Tips to get your kids eating healthier: Substitutions.

Kids are picky eaters, aren’t they? One day they love macaroni and cheese and the next day they don’t! Something too green and grassy looking on their plate and they react as if it is kryptonite.

It’s not easy helping your kids develop healthy eating habits, especially today when any snack is available, fast food is super fast, and our days are busier and busier.

I’ve been learning a lot about the value of nutrition and how some ingredients within food are more detrimental to one’s health than others. My kids are very slender. They have hardly any fat on them, but, their cholesterol levels are higher than they should be. Why? They eat too much bad fat, high sodium and empty sugar calories.

When a child is obese, it’s easy to think, “oh, they need to go on a diet”. The problem is, we forget about the kids who appear to be an “acceptable” size. How much fat, salt and sugar are they eating? Are they getting fiber and vitamins in what they eat?

I have a lot to say on this subject and I realized if I put it all down in one post, it’d go on for way too long. I’m going to break my tips into a series of blog entries over the next few days.

My tips are aimed not at cutting calories and putting children on a weight loss “diet”. Rather, my thoughts regard implementing healthier eating styles. The goal, decrease unhealthy fat intake, decrease sodium, and improve the intake of nutrition.

Substitions:

• Oils: What oils are in your pantry? Vegetable oil is one of the unhealthiest “fatty” oils you can use. I tossed my vegetable oils months ago. I now stock olive oil and peanut oil in my cupboard. I cook with them sparingly and my children never even noticed a change. Learn about oils and try using healthier oils when cooking.

• Powdered Seasonings (especially onion and garlic salt): These powder “seasonings” can be very high in sodium. There are currently studies going on regarding a high salt intake and it’s relation to Osteoporosis. Take a look at the seasonings that you use, see if there are ways to substitute those seasonings with healthier options.

For example: Why even use onion powder and garlic powder? Onions and Garlic have some great nutritional and cleansing properties. Buy a bulk bag of onions and a bag of garlic and use fresh instead of powders. It really only adds another minute or two to your cooking time to chop them up.

“But my kids don’t like onions,” you say. Well, I don’t like onions either. I hate the crunch of them in my mouth with that rush of onion flavor. But, we use onions in nearly everything we cook. Cut the pieces very small. Put them in the pan early enough that they soften. Definitely don’t make a big deal about adding them in. My children never even noticed the addition of the onions.

• 2% Milk: 1% milk has the same calcium content as 2%, but less fat. Unhealthy fat (aka Saturated/Trans Fats) can lead to heart problems later in life. For six months I’ve been using 1% milk instead of 2% milk, my children didn’t notice. Of course, it helps to have some hershey’s syrup on hand to mix up some chocolate milk to get them excited about drinking their milk!

Now, I’m not suggesting a non-fat diet for kids. They need the healthy fats, mono and poly.

• Fattier Meat Products: My kids used to like hot dogs, but they aren’t fans anymore. They do love brats though. I’ve replaced hot dogs and brats with turkey versions. The method that was successful for me was to make the substitutions slowly. There are additives and other ingredients within food that we become accustomed to and in some cases, addicted to it. Healthier food sometimes does taste differently and if you have a picky eater, a change in taste too fast can result in immediate refusal. So, with hot dogs, I didn’t give them a beef hotdog on Monday and then a turkey hotdog on Tuesday. I used the healthier hot dogs when mixing with other things, beans, macaroni and cheese, etc. The other familiar foods helped mask the subtle taste differences. Over time, I transitioned them to Turkey products and they never even noticed.

• Granola Bars: Buy low fat granola bars or look for those with high fiber, such as Fiber One bars, 30% of daily fiber and my kids love them.

Here is an action you can take today. Look in your pantry, your refrigerator, and your spice cabinet. Randomly grab a few things and look at the label, how many things do you have with high sodium percentages and fat percentages? Now make a list, the next time you go to the grocery store, compare those figures. Ignore the calories for now, we are working on getting your kids eating healthier, not monitoring their caloric intake.

What tips do you have for healthy substitutions?

Tomorrow I’ll share what I’ve learned about Tummy Time.