Teaching Kids About Healthy Eating

As much as I love my parents I will be the first to tell you they were not the best at instilling nutritional best practices in my siblings and me.  The meals we ate growing up were quick and very often came in a paper sack with an individually wrapped spork.

There’s been a good deal of talk recently, at least in my blogging circle, about how to teach your kids proper eating habits.  I’m pretty new at this parenting thing, my oldest being shy of four, but having my kids eat healthy is especially important to me considering  the struggles I faced as a result of my poor eating habits when I was young.

My wife and I are not especially strict about the family’s eating habits.  I’m a Southern boy and there are regularly meals that consist of several items covered in BBQ sauce.   However, more often than not, our meals are relatively healthy.  It’s just become and expected part of our cooking.  (Click Here For The Proof)

So that is our golden rule of instilling healthy eating habits in our kids; set the example and make it expected.  Here are some other things that we do to help teach our kids about eating healthy:

• Involve them in the cooking.  I enjoy it, she enjoys it, and she gets to learn how to cook healthy.
• Don’t rule with a stick.  Kids need to know what a donuts taste like.
• Make it consistent.
• Start early.  I think this is the thing that’s worked most to our advantage.  When you start early they just don’t know any better.