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!
