It seems with the childhood obesity crisis our nation is facing researchers have begun to study the nutrition habits of preschoolers.  We know that habits are being learned…formed during this time.   Washington University is studying how to get preschoolers to eat more fruits and vegetables.

According to the research, it starts with the parents.  Well, this seems pretty obvious but here is a nice article that summed several studies that shows how parents can really make a difference in their child’s eating habits.

Parents, you are the most important role model for your kids.  You decide what food is purchased, what the meal will be etc.

So here is a couple of suggestions:

• make fruits and vegetables part of your child everyday life.
• have them help pick out the fruits and veggies at the grocery store
• have them name the veggies and fruits as they help put them away
• have a vegetable and fruit as part of each of your three meals
• don’t fight with your child if they won’t eat it
• encourage them to just have one bite
• if they still refuse, then ask them to name the color of the vegetable or fruit
• make talking about the fruit or vegetable part of the meal conversation
• introduce a new vegetable and fruit each day to your child
• keep reintroducing the fruits and vegetables

One study showed that a child may need to interact with a food at least 10 times before they will try it.

Keep it simple, keep it fun.  We want them to associate fun memories with fruits and vegetables, not bad experiences like “my mom got mad at me ’cause I didn’t eat my vegetables.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Healthy Child, Nutrition tips, Balanced meal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.