Preschooler nutrition and fitness: in a nutshell

Healthy food and eating for preschoolers

• Our article on nutrition and fitness basics for preschoolers contains guidelines and practical tools to help you ensure your child eats good food.
• For good food made easy, try these meals in minutes.
• Pack a goodness punch by including lots of your child’s nutritional needs in one dish. Try Everything fried rice, an omelette with the lot, shepherd’s pie, baked beans on wholegrain toast, or pasta bolognaise with a meat and vegie sauce.
• Healthy eating habits will help your child avoid falling into the trap of childhood obesity. Limits snacks such as salty chips, lollies and sweet biscuits, especially while your child is watching TV.

The importance of a healthy breakfast
A healthy breakfast wakes up your preschooler’s body by starting the metabolism. Breakfast provides the energy your child needs for the day. Research has found that children who skip breakfast tend to weigh more. This might be because these hungry children eat more during the day.

Mornings can be a mad rush for many families. Thankfully, breakfast can be quick and easy to prepare, like yoghurt and fruit, cereal and milk, or toast.

Fussy eaters
Erratic appetites (starving one day, not hungry the next) are common in preschoolers. Your child’s body goes through growth spurts, and it can tell how much food is needed each day.

Forcing children to eat when they’re not hungry overrides this natural ability. This might lead to overeating in later life if children can’t tell how much food they need.

As long as you offer your child healthy food, let your child’s appetite be the guide. Most children get plenty to eat even if it seems like they are barely eating at all.

Water: the best drink

The following tips might get your preschooler drinking more water:

• Offer water with all meals and snacks.
• Keep chilled water in the fridge for hot days. Add slices of lemon or orange, or a sprig of mint, for interest.
• In summer, freeze chopped fruit in ice blocks and pop into a cup of water.
• Carry filled water bottles when you go out.

Fruit juice can provide valuable nutrients, but it has lots of sugar. It’s better to eat the fruit instead. If you do want to give your child an occasional treat of fruit juice, mix it half-and-half with water.

Preschooler exercise

Encourage your child to be physically active – you’re helping to establish a healthy lifelong habit.

Exercise gives preschoolers strong bones and muscles, healthy hearts, lungs and arteries, and improved coordination, balance, posture and flexibility. It helps ward off heart disease, cancer and diabetes later in life. It reduces children’s risk of getting overweight. Being overweight is unhealthy and uncomfortable – and very unpleasant for a young child.

TV is one of the biggest obstacles to physical activity. When children spend lots of time in front of the TV and computer, they miss out on the physical activity and play that keeps them healthy. Child development experts say that preschoolers should have no more than an hour of screen time each day.

Preschoolers don’t need much encouragement to run around in the fresh air. If you play with them, they’ll love it even more. Preschoolers (and you) will enjoy:

• playing at the park
• flying a kite
• dancing
• silly walks (pretend to walk like an elephant)
• chasing bubbles
• swimming
• bushwalking.

Video: Avoiding junk food

24mb

This short video features parents talking about junk food and children. Mums and dads share strategies for making a healthy diet part of everyday life. As part of this, they suggest approaching junk food as a ‘sometimes’ food. But the best strategy for getting your kids to avoid junk food is keeping it out of your home. If it’s not there, your children can’t eat it.

 

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  By Raising Children Network

  Your child’s best role model for developing good health, physical skills and self-esteem is you. It’s important that you eat a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise.
  
  Tips for health

  • A healthy breakfast provides the energy your preschooler needs for the day.
  • Serve meals that include all your child’s nutritional needs in one dish.
  • Offer water with all meals and snacks.
  • Your child will be hungrier when having a growth spurt so be guided by his appetite.
  • Physical exercise has many benefits: strong bones and muscles; healthy heart, lungs and arteries; improved coordination, balance and flexibility; reduced risk of becoming overweight; prevention of heart disease, cancer and diabetes in later life.
  • Encourage outdoor play by joining in the fun at the local park, beach or national park.

  This article is an extract only. For more information, visit raisingchildren.net.au/nutrition__fitness/preschoolers_nutrition.html.

  Sourced from the Raising Children Network's comprehensive and quality-assured Australian parenting website www.raisingchildren.net.au.