specifications and possible allergies of each child.

References

1. Childcare and Healthy Eating. Better Health Channel
2. Healthy Eating and Child Care. Child Care Aware

All child care day centers should by law provide your child with a diet that meets certain standards of a child’s nutritional needs. By law every day care provider has to meet certain standards regarding menu planning, food preparation, food safety and nutritional requirements.

The center should also be able to provide a safe and pleasant environment at meal times and they should also promote healthy eating habits. It is also important that you let the day care center know of any special food requirements your child has for example, if they are allergic to any food or foods which are known to cause problems with hyper activity in your child.

What you can do to ensure your child receives the correct diet

• Does the day care center have a menu posted up that you can look at.
• Does the center offer your child a choice of meals or a set meal.
• Does the center provide you with a menu to take home.
• Does the center have a snack shop, if so what choices do they have.
• Does the center take part in schemes such as providing your child with one free piece of fresh fruit or vegetable per day.
• Does the center give milk to drink or fruit juice.
• Does the snack shop offer salt and sugar free sweets and crisps.
• Does the center order in food or cook it on the premises.
• Are the children encouraged to eat fruit and vegetable with their meal.
• Does the center promote healthy eating habits.

The main menu

Some child care day centers invite parents to help in making the choices for the menus and hold special meetings for this, parents are not only encouraged to take part in choosing a healthy diet for their children but are also provided with information regarding the diet and menu the day care centers provides.

It is important that you do play an active role in any program that the day care center may offer as often this is the only way of finding out what foods and nutritional programs the day care center has to offer.

Guidelines

Meals and snacks provided by the day care center should meet standards set out and meet certain guidelines:

• Children who attend day care for 8 hours or more should be offered at least one main meal and 2 snacks throughout the day.
• Food should be offered at intervals which are no more than 3 hours apart.
• Meals should provide adequate servings from the milk, yogurt and cheese group, meat, poultry, fish and egg group, vegetable group, fruit group and the bread, cereal, rice and pasta group.
• Food should consist of no more than 30% of daily energy from fat.
• Less than 10% of total daily energy from saturated fat.
• Less than 300mg of cholesterol.
• Limited use of sugar and sodium.
• Every child should receive sufficient servings of fresh or frozen vegetable and fruit every day to ensure they receive enough vitamin C.
• Whole grain products should be included to ensure the child receives enough dietary fiber.
• Raw unprocessed foods should be used whenever possible.