You might think your child has 'quirky' eating habits, but from loving brightly colored foods to stopping eating before their waistband pops, your child can teach you a lot about the 'art of healthy eating'.
Mindful Eaters
Think about how a toddler inspects every piece of food, slowly and deliberately chewing it. They don't come home from a tough day at the playground to stand in front of the fridge and mindlessly polish off the leftover piece of lasagna. Children are 'mindful' eaters.
Susan Albers, Psy.D, psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic Family Health Center states; "Beginning close to age 3, we start to lose the innocence of eating when hungry and stopping when our stomach feels full."
Our food choices become more influenced by our feelings or emotions for satisfaction, or what we heard pitched on a tv ad, or even what we see or smell as we walk the grocery store isles on an empty stomach.
Eye Appeal
Ever wonder why so many foods marketed to children are full of bright artificial colors? It's simply because they know children like foods that are full of eye-appeal.
Nature provides a huge array of brightly colored fruits and vegetables that actually appeal to kids. Foods which provide vitamins, minerals and antioxidants for good health.
Given the choice children love the crunch of raw vegetables vs. the soft, mushy texture of cooked. These raw or very lightly steamed veggies retain and therefore provide more vitamins to further provide great health benefits.
Children also love the sweet flavors of fresh strawberries, cherries, grapes or melons. Again, given the choice, kids will gladly eat these brightly colored fruits for dessert.
Biological Signs
Children actually eat when they are hungry. They respond to biological signs that drive them to eat and therefore control their calorie intake quite well.
Regretfully as adults we often ignore these signs because we're to busy or in a rush and don't have time to eat. Or, we're on a diet and think skipping breakfast is what there is to do to lose weight. When our body tells us it is low on fuel, we need to learn to listen just as kids do.
Conversely, as adults we eat many times when we aren't in the slightest bit hungry. A stressful day at work can drive us to the fast-food chain on our way home or the bag of cookies on the kitchen counter while we make dinner.
Liking Lessons
As adults we teach our children to try new foods and in doing so, they learn to like them after a few tries. Often though, we forget this lesson for ourselves and end up eating the same foods over and over again. Trying new fruits and vegetables on a regular basis not only puts variety in our diet, but also boosts nutrition.
Maybe you have heard or know that Japan consistently has among the highest life expectancy in the world. Actually the island of Okinawa, has the greatest concentration of centenarians (people who live to at least 100). So what might make the difference? Interestingly, these folks typically eat seven different fruits and vegetables and 18 different foods every day. Their regular diet consists of more than 200 different foods and spices regularly. Compare this to the diet in the United States where we are lucky to consume a dozen different foods in our regular daily diet total.
Possibly it would be a good thing to re-visit the teachings we did with our children on taking 'Liking Lessons' with new foods on a regular basis; and then incorporating these new foods consistently in our diet.
"One should eat to live, not live to eat." - Moliere
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