How to eat healthy
Food is vital part of everyday life, but it is commonly overlooked in many families. Nutrition holds the key to living a long and prosperous life but when families opt-in for the easy (generally bad) food options (Fast Food) for most meals of the week, you run the risk of increasing your families change of developing a range of preventable health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, stroke and liver disease.
The 2007 Australian National Children’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey reviled some insight into the current obesity epidemic within Australian. Children’s diets mostly consisted of high levels of sugar and saturated fats, but also low levels of vegetables.
- Key finding – only about one-quarter of children in the younger age groups and 1–11% of the older age groups met the guideline for vegetable intake. If potatoes are excluded from the count as a vegetable, compliance is considerably worse due to the relatively high consumption of potato compared with other vegetables.
The survey also determined that children are becoming less active as they move throughout childhood into adolescents. This perfect storm of malnutrition and inactivity is extremely alarming and will increase long term health risks for children as they move into adulthood.
How to save your children
- Ensure your child is meeting there RDI outlined by the Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescents in Australia
- Create fun and nutritious meals for children with lots of colours
- limit pre-packaged foods such as potato chips, soft drinks, chocolate and lollies
- Research healthy kid’s foods and how to make them, YouTube has some great channels dedicated to healthy foods.
- Try new activities which will get children active and involved. Why not create your own veggie patch at home.