Providing your child with a healthy, balanced diet is important for growth, learning and general wellbeing. With such an abundance of different food choices available, setting your child on the right path to making independent healthy choices has never been so important.
We chat with child nutrition expert Dr. Carrie Ruxton, on healthy eating for children and how you can help them make the right nutritional choices.
Dr. Carrie Ruxton works as an independent dietitian for a huge range of food companies and also for the NHS. Her specialist areas are children's diets, obesity and ‘superfoods' such as fish oils, seasonal fruits and vegetables.
‘Primarily my job is to help organisations communicate great things about food and to help people choose healthier diets' says Dr. Ruxton.
Fruit and vegetables and children's health
As children grow, they need lots of different vitamins and minerals. Of course, fruit and vegetables are one of the most important sources of these. Dr. Ruxton explains, ‘Carrots are high in vitamin A, green vegetables are rich in iron, and fruits are packed with roughage (fibre). If children eat the same types of fruit and vegetables week in and week out, they may not be getting enough variety in their diet. This is why it is better for all of us, but especially children, to eat different fruit and vegetables each season.'
‘Children's bodies are growing and developing every day. In order to make the most of this, children need a balanced diet (containing all the main food groups) plus at least an hour of exercise each day. Seasonal fruit and vegetables provide a huge variety of vitamins and minerals that are vital for healthy, growing bodies,' she adds.
Ensuring that your child has a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables to choose from is vital, as Dr. Ruxton explains, ‘increasing the variety of children's diets also helps them to experience new tastes and textures which is all part of growing up.'
By exploring different foods children will form eating habits which can affect them for years to come. Providing your child with the opportunities to try different healthy foods will give them the independence to make healthy eating decisions in the future, and gain a better understanding of how what we eat can affect our bodies.
A balanced diet
So how do you make sure your child is getting a balanced diet? Dr. Ruxton suggests that ‘if children are growing, active and sleeping well, you can be sure they are getting enough calories.' To ensure a balanced diet, provide children with the major 4 foods groups every day:
- Wholegrain cereals/bread/pasta
- Meat/fish/poultry
- Low fat dairy foods
- Seasonal fruit and vegetables.
Dr. Ruxton adds ‘Keep high fat, high sugar treats to a minimum and avoid adding salt to children's foods. Children who don't eat a balanced diet can become overweight, irritable, sluggish and have irregular bowel movements.'
Nutrition and behaviour
Children are designed to be active and to eat a wide variety of healthy foods. When they are encouraged to be inactive, watch more than an hour of TV/videos a day and are given an unhealthy diet lacking in major nutrients, behaviour can certainly suffer.
