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The Importance Of Eating Preferences In Children

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Possibly, your kids know that they can leverage your desire to get them to eat with their own preferences. If they can refuse until they get chicken nuggets, or can eat in front of the television, why change?

We’ve all done what we’ve had to do in order to get through a meal. That said, we might make some leeway by instituting an eating schedule. In addition, we can make sure that meals are eaten together at the table.

We all go off-plan sometimes. But try to be less forgiving about when and where food is served in your house.

3. Texture or smell.

As a kid, you weren’t a fan of broccoli (I wasn’t). As it turns out, this is probably because young ones are sensitive to the taste of some plant compounds. For most, they just need to …show more content…

That doesn’t differ from what adult women who want to drop a dress size may eat! Healthy brain, bone, and muscle development are crucial at this time, so a near-adult amount of calories makes sense.

Not to mention, they need to eat for the energy typical of toddlers.

Without it, listlessness and fatigue will occur, stunting their development. Other symptoms of nutritional deficiency may include crankiness, speech delays, and more frequent illnesses.

And what of those nutritional shakes that promise to help our kids get precious vitamins and calories? They definitely work, but they’re full of less-than-desirable ingredients. For example, one popular brand specifically marketed to kids includes the following:

Added sugar - Not natural sugar, like from fruit; just more of the white stuff.

Maltodextrin - A thickener and preservative that can cause sugar spikes and impact healthy gut bacteria.

Carrageenan - Another thickener/stabilizer which may be bad for digestion.

Artificial flavoring - Addictive, lab-created chemicals.

Monoglycerides - Synthetic hydrogenated fat.

And that’s just for starters - the ingredients list on these “nutrition shakes” is a mile long! In addition to providing calories and (synthetic) vitamins, they’re big on sugar and preservatives.

In a way, it’s quite counterproductive. We do our best to avoid or limit candy and soda, so they don’t get hooked on it

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