Childrens nutrition and the Lunchbox

The importance of Childrens nutrition, can be as simple as what you put in the lunchbox of your kids each day. This could well define how many behavioural conditions might be able to be controlled by a correct and healthy antioxidant rich diet, implanted early in life.

The importance of the diet can be summed up in three words. Mum then Dad. Generally speaking, by the time children are getting ready for school and lunch boxes are being packed; it is usually Mum who is doing the heavy lifting, as Dad has most likely gone to work.

Although the home environment is where childrens nutrition and dietary habits start, it is the essential nutrition in the lunchbox that becomes the blueprint; for the rest of a child’s life. For it is here, that the childs food and diet memory is implanted. Good or Bad?

Just as an elite athletes body performs by muscle memory, so too are the childs memory of those early eating years. Memories which remains deep within us and so go on to programme us in the most basic fashion, forever !!

Childrens nutrition and junk food

Put bluntly, junk food supplies junk nutrition and therefore no lasting nutrients are supplied throughout the day after the first sugar hit.

However dried fruit and nuts, a piece of fruit, a multi grain salad roll or natural juices, work on thru the day to convert to the natural sugars to energy. These are so essential for growing children, by supplying the nutrients that their young minds and bodies need.

These natural sugars are so important, for sustaining stable blood sugar levels in a young, fast growing metabolism.

A young body that gains maximum support, to replenish neuro-muscular acivity and healthy internal organs with nutrients that are the main source of the power. This helps to keep the mind concentrating on the study, sport or the tasks at hand.

Kids fitness, weight and self-esteem

Today’s society encourages children with so many tempting treats on TVs and with promotions of all types which inevitably leads to many with a body mass index (BMI), high into the 30s and even the 40s. Common sense tells us therefore, that there are only two ways to remedy childrens nutritional deficiencies.

The first is obvious, eat correctly with properly planned meals. The second is simply what we did as children and that is to run around and play and exercise sufficiently.

The sad reality of our lifestyle now, is that far too much of kids time is spent indoors for varying reasons; ranging from TV, computer games, study, personal safety or even health and emotional issues.

Health and emotional issues are generally intertwined with the unhealthy preoccupation with sitting in front of a computer or touch screen. It is here that interaction with trolls, can leave lasting impressions on fragile minds. Those kids may then seek solace in binge eating and purging, excess lollies and fizzy drinks; or constant fries and junk food eating.

There is a reliable and easy answer here. Limit time spent on the Internet and increase the time spent running in parks or cycling up hills.

In the following 4 by 3 exercise and eating plan section, there are a series of simple exercises which involve short sharp bursts of energy in 20 second bursts of exercise. To start with on an exercise bike. Repeated three to four times with a warm down break in between. It is all the exercise a child who is overweight, will need to modify and regulate their BMI levels.

It is very easy as it does not involve hours pounding the pavement. Overweight children, teens or adults should in fact be discouraged, from strenuous running or jarring exercises. It may well do more harm then good.

This may sound too simple, but it’s a proven science that is being uncovered at present and it takes the tedious hours of running and stretching out of the equation and frees a child’s mind for other things. A gradual loss of weight, becomes a gradual increase in self-esteem and happiness.

Childrens nutrition comes in cooking and good eating habits

Most caring mum and dad’s are likely to see that the kids can be helping whenever possible, in the kitchen with the prepping of the evening or weekend meals; for life’s cooking lessons that lie ahead. This is where kids can be taught life’s simple things.

Simple things such as, you do not need to add salt to a meal; unless it is the amount suitable for the youngest and most fragile body at the dinner table. Salt is required in different amounts from near zero in a baby, to larger quantities for an active worker sweating in the noonday sun. Excessive salt in the formative years, can be a danger to the arteries and organs in the young body and can cause lifelong problems.

Processed sugar is not a necessity for life and natural sugars can be gained from fruits and wholegrain foods, by the breaking down of carbohydrates in the diet. Manufactured sugar and chemical sweeteners, are just as damaging as nicotine and alcohol; to the body’s well-being. They are now responsible for a large proportion of the death, disease and illness in the world.

Aspartame has been for years and more so lately, linked to very unhealthy disruptions in the bodies chemistry; with claims of a higher than normal risk of cancers. There are numerous legal cases linked to it and it has been banned by Pepsi in the USA. Should your kids be drinking, an at risk food additive that the worlds biggest drink maker has banned. The best and healthiest alternative is natural and it comes from the honey bee.

Nature has evolved to be the best producer of what our bodies should ingest and thrive on, but the multinational companies keep turning out the junk that is high in trans fats, sugars, preservatives, sodium and so many unnatural substances, emulsifiers and additives that border on poisonous for our children an mankind as a whole.

Kids health and rising obesity levels are a direct result of the fast food Western diet, with all the preservatives, additives, sweeteners and red, orange and yellow food dyes and colourings that come with it. For really hard hitting facts and danger warnings on behavioural disorders related to sugars, preseratives and food colourings; look up https://feingold.org/, founded by the highly esteemed Paediatrician Dr Ben Feingold.

Children who are encouraged to cook by helping out in the kitchen and who are learning to use healthy greens and better ingredients, will get to know that they are much healthier than their fast food alternative friends. They are cleaning and maintaining their internal organs and are bettering themselves in more ways than one.

Firstly, good eating becomes a habit as they learn what ingredients go with what to make something yummy. They quickly figure out, that what goes into their mouths; is going to create the healthy lifestyle that is so possible, for the rest of their lives.

Secondly and more importantly, when they are away on vacations or school camps, family holidays or when they are taking the first steps out to living away from home. They are naturally equipped to cook and provide for themselves and to be prepared to be an efficient urbanised survivor.

In the Healthier Tips 4 by 3 Diet chapters, we talk about different foods, different ingredients and more specifically; the best foods that supply the best nutrients. Using the most cleansing antioxidant rich vitamin and minerals food stuffs, so essential for a healthy lifestyle. Young people taking the time to learn these easy simple lessons about the correct rich nutrition, will soon come to understand that:

“you are what you eat”!!