Thursday, July 24, 2008

Healthy Foods for Healthy Children

Sometimes in our busy workaday life it’s hard to make sure we are keeping our family and children healthy and supplying them with all the nutrition they need to grow into healthy, well balanced adults. With so much going on in our day to day lives, the temptation to rely on prepackaged quick meals, lunch cafeteria choices, and other less wholesome lunches is hard to resist. However, there are so many good reasons to make sure kids eat fresh, all natural foods as often as possible.

These days it seems like there are new health risks facing our children every day. More and more young people are being prescribed medications for all sorts of illnesses from physical to mental to emotional. These powerful medications are not always 100% successful, and often come with a hefty price tag of dangerous side effects. Yet we neglect the basic building blocks of life…the foods we eat.

It is well known that healthy foods such as whole grains, fresh organic vegetables, all natural foods and unprocessed ingredients are much better in every way. They keep the body clean and in proper working order, prevent illness and disease, extend life expectancy and combat the symptoms of old age, promote healing and recovery faster and more thoroughly and a whole range of other benefits.

Maintaining a healthy diet and good nutrition is especially important for children. Kids are still growing and developing, and the body uses a lot of fuel during these stages. Young people tend to be more active as well, and require the proper kind of fuel to maintain the constant on-the-go lifestyle of many youngsters. A lot of energy is burned by a child out playing in the woods, running in the yard, riding a bicycle and playing all the sports and activities that kids do

Children are also students, and in this span of years they do a lot of learning and emulating and also at this time habits are formed that may stay with them for the rest of their lives. All natural menus and organic recipes are one way to help your kids maintain the energy and attention span needed to achieve the most they can in academics. It seems that many children today live on diets that are full of things such as artificial ingredients, highly processed refined sugars and ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup. Then we wonder why they can’t sit still and concentrate in class.

Middle schools and high schools around the country have also taken to the strange practice of allowing fast food chains that serve meals devoid of nutritious value to our young people to occupy space on campuses or in the schools themselves. Fast food chains such as these offer breakfast, lunch and dinner foods, and many young people are relying on these places for two and sometimes three of their meals a day. Ice cream, candy, soda and other types of snacks and junk food are often made available to students in the stores of the school itself. How can we expect to make the right choice when it comes to nutrition with such temptations available to them?

Teaching children to respect good nutrition from the start is one way to ensure that your children will appreciate the benefits of a healthy diet and natural lifestyle. When a young person learns about the value of organic foods, all natural recipes and healthy diets, they have a chance to get excited about it and carry on the habits into adulthood.

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