Saturday, September 13, 2014

How To Know Your Children Are Getting Enough Daily Nutrients



If your family is as busy as mine, your time is filled with sports practices, after school enrichment, swimming lessons, music lessons…. the list is endless – not to mention working a full time job and tackling homework. With a schedule this packed its hard not to be tempted by the convenience of drive thru. So while you may be putting in the effort to make sure your children are eating healthy, how do you know they are getting enough nutrients to support their growing bodies? Build Healthy Kids has an easy 5 minute online assessment you can take to help determine if your kids are getting the required amount of daily essentials http://www.buildhealthykids.com/assessment.html.

Based on the quick assessment of my younger son (age 6), his fruit and vegetable servings per day were good, but I definitely have room for improvement. Such as adding half a banana with his honey oats and ½ cup of whole milk for his morning breakfast. When packing the boys lunches (my other son is 9), I always make sure there is at minimum an apple sauce squeezer but now I’ll also add grapes, apple slices, or other fruit of their liking to the after school snack. 

Another challenge with my younger son is he doesn’t like chicken very much. He’ll eat chicken nuggets or homemade chicken strips (click here for my kid friendly recipe http://kangarookidsfitness.blogspot.com/p/kid-friendly-healthy-recipes.html) but any other preparation and he balks. Therefore, I’ve increased black beans and rice mixed with fresh cut corn (or canned when I’m in a hurry).

I encourage you to take the assessment as well. While we can’t obsess over making sure our children are receiving exactly 2 cups of milk per day or that they ate a rainbow throughout the day, its always a good idea to make sure you are in the ballpark of what keeps our kids healthy.  Please let us know if your kids are getting enough daily nutrients in the comments below. Create more healthy kids!