In the spirit of the New Year's Season, I have been thinking about resolutions for my family for a healthy year and for all the HealthykidsHealthyFamilies readers. Some of these are new goals for our family as our kids get older. Many are items that I have written about previously. All of these top goals are supported by research out in the past couple of years.
1. Give Vegetables and Fruit a Starring Role
For us this means a salad course first or cut raw veggies on the table while I am cooking dinner, carrots/cukes/etc. This also means veggies and/or fruit in each meal. There are veggies in lunch boxes and even veggies in our pancakes (see camping pancakes for tips on including veggies in your breakfast http://www.mamamianutrition.com/2012/12/healthy-kids-on-road-eating-well-while.html. )
Remind kids that 1/2 of their plate should be vegetables or fruit. For more tips on this see http://www.mamamianutrition.com/2011/07/veggies-whens-wheres-and-hows-of.html .
2. Get Kids Involved in Athletic Competitions
These could be the competitions that occur with their regular sports, like the soccer championships that their leagues are participating in or they can be local bike tours, fun runs or ocean swims (yes, we are trying an Aussie Ocean swim with the kids). Numerous 10k runs offer kids' runs or 2k fun runs. Generally the kids' runs are short enough a toddler could run it; but some of the fun runs are 1 mile or more and perfect for older kids. Bike tours and open swims can challenge kids to complete a longer distance in good company.
Competitions are really valuable in growing a child's sense of self-confidence. They provide a sense of accomplishment that weekly or even daily practices cannot match. Children often need competitions to help appreciate how much their bodies are capable of doing.
3. Increase Omega-3 Consumption
Omega-3 fatty acid content is too low in the modern Western diet and children have some of the lowest intakes of Omega-3's. Omega-3 is a polyunsaturated fat that is critical to healthy brain and ocular development, important in immunity, inflammation, and more. Increasing your intake is one approach to increasing circulating Omega-3 levels. Easy foods to get Omega-3's from are fish, some plant oils, certain nuts and seeds, algae and, interestingly, organic vegetables .
Another approach is to improve the ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids. This has been a controversial topic, since a study by Walter Willet and other big wigs in nutrition suggested the ratio hasn't proven to be that important. However, a closer reading of their meta-analysis led me to the conclusion that balancing this ratio is valuable to maintaining health and preventing illness. To look more closely at this issue see http://www.mamamianutrition.com/2010/12/omega-3-fatty-acids-part-2-what-does.html
or the Nutrition Diva's post on this topic http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/is-the-omega-ratio-a-myth.aspx.
4. Eat Whole, Fresh Food Whenever Possible
All roads lead to this point. The most nutrient rich foods are those that have the least processing. This doesn't refer to the cooking or baking it may receive in your home but to the more extreme processing that happens before it gets to the grocery store. Wherever you can try to switch to whole foods and limit the boxes and tins that go in the cart.
5. Include Active Family Time That Gets Everyone Outside
It is great to model healthy living for your kids and even better to enjoy it with them.Historically, people used to eat a much greater quantity of fermented foods, just because of preservation techniques. One consequence of this was children had a lot more healthy bacteria in their gut and consistent source of prebiotic and probiotic food.
This past year studies have been published showing the benefits of increasing probiotics in kid's diets. These benefits go beyond the known benefits of decreasing diarrhoea and gastroenteritis. Studies have found probiotics beneficial in decreasing allergies, asthma, allergy symptoms (such as skin problems, wheezing, and more), yeast infections, and limiting the effects of Chron's disease and ulcers.
The data indicating the benefits of probiotics in adults is more extensive. Research suggests that fermented foods and probiotics are necessary to good health, especially for maintaining a healthy gut and immune system.
7. Enjoy, Enjoy and Enjoy
Fundamental to parenting healthy eating habits is modeling them. If we want children to enjoy food (especially to develop a palate that can enjoy diverse foods) we need to share our enjoyment with them.
Eat slowly, take small amounts, savor the food you have been given, talk about what you taste, what you like, linger and encourage them to share what they can taste.
All the Best for a Healthy 2013!
This is a great start for a healthy lifestyle. What kind of foods have probiotics? Yogurt? I'm taking probiotics supplements and for my kids, I gave them yogurt. What do you give your kids?
ReplyDeleteHi Catherine,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your note, sorry about the delayed reply. Good question, there are not a ton of probiotic-rich foods in the Western Diet and a lot of them are more adult foods or hard to come by (i.e. Blue Cheese, Kimchi, Kaboucha).
Yogurt can be a reliable source of good bac and probiotic sugars; however a lot of yogurts are so low in bacteria and high in sugar they are not that helpful. If you use yogurt, choose one that is lower in sugar and gives a bacterial count. I tried to find a specific bacterial count number for you but the research is all over the place. It does seem that yogurts are accurate in their claims and those that list counts tend to have the highest amounts.
My family has a history of a lot of gut illnesses on both sides of the family, so I have included fermented milk drinks in the kids diets (they like Yakult, although someday I hope to make my own). This offers a magnitude more bacteria and has a greater number of different bacterial species. We also supplement a couple times/wk with a good supplement (when we were in the States this was a refrigerated supplement from a reputable supplement provider such as either Whole Foods or Meyer's).
Some other foods if you are not keen on fermented milk for the kids include miso, pickled veg (like saurkraut or pickles), or pickled meats. Careful on the pickled foods that are store bought b/c sometimes they take the shortcut and just season with vinegar rather than really pickle and ferment them. Good luck...Emia