Teaching your kids healthy eating habits and preparing nutritious meals for them is one of the most important things you can do as a parent. With childhood obesity rates on the rise, making sure your children eat right should be one of your major concerns. Unfortunately, unless you majored in nutrition in college, you may only have a vague idea of how to create healthy meal plans for your family. Many parents cook the same recipes for their kids that their parents cooked for them: casseroles, pot roasts, spaghetti and meat balls, etc. While many of these traditional home cooked meals aren’t necessarily bad for kids, they aren’t always necessarily the healthiest options.
If you want your family to learn more about nutrition and eat smarter, here are some online resources that you’ll find helpful:
1. Eat Smart, Play Hard – Sponsored by the USDA, this website provides parents with important nutritional information to help their kids make smarter eating choices and healthier lifestyle choices. Additionally, Eat Smart, Play Hard offers a useful meal planning tool for families and tips on how to grocery shop and exercise as a family to promote health.
2. KidsHealth – This website offers nutrition and fitness information and tips in addition to information about the human body and health in general. There are three versions of the KidsHealth site: one for parents, one for kids, and one for teens. The content on each of the sites is geared toward the different age groups. So, your kids and teens can learn more about how to stay healthy on their own versions of the website, and then the whole family can get together and compare notes.
3. BAM! – Made by the CDC for kids, BAM! uses games and cartoons to teach kids more about nutrition, diseases, physical fitness, and safety. If you want your children to understand why it’s important for them to eat healthy and stay physically active, you’ll find this site to be incredibly beneficial. BAM! might even get your kids excited about eating their vegetables.
4. Parents.com Kids Nutrition – If you’re having trouble coming up with healthy recipes to prepare for your family, you’ll find the Kids Nutrition section of the Parents.com website to be incredibly beneficial. It’s chock full of nutritious recipes and healthy eating tips and information.
The above websites well help your family get informed about nutrition. Remember that healthy kids and parents make for a happier family!
About the Author: Nadia Jones is a freelance blogger who loves writing about education, new technology, lifestyle and health. As an education writer, she works to provide helpful information, pointers, and the most recent online college news for students looking into online degrees.