Meeting the Nutritional Needs of Children
How to Make Sure Kids are Getting Enough Vitamins and Minerals
Ongoing research is revealing that many children in the western world are undernourished. For example, in New Zealand, the 2002 Ministry of Health Children’s Nutrition Survey showed that only two out of five children meet the recommended serving of fruit and vegetable servings per day. In the United States, a national study of children aged 1 to 11, published in August 2009 by the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that one out of five U.S children are deficient in vitamin D. Over in the United Kingdom, there are currently 1.5million children classified as either overweight or obese.
Which Vitamins and Minerals do Children Need?
Children require a wide range of vitamins and minerals. However, a few are especially important for growing bodies and minds. Vitamin A promotes normal growth and development, along with tissue and bone repair. This vitamin also helps produce healthy skin, eyes and immune responses. Calcium helps build strong bones as a child grows. On top of that, vitamin D, magnesium, B vitamins and essential fatty acids (DHA), as well as iron and iodine, are known to encourage healthy brain and nerve function. These particular vitamins and minerals also help improve a child’s memory and overall mood.
How to Provide a Healthy, Nutritious Diet
Children should get everything they need from a rich, balanced and healthy diet that includes:
- Fruit and vegetables.
- Protein (meat, fish, eggs).
- Calcium resources (cheese, milk, yogurt, almonds).
- Whole grains.
Children do not need large amounts of fat, sugar or refined white flour in their diets. Sugars and simple carbohydrates have a similar impact on a child’s body. They are empty calories that disrupt energy levels and insulin levels and increase body fat. The risk of diabetes increases when these sugars and carbohydrates are consumed.
Fat is slightly different as some fat is necessary in anybody’s diet- whether they are an adult or a child. Fat provides energy, enables the body to absorb the fat soluble vitamins A, S, E and K, and is also needed to prevent fatty acid deficiency. Problems occur when too many artificial fats are taken in. These man-made fats are also much more dangerous when combined with simple carbohydrates. Donuts, chocolate bars, deep fried chips and hamburgers are all examples of this dangerous partnership which can result in raised cholesterol and heart disease.
Convincing Children to Eat Properly
Most children learn from example, so if the parents are seen to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, the child will be more likely to follow suit. Starting early is crucial, offering the child a variety of different foods and making sure that a colourful, healthy diet is followed when the child starts eating at the table with the rest of the family. Children will generally develop similar tastes to their parents so if mum and dad refuse to eat broccoli, it stands to reason that the child will probably refuse to eat it as well.
It is also important to remember that it does take time for new tastes to be accepted. If the child rejects a certain food at one meal, it doesn’t mean that he or she won’t like it a few weeks down the track as his or her palate develops.
Other ways of getting all that much needed goodness into a child’s diet include:
- Making smoothies, muffins and yogurts full of fruit and other healthy ingredients.
- Adding chopped fruit to cereal.
- Adding vegetable toppings to pizza.
- Mixing vegetables into pasta sauce.
- Serving sliced raw vegetables – such as carrots or zucchini – with a tasty dip.
The Benefits of Dietary Supplements and How to Incorporate Them
A high-quality multivitamin or mineral supplement can help keep kids healthy and vibrant. However, parents need to remember that they are not designed to replace food. They should be regarded as a useful top-up.
With the wide selection of supplements now being designed specifically for children, it can be difficult to know which one to choose. It is certainly worth checking out the list of ingredients when shopping for a suitable product. Some multivitamins are extremely high in carbohydrates and sugar, while others use low doses or poor, cheap forms of nutrients. These supplements are not worth using as they are really nothing more than very expensive sweets.
For more information on children's nutrition and how to create healthy snacks, read Nutrition and Children. The American Academy of Pediatrics website is also a very useful resource.
Sources:
McPherson, Kim, Martin Brown, Tim Marsh and Tom Byatt. Obesity: Recent Trends in Children's Diet. UK: the National Heart Forum, 2009.
Kumar, Juhi, Paul Muntner, Frederick J. Kaskel and Michael L. Melamed. "The Prevalence and Associations of 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Deficiency in US Children". Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, August 2009.
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