Teaching Kids About Nutrition Helps Adults and Children Alike

Teaching kids about nutrition is a great way to lay the foundation for healthy eating in the future. After all, the first thing you need in order to make the right food choices is an understanding of what healthy foods. If a child doesn’t learn about balanced eating and the right foods to obtain various macronutrients and micronutrients, his or her odds of making the right choices will decrease.

That said, teaching kids about nutrition isn’t just helpful to children. Adults can also benefit from teaching these valuable real-life health lessons. Many adults don’t realize how much they don’t know about nutrition. Moreover, it’s also not uncommon to discover that what you once thought was a fact has been disproven or turns out to be a myth. Educating children can help you to polish your healthy diet knowledge, too.

Teaching Kids About Nutrition Doesn’t Always Happen in School

Not all school districts or individual schools have the same curriculum for teaching kids about nutrition. Some places give it a notably higher priority than others. This means that, depending on your state, county, district or even specific school, your child may obtain an outstanding nutrition education or may receive next to no information about healthy eating at all.

The same can likely be said about you. The gap in teaching kids about nutrition has been a problem for many years. Therefore, if you take it upon yourself to learn about the various food groups, vitamins, minerals, and macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats), you and your child can learn more about healthy eating together.

Teaching Kids About Nutrition is Fun

Kids love to pick out food, be a part of its preparation and will be far more likely to try new things – and like them – when they’ve taken part in bringing them to the plate. Learn about a specific part of nutrition and put it into practice. Buy the ingredients at the store. Talk about them together. Look at nutrition labels. Prepare the meal and eat it together.

If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can also plant seeds for a tiny garden in your window or, come spring, a veggie garden outside. Container gardens for vegetables have become very popular on decks and balconies. That said, any window with some direct sun is perfect for herbs and beans. Beans are a particularly successful food with kids because they are fast growing.