5 Healthy Goals

We all know that eating right is key to staying healthy. For children nutritious food is imperative for optimal growth and development. As you make choices about the food you serve, think about the benefits to a more healthy menu:

• Eating a healthy breakfast is associated with improved memory, more energy and positive mood.
• Healthy eating helps prevent high cholesterol and high blood pressure and helps reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
• Healthy eating also helps reduce the risk for developing obesity, osteoporosis, iron deficiency and tooth decay.

Another way you can encourage healthy eating is by engaging in family-style dining. Family-style dining:

• Creates an opportunity for positive role modeling; kids might try something new if others enjoy it
• Encourages self-feeding skills and recognition of hunger cues
• Helps children learn about the foods they are eating
• Improves language skills as adults and children talk with each other
• Supports social, emotional and motor skill development

Make Nutrition Fun and Engaging

• Mix it up—serve a variety of nutritious choices and introduce new foods. Have a food of the week.
• Plan fun classroom activities, like taste-tests and food-related art projects.
• Talk about “sometime” vs. “anytime” foods or ‘Go’, ‘Slow’, and ‘Whoa’ foods.

Picky Eaters

• Let children help prepare meals and snacks. Stirring and adding ingredients make kids feel “big” and proud of what they created. Kids like to try their food creations.
• Encourage “two bites” if children are resistant to trying a new food. Read the “Two Bite Club” from MyPlate to your class and encourage kids to “join the club.”
• Be patient. It may take 10 – 15 tries before children accept a new food.

Buying Healthy Foods

• Look into specials at farmer’s markets or a find a “Farm to Preschool” program.
• See if there’s a central kitchen in your area. A centralized kitchen model is one in which all of the cooking activities of a particular location are concentrated within one large kitchen.
• Save money and serve healthier meals with USDA’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Commonly known as ‘the food program’, CACFP provides aid to early care and education programs for serving nutritious foods to young children.

Birthday and Holiday Treats

• Focus on fun activities. Make a special shirt or hat for the birthday child. Let the birthday child choose a book or song for everyone to enjoy.
• If parents want to bring food to celebrate, give them a list of acceptable, healthy options to bring instead of cupcakes and candy.
• Refrain from using “sweets” as a reward.

Serve a fruit and/or a vegetable to toddlers and preschoolers at every meal.

Delicious Ways to Include More Fruits and Vegetables Daily

• Serve vegetables with yogurt, hummus or low-fat dressing.
• Incorporate veggies into other food, like pasta sauce.
• Let children choose a recipe with fruits or vegetables and prepare the dish together.
• Serve fruit as a naturally sweet dessert.

Creative Ways to Teach Children About Healthy Foods

• Highlight a fruit or vegetable of the month. Try some that might be new to kids like squash, kale or kiwi. Bring it in the classroom and let kids touch, smell, prepare and taste it. Read books about it. Add it to the menu.
• Teach kids about colors and textures using fruits and vegetables. Incorporate the food into learning, art projects and physical activities.
• Learn how food grows. Take field trips to local farms and farmers markets. Plant a class garden and let kids help.

Offer toddlers and preschoolers French fries, tater tots, hash browns, potato chips or other fried or pre-fried potatoes no more than once a month. Make sure to serve fried and breaded meats no more than once a month as well (including chicken nuggets, fish sticks and other fried or pre-fried forms of frozen and breaded meats or fish).

Examples of Fried or Pre-Fried Foods
Meats:
Chicken nuggets
Chicken patties
Fried fish fillets
Fish sticks
Popcorn shrimp

Vegetables:
French fries and Crinkle-cut fries
Tater tots
Hash browns
Onion rings and onion straws
Fried okra

How to Tell if a Packaged Food is Fried or Pre-Fried
If a package says that the food is “crunchy”, “crispy”, “battered”, or “breaded”, it is probably fried or pre-fried. You may need to check the nutrition label as well. Common ingredients in these foods include:

• Oil (partially hydrogenated soybean oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil)
• Corn starch or wheat starch
• Bread crumbs
• Bleached wheat flour or yellow corn flour

Serve all meals to preschoolers family-style. ‘Family-style’ dining means children serve themselves with limited help, and adults sit at the table and eat the same foods.

Family-style dining is a great opportunity to teach by doing, and talk with the children about what they are eating.

Ways to Make Family-Style Dining Work

• Let kids practice serving themselves first.
• Use play food, like plastic fruits and veggies.
• Use the child-size equipment. Use smaller pitchers, tongs, and serving bowls and plates. Put dressings and dips in child-size squeeze bottles.
• Be prepared for spills. Mistakes will happen so have paper towels within reach.
• Show kids you enjoy eating healthy foods. They will follow your example.