Tips for Parents to Maintain a Child’s Healthy Diet

As we see the transition from the lifestyle of the previous millennium to the present, there is one big difference that we cannot fail to notice—the diet we feed our children. While Indian has long had an ethos of home-cooked food, we see that this very ethos seems no more feasible for mothers who continuously try to strike the delicate work-life balance.

But, even when so many mothers have managed to make home-cooked meals for their children, the fad gets the better of them, the trend of eating out often and eating junk when you do. Children are, more than ever, addicted to junk food, pizzas, burgers, and noodles being the raging favourites.

Unhealthy Foods Children Should Avoid

As parents, we think that all the children are having it, and they seem just fine. The truth is that they’re not. What children need in their growing age is well-balanced nutrition. What may look like a perfectly healthy child to you may be falling prey to malnutrition because of an imbalanced diet.

When children depend on an awful lot of processed foods like processed cereal, bread, pizzas, burgers, aerated drinks, and the like, their body does not get the nutrition it needs to grow and often results in the stunted physical or mental growth.

Do you see symptoms like tiredness, uninterestedness, lack of enthusiasm, lack of concentration, aggressive behavior, fragile body, low immunity to bed colds and infections of the stomach, etc., in your children, even if in moderation or very little for now? If yes, they may be directly related to their diet.

What Are the Consequences of an Imbalanced Diet for Children?

The lack of a healthy diet may be causing grave deficiencies in your child right under your watch. Inadequate intake of essential nutrients like vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and proteins can cause colossal damage to your child’s health, sometimes irreversibly and irrevocably. It can bring about drastic changes in your child’s blood constitution, physique, behavior, mood, and intellect.

It can also render their immune system weak, leaving them exposed to a score of infections that cannot affect them otherwise. Their bones and muscles can also go considerably weak. It can even lead to dreaded diseases like marasmus and kwashiorkor. And what is even more worrying is that having so much processed and fatty food is leading to an astonishing number of occurrences of type 2 diabetes in children due to obesity.

What Can You Do About It?

The solution lies in making changes to our lifestyles as parents to reflect these in our children’s diet.

• Do not eat out often. While family outings are very important, eating out more than twice a month will affect your children’s health severely. And you do have healthy choices like subs and salads even when eating out. Choose wisely.
• Regularise meal timings for the entire family. Even if you take lunch at your workplace, fix a time for breakfast and dinner for the whole family to sit together and eat the same thing without exceptions. It it is bitter gourd on the menu, then bitter gourd it is for everyone.
• Say no to processed food, especially aerated drinks and even packaged juices. Go for natural drinks like warm milk, fresh juices if you need it.
• Serves small portions of green vegetables and lentils, so much so as they can finish quickly. Do not pressurize and overload.
• Do not let them eat or eat yourself while watching TV or playing video games, a practice, so many parents have taken up to save the tantrums of their children. It results into mindless eating since the child eats more than required, giving birth to obesity.
• Include fibrous fruits as a staple in the diet, along with citrus fruits.

When it comes to your child’s diet, it is essential to think long term. So many of us give into our children’s demands because well, we cannot bear to see them crying. That’s is very myopic. Think of their health in the long term. Our mothers and grandmothers were right, and it won’t be a bad idea to adopt their dietary practices for our children.

Why Choose Amandeep Hospital for Your Child’s Health

At Amandeep Hospital, the best child hospital in India, we have a highly qualified and experienced team of child specialists to provide the most effective care to your child. We keep on updating ourselves and stands out as a citadel of excellence with modern child care treatments. In terms of providing all the necessary treatments, we have come up as a group of hospitals which aims to provide a healthy life and selfless care to the children.