Advertisement Kids today are being raised with a “quicker is better” mentality toward meals and snacks. Most families are dining out much more frequently and children’s menus often are limited to cheeseburgers or chicken nuggets with french fries. Their taste buds continue to crave these salty processed products, loaded with saturated fat and sodium, which are usually chased down with unlimited refills of soda pop.
To top it off, we as a society have become quite lazy and are passing this lifestyle on to our children. We jump into our cars to drive just six blocks to buy a gallon of milk. We don’t get off the couch to change the channel on the television. We even pay-at-the-pump to avoid the short walk into the convenience store to pay for our gas. What are we doing with all of the extra time allotted due to these timesaving devises? We are using it to watch more television and play on the computer.
Why not consider walking for trips shorter than a mile, which will take the average person just 15 minutes? A family walk or bike ride after dinner is a great chance to talk to your kids and get exercise.
We need to be aware of and limit “screen time” for our children. Research has shown that children who view more than a total of two hours of television, computers, video games and other screen media combined are at a much greater risk of being obese. Children who have televisions in their bedrooms are 50 percent more likely to be obese than children without. Parents need to be in control of the amount of screen time their children view daily. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the TV-Turnoff Network encourage parents to eliminate screen time for children younger than 2 and to limit older children’s screen/media time to no more than two hours daily.
It’s easy to blame school lunches for your children’s poor eating habits, but school lunch only accounts for 16.9 percent of the total meals eaten by children each year. This means that parents, without regard for the option of sending a cold lunch to school, are in control of 83.1 percent of the meals their children consume.
Instead of thinking of any food as “bad,” it is better to think of the refined, processed flour and sugar products as “treats.” All foods can fit into a healthy eating plan. If you are eating plenty of fruit and vegetables (combination of five each day) and choosing whole-grain breads, crackers and cereals most of the time, you can occasionally consume the less healthy carbohydrates without any guilt. See the basic smoothie recipe below for a quick healthy breakfast or after-school snack idea.
Fad diets, such as the low-carbohydrate plans, are partly responsible for a majority of the obesity in America today. The “feast or famine” cycle of the past is our current “diet or binge” cycle of today. We need to teach children to avoid diets and instead listen to their bodies. In a perfect world, we would all take a commonsense approach of eating when we are hungry and stopping when we are satisfied.
Basic Smoothie Recipe
1/2 cup skim or 1 percent milk or soymilk
1/2 cup flavored yogurt
1/2 of a medium banana
1/2 cup frozen berries or other fruit
Place all ingredients in a blender and mix until combined. May sweeten with 100 percent fruit juice if needed.
Makes 1 serving.
Nutrition information per serving: 220 calories, 1 gram fat, 45 grams carbohydrate, 5 grams fiber, 10 grams protein.
Jill Fleming is a registered dietitian at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center. The 500 Club is a healthy-eating program coordinated by Gundersen Lutheran registered dietitians.
