Without realizing it, being busy at work or doing activities every day sometimes makes parents pay less attention to choosing healthy food sources for children.
For this reason, most children are very fond of buying unhealthy snacks because they do not understand the side effects.
Take for example fried foods, sweets with a high sugar content, or snacks that contain a lot of coloring.
It is feared that this habit can be carried over into adulthood which then causes various adverse effects on health.
Therefore, not only can you prevent disease attacks, providing nutritious food for children also offers a myriad of benefits such as:
Stabilize the supply of energy in the body.
Improve mood (mood).
Helps maintain ideal body weight.
Helps prevent mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD.
Meanwhile, if children are not accustomed to eating nutritious food from an early age, the risk of children developing chronic diseases is even higher.
Starting from heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, to obesity later in life. Of course you don’t want this to happen to your baby, right?
So from now on, it’s best to instill the habit of eating healthy food to help support the growth and development of children.
What are the sources of healthy food for children?
In order to meet the nutritional needs of school children, including during the developmental period of children aged 6-9 years, it is not only the portion of the food that must be considered.
Providing healthy food for children helps support cognitive development as well as physical development of children.
However, the diversity of food sources should not be overlooked either.
Before you provide healthy food for children, you should know the various choices of the best sources.
Here’s a series of nutritious foods for children every day:
Food sources of carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are one of the main sources of energy for the brain which is needed in various metabolic processes. This is because when it enters the body, carbohydrates will be directly converted into glucose or blood sugar.
Furthermore, it is this glucose that functions as a producer of energy for all the work of organs, cells and tissues of the body. There are two types of carbohydrates as a source of healthy food for children, namely simple and complex carbohydrates.
Both have different food sources. Brown sugar, white sugar, honey, candy, soda, and cakes are some foods that contain simple carbohydrates.
While food sources of complex carbohydrates include wheat, pasta, beans, potatoes, bread, rice, and several types of vegetables and fruits.
Food sources of fiber
If you want to serve a plate of nutritious food for children, don’t forget to include a source of fiber in it. The reason is, fiber is good for smoothing the work of the digestive system, normalizing blood sugar, preventing various heart diseases, while maintaining ideal body weight.
Not only that, this healthy food source for children can also make them feel full longer. Just like carbohydrates, there are also two different types of fiber. Includes water soluble and water insoluble fiber.
Various choices of food sources of fiber are as follows:
Vegetable
Fruit
Legumes, such as soybeans
Whole grain cereal
Pasta with whole grain mix
Whole grain bread
Try to choose fresh ingredients, such as fresh vegetables and fruit, rather than canned or dry foods.
Because most packaged foods contain high amounts of sodium, so they are not good for your little one’s health.
Healthy food sources of protein for children
Apart from being the body’s main building substance, protein also functions to replace damaged tissue.
Children need protein as a healthy food source to support their growth and development process.
There are two types of protein that you can give to help meet your child’s daily nutritional needs, namely animal and vegetable protein.
Food sources containing animal protein include red meat, chicken, fish, eggs, milk and dairy products such as cheese and yogurt.
Sometimes, parents can give their children milk to help meet their nutritional needs.
Meanwhile, foods with vegetable protein sources include nuts, seeds, tofu, tempeh, oncom, wheat and oats.