When do you start teaching your children about healthy foods?

“Nutrition begins with the parents. Some studies indicate that a child’s taste starts to be established based on what a pregnant women eats,” says Shari Barkin, professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University.

“Make your baby’s first foods real foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. Select the foods you most want them to eat as older children and begin these foods early on. This helps children acquire a taste for real, wholesome foods … Then, when they get into preschool and the real world of junk food, their tastes have already been shaped,” says William Sears, pediatrician and co-author of The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood: Ten Ways to Get Your Family on the Right Nutritional Track…

“You can teach your children about good nutrition by what you decide to prepare and serve. They learn to eat the same foods that you eat,” says Joanne Sorte, director of the Oregon State University Child Development Center…

Lead by example, and try and try again. Research has demonstrated that a child may have to try a food up to 15 times before liking it. “It helps to offer new food items relatively frequently. This makes the concept of new food seem routine…

“By using sweet rewards as motivators, adults are pretty much acknowledging that they are out of control of the situation,” says Sorte. Parents need to come up with other options and not fall into the food-reward trap…

Source: NorthJersey.com
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