It is not always easy to decide what you should feed your child to be healthy because, while you want to provide your child with the best nutrients so that they develop a healthy mind and body, it can be hard to decide what to choose.

There is a lot of information out there that can be overwhelming because one article says one thing and the other says that you should do exactly the opposite. So we have gathered some diet guidelines that many scientists have provided over the years to help you understand what a healthy diet for your child means and why it is needed.

The implications of an unhealthy diet

An unhealthy diet can lead to many problems in children as well as in adults, but one important thing that you should know is that the eating habits that we get when we are young, we tend to keep for the rest of our lives. 

That is why some companies conduct product marketing campaigns in schools because they want to form their clients for another 30 years to come. If a child is fed fast food through their young age period, it is highly possible that, as an adult, they will continue to eat fast food. So it is important to create healthy eating habits from the beginning.

What should your child eat?

Children between 2 and 3 years old should eat 1 serving of fruit, 2 and a half of vegetables, 1 meat serving, 4 servings of grains and 1 and a half dairy servings a day. 

As children grow older, their portions increase until they get to 2 servings of fruit, 2 and a half of meat, 5 servings of vegetables, 6 servings of grains and 3 and a half servings of dairy per day by the time they are 13-years-old.

These are just some guidelines, but it is important to understand where your child has to get its nutrients from. Fruit and vegetables are of high importance because that is where children get their fibers from. You can increase the consumption by including vegetables in every meal and introducing raw fruit snacks during the day.

Meat is important because that is where your children get their protein from, and, as you may know, protein is essential for growth. Dairy products also give the body a fair amount of protein, but they also have a lot of calcium that promotes good bone health.

What habits should you introduce into your child’s routine?

Humans are creatures of habit and the sooner in life that we develop healthy habits, the more likely they are to be present in our lives forever if we repeat them long enough. Habits are the only things that assure us that we can become great or bad at something we do, and healthy eating is no exception.

That is why we should encourage our kids to adopt healthy habits. You can do that by making dinner a family gathering. Associating food with positive emotions will make your child want to eat and if you provide him/her with healthy food they will associate it with positive emotions.

You can try to make food look funny and you should also make it a game to prepare the food together. It is important not to keep fast food in your home and to encourage your children to eat a healthy breakfast every morning. This will make them develop this healthy habit for the rest of their lives and become healthy individuals.