8 Things We Need to Teach our Kids about Food

Raising kids is hard. There are so many life lessons we need to teach them in order to mold their minds and bodies into healthy adults. While calculus and balancing a checkbook are challenging life lessons for kids, teaching kids about food isn’t hard. However, it does take time. I thought I would share a few things we need to teach our kids about food so you could get started with your own children. For more information, check out my post about how to teach kids where meat comes from.  .

 

8 Things We Need to Teach our Kids about Food

Making healthy food choices is a concept that you need to start introducing when children are young. And  you need to incorporate these healthy food concepts into your own life in order to model smart food habits that your kids will want to follow.

Teaching kids about healthy foods starts with YOU making good choices about healthy foods!

Just because a food is brightly colored does not mean it tastes better.

Neon blue sports drinks would not taste any different if they took out the ‘blue’. Do not base your perception of a food based on it’s color. Unless nature created it, of course. Then I am all for vibrant colors in my food!

Most of your diet should be made of food that IS an ingredient, not that CONTAINS ingredients.

The best way to teach our kids about healthy food is to take them to the grocery store with you when you shop. I know, moms of toddlers are hating me right now. However,  your child will never understand how to shop for healthy foods if they don’t go with you!

Let’s teach kids to make healthy choices when they are young so that when presented with a shopping cart and a credit card they know how to do it right.

Healthy Recipes for Kids

• Healthy Fruit Salad Recipe with Easy Yogurt Glaze
• Cinnamon Apple Energy Bites 
• Mint Chocolate Chip Greek Yogurt Popsicle Recipe

Don’t be fooled by the front of the box. 

Manufacturers have been known to write all sorts of things on the front of their packages to fool people into thinking it is healthy. Things like ‘Contains natural ingredients. How vague can we get, right?

Let’s teach our kids to flip the box over. Read the back label where the actual nutrition information and ingredients are listed. That is what the brands don’t always want you to see. Hence the really tiny print.

Don’t get caught up in ‘diets’. 

The key to a healthy lifestyle is not getting caught up in the word ‘diet’. Instead of counting calories, avoiding carbs, or trying to sweat off the weight with the next greatest exercise equipment, just concentrate on making smart choices.

Eat when you are hungry. Get some sort of exercise daily. Make 80% of your food intake ‘good, wholesome, natural food’, and then don’t worry so much about the other 20%.

Go for a walk and eat a cookie. Don’t play video games all day and eat 12 cookies. Like Michael Pollan said in his book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants”.

Don’t get sucked into the next big promotion. 

Just because Taylor Swift is drinking Diet Coke and Dora the Explorer is on your box of cereal doesn’t make them any healthier for you. This is a lesson I taught my kids VERY young.

Kids are smarter than you think. My kids knew the phrase ‘marketing gimmick’ by the time they were 5. No way in the world was I going to buy them Sponge Bob cereal and their questions of ‘why’ were driving me nuts.

You CAN grow it yourself. 

We need to teach our kids how to grow food. Even if you just show them how to put some herbs in a pot or buy a chicken or two for the backyard.

Our kids need to understand where food comes from and I don’t mean the drive-through lane at your local fast-food restaurant.

Show them how to dig up the soil, put a plant into the ground, and nurture it for a few months. Then show them how to take that food and cook it in their own kitchen.

Kids who learn to garden and cook at an early age are much more likely to do those things as adults. And gardening with kids is a great way to raise eco-friendly children. Read my post about how to work with your HOA to approve front-yard food gardening in your neighborhood. 

Food ingredients should not be unpronounceable chemicals.

We need more people in this world who actually read the ingredient list on the box of food. My daughter came home from school one day and told me that their class learned about a popular sub sandwich restaurant that uses a chemical in their bread that is also found in yoga mats. Ewww… gross, right?

Her friends were all horrified. My daughter was already well aware of the questionable ingredients that food manufacturers use in their products. Antifreeze in kids’ drinks and beaver anal gland secretions in ice cream no longer shock her. Teach kids that if they don’t recognize an ingredient, they might not want to be eating it.

There are many people in this world who do not have enough food.

Food insecurity is a real problem in this world. And yes, we need to do something about that. Volunteer with your kids to feed those less fortunate.

There are many organizations that are trying to help feed the poor and they should be given our support. This could be in the form of a monetary donation, a few hours of volunteer time, or taking your child shopping for food donations for your local food bank.

Teaching kids about healthy food needs to start when they are young. Make sure they understand where their food comes from. Talk to them about supporting local farmers and buying local food whenever possible.

While we can’t do much in our own lives about fixing our country’s broken food system, we can encourage a healthy understanding of food in our own children. Can you think of anything else we need to teach our kids about food?