What do we want for our children?
Parents want many things for their children. Good health would be the most important among them.
Some diseases are inherited; parents cannot control the genes they pass on to their children
In other cases, the disease is the result of a lack of understanding. The importance of helping our children develop good nutritional habits is often overlooked. Teaching children to live a healthy lifestyle is especially difficult today. Why, I’m thinking plain old TV just for starters.
How does television rob children of the opportunity to be healthy? My first thought is advertising. What children are bombarded with while sitting in front of the television. There is advertising after advertising encouraging our children to eat and drink garbage. Even today’s cereals are coated with sugar. So much so that they can often feel like they are eating sweets.
Beverages like soft drinks are the preferred drink in the minds of our children. It has to be sweet to be good. High fructose corn syrup is now recognized as contributing to obesity. One of the most used products today in processed foods. Replaces sugar to make things taste sweet. Read the labels and you’ll find this on so many things our kids eat and drink. In reality, it is not only children, adults also consume these products.
Nutritionists will see high fructose corn syrup intake as a key factor in the reason for the obesity we see today. Our bodies and the bodies of our children process this sweetener differently than traditional sugar. It actually causes the liver to send more fat into the system.
I am not advocating eating a lot of sugar, rather in the case of drinks I would suggest drinking something natural that does not contain sugar. There is rooibos tea, herbal tea, tisanes and green, black and white tea. Excellent drinks, without the need for sugar and with many healthy advantages to drink them. Enjoy them as a hot drink or add ice if that’s your mood.
Teas and tisanes have vitamins and minerals that are beneficial. Sounds like a healthier option? Happens to me. Herbal teas have the added benefit of being caffeine free.
When is the right time to introduce your children to a healthier lifestyle?? Should we do it when they are in high school, after years of consuming food that is not nutritious? Maybe we should wait a little longer when our kids are in college to educate them on nutrition. We can email them all kinds of information about healthier options for them. Do you think they would be interested then?
Come on, you know when the time is right. When you can still hold them in your arms and rock them to sleep. Before you have the emotion of seeing them, take that first step.
That’s the time, those precious years we have with them. These are the years when we can encourage our children to acquire a taste for healthy things.
Children learn well by example. The old cliche “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t have the same force as it did when I was young.
Throw all those sodas, all those fruit drinks that have high fructose corn syrup in them down the sink. Acquire a taste for something healthier, something easy and quick to make at home and that you can carry with you in a thermos or sports bottle.
Focus on becoming a healthier adult. Then it becomes easier to encourage healthy children to follow in their footsteps.
