Maintaining Beneficial Children's Nutrition Prevents Many Medical Problems

Children's nutrition is of great importance to their overall health and correct nutrition may help in preventing many medical problems that includes being overweight, developing weak bones and also developing diabetes. Children's nutrition also helps in enabling the child's physical growth reaching its full potential.

The parent may also help in providing correct nutrition to the child by setting a good example themselves and this may include promoting healthy eating habits coupled with regular exercise that should form a part of the family's daily routine. Good children's nutrition would include giving the children a variety of foods, balancing the food eaten with physical exercises and activities, choosing a diet that has plenty of grain products, vegetables as well as fruits and choosing a diet low in fat, saturated fat as well as cholesterol.

Also, the diet consumed which forms a part of the children's nutrition plan should also not contain too much sugar and salt and the diet should contain enough calcium as well as iron to meet the child's growing body needs.

The Food Grain Pyramid

The food grain pyramid has been designed by the US Dept. of Agriculture with the intention of promoting healthy nutrition in young children, age two and above and is a guide for choosing daily foods. This food pyramid offers a range of servings for every food group and for teenage boys it might suggest giving them 2800 calories while teenage girls may require approximately 2200 calories and for boys groups they should eat the highest range of servings, while girls should eat middle range of servings.

In the case of overweight children on a diet, they need to eat at the lowest range of servings. In addition, to determine the number of servings to eat one should look at the size of the serving with larger portions being treated as more than a single serving while smaller servings can be treated as being a part serving.

Children's nutrition may consist of new flavored milks including orange, strawberry and vanilla, which, in the case of children whose consumption of dairy products is below recommended levels, will find these milk products to be of great help as it may cause them to drink less soda and fruit drinks. Also, apple juices are nutritious and can supply children with healthy phytochemicals though it does not necessarily have to be the main beverage for children, as is often the case.