Helping your kids establish healthy eating habits from an early age is crucial for their long-term physical and mental health. While it might seem impossible at first, getting your child to have a positive relationship with healthy food will set them up for a lifetime of good choices. Here are all the key reasons parents should prioritize creating healthy eating habits for their kids.

Poor eating habits can create obesity

Unhealthy eating habits can lead to obesity and chronic diseases. Children who grow up eating fast food and junk food are at a disadvantage because being overweight becomes familiar. For example, when a child has been overweight their whole life, they won’t necessarily realize how bad their situation is until or unless it becomes severe. The bigger a person gets, the harder it is to gather the motivation to get healthier. A lot of people only get serious about dropping weight when they feel absolutely miserable. Don’t let your child get to that point.

If your child doesn’t like vegetables no matter how you cook them, try grilling them on the barbecue. Cooking vegetables on an outdoor grill just might be the solution you need to eliminate the bitterness that puts kids off. Plus, if your child is old enough, you can teach them how to cook their own vegetables and give them a sense of pride.

Healthy eating habits make kids feel good

You may not see it right away, but the more you train your kids into healthy eating habits, the better they will feel all around and that can have a profoundly positive effect on their social life, both at home and at school. According to one study performed on kids aged 2 through 9, kids who at healthier had better self-esteem and fewer emotional and peer problems.

Although food isn’t the only factor at play, unhealthy eating habits can contribute to poor moods, like frustration, grumpiness, anger, and even violence. Studies have found that frequent junk food consumption is associated with psychiatric distress, violent behaviors, and high impulsivity. Kids who suffer from these issues often do poorly in school and have trouble maintaining positive relationships with their peers.

By supporting healthy eating habits early on in your child’s life, you’ll be setting them up to feel better, establish stronger friendships, and do better in life.

A poor relationship with food can cause eating disorders

All sorts of eating disorders can develop when a child doesn’t have a healthy relationship with food. For example, children who believe eating anything, even healthy food, will make them fat are at risk of developing bulimia. Once their mind is made up that all food is bad, it’s hard to reverse that thought pattern and it can become a lifelong struggle.

On the other side of the coin, many kids end up developing issues with overeating. Some kids never feel satisfied with a normal sized meal and will continue to eat multiple meals or entire packages of food in one sitting.

Sometimes this isn’t entirely their fault; fast food and packaged foods contain chemicals that induce hunger. These substances include advanced glycation end products (AGEs), monosodium glutamate (MSG), refined flour, phthalates, high fructose corn syrup, and more. Fast food also breaks down faster than healthy food, which causes blood sugar to spike and induces more hunger.

Once a child is used to eating multiple portions for every meal, it’s a difficult habit to stop. If their food of choice happens to be junk food, they’re going to continually do harm to their body.

Healthy eating habits can make kids more adventurous

Healthy food tends to embody variety in flavor, color, and presentation, while fast food is usually greasy, fatty, and somewhat plain. It’s a big switch to go from only eating junk food to exploring dishes with more complexity, like fettuccine alfredo, smoked salmon, and chicken parmesan. However, getting kids to try flavorful dishes at a young age will benefit them for a lifetime.

There are plenty of kids who refuse to try new foods simply because they’re not used to new flavors and the unknown factor can seem scary. Sometimes kids legitimately don’t like new foods, but often it’s a matter of not being willing to go outside of their comfort zone.

Kids who don’t expand their palate early on will usually struggle to taste new foods as an adult, which causes them to miss out on some amazing dishes.

Support your child’s future

Instilling healthy eating habits in your child from a young age is an investment in their long-term wellbeing. By prioritizing nutritious food and encouraging them to expand their palate, you’ll empower them to make informed eating choices throughout their life.

​​