Feed Your Children Well
A new book on child nutrition deals with many issues parents face when trying to satisfy their children's health and dietary needs.
Susan Roberts, a nutrition expert from Tufts University and one of the authors of a new book called Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health tells CBS News Saturday Morning what adults think of as a healthy diet may not be healthy for their kids.
"Children are not small adults when it comes to food," the book warns. "Although they can eat many of the same foods you do, the proportions need to be quite different to ensure that their very different nutritional needs are adequately met."
Children must be trained to acquire the taste for healthy foods when they are very young, Roberts explains.
According to the book, most children older than about 8 months instinctively seek variety unless discouraged by bad food experiences. They push their parents to provide variety by refusing to eat some items they previously ate. This is a common source of irritation, but doesn't need to be if parents understand what it is about.
The book assures parents that given enough time at each meal and a low-key atmosphere, most children will regularly graze through a good proportion of the variety of food on the table.
Advice for parents, excerpted from the book, includes:
- Make an ally of your child's variety instinct to minimize fussiness. Many food refusals are caused by boredom, and demands for less-healthy foods may really be a plea for something different.
- Offer your child a varied and interesting selection of the foods you want him [or her] to like, and a very limited variety of the things you want to de-emphasize.
- A different vegetable or two with dinner every night of the week encourages vegetables to disappear, while offering the same brand of plain cookies every day for morning snack keeps an excessive cookie habit from forming.
Smart Strategies for Healthy Eaters
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