Eating is the first important thing in life. How can you cultivate a healthy body and civilized eating habits in your child? Here are 10 recommended ways to teach your child healthy and civilized eating habits, suitable for both you and your child:
1. Joyful Eating
A pleasant mood before a meal is an important measure for a child to increase their appetite. Whether the mood during the meal is happy is also the key to determining if the child will enjoy eating; don't often force your child to eat or scold them during meals, otherwise they will feel that eating is an unpleasant thing.
2. Delicious Food
Cooking skills need to be reviewed: after adding supplementary foods, vary the styles and flavors to make the child feel new about the food every day. Mothers who are not skilled in cooking might as well buy more children's recipe books to study at home.
3. Participatory Eating
Let the child participate in the preparation process: you can let the child spread jam or add salt themselves. Because of the sense of participation, they will enjoy the food they made. For example, before the meal, ask the child to help wipe the table, serve soup, mix seasonings, or introduce the dish that is about to be served as a gift from their favorite person, and talk about its nutrition and taste.
4. Spaced Eating
Adults sometimes also have a poor appetite due to emotions or the weather. If occasionally the child doesn't feel hungry at mealtime, don't force them to eat. Conversely, let them try again after a period of time: if the child dislikes a certain food, it might just be a temporary dislike, you can try letting them eat it again after a while.
5. Substitution
Learn the principle of substitution: although the types of food are different, their nutritional components can be substituted. If you really don't like certain foods, try to find substitute foods.
Eating is the first important thing in life. How can you cultivate a healthy body and civilized eating habits in your child? Here are 10 recommended ways to teach your child healthy and civilized eating habits, suitable for both you and your child:
6. Supervised Eating
Avoid letting the child eat alone. Without parental supervision and guidance, they will generally pick and choose randomly, eating only what they think is good and ignoring other dishes no matter how nutritious they are; or they will eat a little, then play for a while, and some will simply dump some of the food and lie about having eaten it.
7. Varied Diet
A varied diet fully reflects the principle of food complementation and is the guarantee for a child to obtain various nutrients. You can start by eating 10 or 15 different foods a day.
8. Slow Eating
Teach the child the habit of "chewing each bite 30 times and taking half an hour for a meal." This slow-eating method has multiple effects: brain-boosting, weight loss, beauty enhancement, and cancer prevention.
9. Plant-Based Diet
This originally means "basically eating vegetarian," not avoiding all meat, which is also the original eating pattern determined by the delicate digestive system structure of children, as per human origins. A plant-based diet is the core measure for preventing "civilization diseases."
10. Early Eating
This means all three meals should be eaten early. For both children and adults, an early breakfast is the "intellectual switch" for the day; an early dinner can prevent more than ten diseases.