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Home › Articles › Parenting Preschoolers › Your Child: The Newest Expert on Nutrition

Your Child: The Newest Expert on Nutrition

Teaching Healthy Food Choices (Without Really Trying)

By T. Susan Chang

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Parents don't have a marketing budget. What we do have is a fierce commitment to see our kids thrive. If we do a better job making good food familiar and available to our kids than the snack companies do, our kids will develop healthy lifelong food habits. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow – but in the long run.

I don't know for certain that anything I did is responsible for Noah's embrace of leafy greens. But I do know that I didn't do anything to prevent him from discovering them on his own. A few simple lifestyle choices we've made in our home may have helped, and these could be adapted to any home.

Family Time in the Kitchen
We set up a table where Noah can draw or build things in the kitchen. He's interested in watching me cook, and he sometimes wants to know how we make certain dishes he really likes.

Noah always has something to say about the smell of what's cooking on the stove. If he wants to help make something, I try to find a task he can handle, such as peeling the carrots (with supervision!), tipping the beans or stirring batter.

Family Time at the Table
Life can be so hectic that time together is a luxury. Still, we try to eat dinner as a family as often as possible. According to Hemmelgarn, modeling healthful eating "is one critical key to cementing healthful habits that will last a lifetime."

When we eat together, we talk about the food and what we like and don't like about it. We talk about the taste and the texture and how each food is different. We also talk about what each of us did during the day. (One of our rituals is that Noah gets to choose whose day we hear about first.)


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