Par­ents are con­stant­ly be­ing chal­lenged by food mar­ket­ing com­pa­nies that tar­get chil­dren di­rect­ly. They of­fer, processed foods of­ten high in sug­ar, preser­v­a­tives, ar­ti­fi­cial colours and flavours, with lit­tle nu­tri­tion­al val­ue. This com­bined with our fast-paced lifestyles, chil­dren’s aca­d­e­m­ic and ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar sched­ules makes it dif­fi­cult to be home at meal­times. De­spite these chal­lenges, par­ents can fo­cus on in­creas­ing the pro­por­tion of healthy foods their chil­dren are eat­ing, to help them to es­tab­lish healthy eat­ing habits and get the vi­tal nu­tri­ents they need to grow.

Here are some ways to get more of the right foods and less of the processed foods on your chil­dren’s (and your) plates.

Serve the healthy foods that they love

This may seem ob­vi­ous, but it is easy to for­get to of­fer your child the fruits and veg­eta­bles that they like, es­pe­cial­ly since pro­duce is per­ish­able. You should use every op­por­tu­ni­ty to get health­i­er foods on their plates so, make sure you stay stocked up and pre­pare the healthy meals/snacks that they en­joy.

Larg­er por­tions of the fruits/ veg­gies they en­joy

When you serve your kids the healthy foods that they like, su­per­size the por­tions! Kids tend to eat 75 per­cent of what’s on their plate, so if you serve a larg­er por­tion of the healthy food, they will like­ly eat more.

Have ready-to-go fruits/ veg­gies in the fridge.

One way to give your kids some au­ton­o­my on their food choic­es is for them to choose their own snacks. In­stead of let­ting them have un­re­strict­ed ac­cess to the pantry where the processed snacks are like­ly to be stored, you can have a va­ri­ety of ready to eat snacks handy in the fridge (cut fruits and veg­gies, boiled eggs etc.) that they can choose from for the snack.

Serve veg­eta­bles as an ap­pe­tiz­er

Kids are most open to eat­ing healthy foods when they are hun­gry so, serv­ing up some veg­gies while you are fin­ish­ing din­ner works well. Af­ter school or ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties is an­oth­er good time to fo­cus on get­ting the nu­tri­ents in.

Choose “bet­ter” processed foods or cre­ate health­i­er home­made ver­sions

Ide­al­ly, we want the kids to eat food, as close to a whole and un­processed form as pos­si­ble. How­ev­er, with some kids we may need to take ba­by steps to reach there. Mak­ing health­i­er home­made muffins or even buy­ing health­i­er ce­re­al with more fiber and less sug­ar may be the step­ping-stone you need to in­crease the pro­por­tion of healthy foods on your fussy eater’s plate.

Re­duce sweet­ened drinks

Sweet­ened drinks such as juice box­es, soft drinks and choco­late milk are of­ten very high in sug­ar, which stim­u­lates ad­di­tion­al sug­ar crav­ings. In ad­di­tion, sug­ary drinks can spike blood sug­ar lev­els, lead­ing to hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty and lack of fo­cus plus mood swings as the sug­ar lev­els fall. When kids fill up on these sweet­ened drinks, they are less like­ly to eat whole foods. To help with the tran­si­tion, slow­ly re­duce por­tions by serv­ing in small­er cups or wa­ter­ing down juice. You can al­so use week­ends or school hol­i­days to break trends or 'for­get' to stock up at the gro­cery.

Lim­it fried foods

When I was grow­ing up, French fries were a re­al treat. Now, kids are eat­ing French fries and oth­er deep-fried foods such as chick­en nuggets, dou­bles and fried bake week­ly, and some, even dai­ly. These fried foods con­tain un­healthy fats that in­crease our 'bad' cho­les­terol and risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. One way to lim­it is to use dif­fer­ent cook­ing meth­ods at home e.g. bake, broil or roast in­stead of fry­ing. It is al­so a good idea to set over­all bound­aries on how of­ten you will in­dulge in fast foods for ex­am­ple, in my house­hold, dou­bles are a once a month treat.

En­cour­age tast­ing of new foods

One of the chal­lenges with in­creas­ing the pro­por­tion of healthy foods for some chil­dren is that the scope of healthy foods that they en­joy is lim­it­ed. Con­tin­ue to en­cour­age your chil­dren to taste new foods to ex­pand their palettes.

What we feed our kids af­fects their phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, their learn­ing and fo­cus, as well as their moods and be­hav­iour. The re­al­i­ty is we tend to pre­fer foods we eat more of, so when the pri­or­i­ty is on processed foods it leaves lit­tle room for whole foods.