Teach your child to eat well from an early age

• Did you know that healthy eating habits are acquired during childhood?
• Arnidol^® offers advice so you can make mealtimes fun and your child learns to eat all kinds of food.

Do you worry about your child’s diet? Do you think it’s balanced and she likes everything? Then you’ll be interested to know some of our lifelong habits are acquired during childhood, for instance, eating habits. Many experts maintain that tastes are acquired in the early years of a child’s life and they are difficult to change after the age of 10 or 12. That’s why it is important to teach them healthy eating habits and to follow a balanced diet from a very early age. Arnidol® has some helpful advice.

Tips on teaching your child to eat well

Involve her in deciding the weekly menu. 

Let her join in when you put together the weekly menu, so she can see that it includes both her favourite dishes and those she’s not so keen on but has to eat.

Make her your assistant in the supermarket and in the kitchen.

Take your child shopping with you and use the time to explain why we buy a variety of foods. Let her ask questions and choose pieces of fruit, vegetables, meat and fish that you will eat. In the kitchen, let her help with safe jobs: washing vegetables, coating meat, etc. This way she will understand the importance of eating all kinds of food and appreciate the work that goes into cooking.

Eat as a family.

Make mealtimes relaxed and fun, a time when the family gets together to enjoy food and chat. Try to adapt everyone’s schedule so that you can at least have your main meals together and make these times to share the good things that have happened during the day. Avoid having arguments at the table.

Set an example.

Children copy everything their parents do, so set a good example. What you do at the table becomes a family habit for your children, both the food you eat and the way you behave.

Vary the presentation and the way you cook food.

Prepare the same foods in different ways so your child can discover new flavours and doesn’t get bored. For instance, one day serve Swiss chards boiled with potatoes and another do them in white sauce, with cheese or in a creamy soup.

Respect her tastes.

Find out whether your child says ‘I don’t like it’ because she really doesn’t or because she wants to avoid a food she thinks is boring. Encourage her to try everything and if, once she’s tried a food several times and cooked a number of different ways, she still says she doesn’t like it, respect that.

Arnidol^® has given you a few tips on how to help your child learn to eat healthily from a very early age. But every mum has her own tricks. How do you do it? Give your opinion in our forum and share your experience with other mums.