How to Develop Healthy Eating Habits in Children

Develop healthy eating habits in your children from infancy. There are many things you can do to accomplish this feat.

Breast feed your child for as long as possible. If you work, pump and store. Mix infant cereal with your own milk instead of formula. Breast milk is natural and contains thousands of vitamins that formula cannot match. This will help your child develop a taste for natural foods.

Make your own baby food. Grate apples, or make applesauce (with little or no sugar). Blend a few fruits and spoon feed it to them once a day. Cook chicken soup with whatever combination of fresh vegetables you have, broccoli, carrots, potatoes or celery. Then blend it.

When introducing dairy into your child's diet, do not give them "baby yogurts." These are loaded with sugar and artificial flavors! Give them plain yogurt and add your own fruit.

If you did not breastfeed or make baby food when your child was an infant and he/she refuses to eat fruits and vegetables, it is not too late to promote healthy eating. Cut junk food out of your house cold turkey. No cookies, cakes, sodas, chips or even fruit juice. Fruit juice, although better than soda, is all sugar. The child is better off to eat the fruit whole to get the fiber.

When you go to the supermarket, never go into the middle aisles. Shop on the outskirts, where products are fresh and healthy. Here you find fruits and vegetables, dairy, bread, meat, chicken and fish (though I buy meat and chicken that was not previously frozen from the butcher where it is fresher). The inner aisles of supermarkets are usually where the junk lies. This is a no think formula for how to go food shopping in a healthy manner.

Do not become fanatic and deprive children of sweets. Give them treats, in moderation, and definitely not every day. Bake cookies or pie fresh so you can control the amount of sugar that goes into it. Substitute whole wheat flour for white whenever possible.