A Fine Parent

A Life Skills Blog Exclusively For Parents

About Vanessa Wordsworth

Vanessa Wordsworth is a writer, school teacher and mother of three almost fully grown children. After leaving a career in finance, she became a stay-at-home mother and completed a teaching qualification. She draws on her own experiences to write about parenting and education.

How to Encourage Kids to Have Healthy Eating Habits

by .
(This article is part of the Positive Parenting FAQ series. Get free article updates here.)

Healthy-eating-habits-main-image_9801334.jpgHave you noticed how some children (and adults), when presented with a buffet of food, make a well balanced, mostly healthy selection?

While others pass over anything resembling a fruit or a vegetable and load their plates with as much fatty, sugary food as they possibly can?

Why is this?

How come some kids have healthy eating habits while others gravitate towards junk food? Is there anything we can do to nudge our children into the former group rather than the latter?

I still remember taking my son to a birthday party when he was about seven. He totally ignored the sandwiches and fruit kebabs, although he would happily eat both at home, and loaded his plate with crisps, cupcakes and sausage rolls. I wasn’t going to intervene – it was a party after all – but after the second full can of fizzy drink, I found myself stepping in and saying ‘no more’.

It bothered me because, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity affects 39.8% of adults and 18.5% of children in the United States. Obesity-related conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers are the leading causes of preventable premature deaths. [Read more…]