Every parent knows that the biggest battle with kids is to make them eat healthy wholesome foods, which eventually becomes an uphill struggle, as they grow older.
Most kids find healthy satisfying meals such as plain chicken, fish, salads and fresh fruit for dessert, boring, bland, or simply disgusting!
It can be very challenging and difficult to combine great tasting food, high nutritional value, and encourage healthy eating behavior at the same time.
While focusing on nutritious and delicious foods, most parents feed their kids foods that have very little nutritional value and contain large quantities of hidden fats and sugars.
Here is a list of nine of the worst foods you can feed your children whether it is for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snacks.
1. Sugar sweetened beverages.
This is by far the number one food that every parent should have on his or her list of foods never to give your kids. The list includes soda, juice drinks, iced tea, lemonade, and powdered drink mixes. These beverages provide no benefit and are the number one source of excess calories in adolescent diets. Besides being high in calories they also contain, fructose, corn syrup and are usually laced with artificial colors
2. Kids sweetened and artificially colored breakfast cereal.
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While many breakfast cereal companies specifically target the kids market, By placing images on the boxes that are colorful and exciting with words like delicious’ healthy’ and nutritious. The reality is there far from being nutritious or healthy.
The staggering amount of processed ingredients and sugar per serving completely outweighs the miniscule amount of nutritional value. The best morning cereals are those who contain whole grains, oatmeal and are high in fiber with vitamins and minerals, with less than 8 grams of sugar. To make it more appealing for the kids you can sprinkle the cereals with berries or mixed nuts and yogurt.
3. Luncheon meats
100% of all processed meats can be both dangerous and toxic as they contain nitrates, sodium, saturated fat, and artificial colors and fillers These preservatives that are used in food processing drastically increase the risk of heart disease and cancer. Parents should be aware of all deli meats that contain nitrate including hot dogs which also can be a big-time choking hazard.. A good substitute is products that are labeled organic or not containing any preservatives.
4. French fries
It might be hard to keep French fries totally out of your kid’s diet. The problem is that French-fries have no nutritional value, they are super high in fat and sodium, especially the fast food ones such as McDonald, Wendy’s and Burger King. To top it all off, studies are beginning to show cancer-causing properties from acrylamide, a toxic substance that is created when starchy foods like potatoes are heated to extreme temperatures. A good substitute is to make baked potato wedges or oven baked chips. Avoid the ketchup as it is loaded with sugar.
5. Pizza
You can forget about shop bought pizzas. Most of them are loaded with low quality cheese, which is high in saturated fats. The dough contains high levels of hydrogenated fats, and the tomato sauce is high in sugar and the processed meats like pepperoni and sausage add fat and nitrates.
Your best bet is to split open a pita bread, smother it with homemade tomato sauce, fresh garden vegetables and your choice of low-fat cheese. Simply toss it in the toaster oven and 15 minutes later you have a great tasting nutritious homemade pizza.
6. Fruit snacks.
If you’re giving your kids fruit snacks you may as well give them candy. Fruit snacks contain a high level of corn syrup, and coloring dye. There’s absolutely nothing nutritional in fruit snacks. Just because it has the word fruit in it don’t come to the conclusion that it’s good for your kid. A good substitute is real fruit, which contain fiber, dried raisins apricots prunes, and figs.
7. Peanut butter.
Most kids that don’t have an allergic reaction to peanuts love peanut butter. The problem is that all of the peanut butter sold at the grocery stores contains hydrogenated oil, sugar, corn syrup and salt. Your best bet is Trader Joe’s organic unsalted peanut butter. It tastes great and its only ingredient is organic peanuts.
8. All Packaged breakfast pastries and doughnuts
Whether you eat them straight out of a package, toast them, or bake them, these package breakfast pastries rank high with large amounts of sugar and trans-fats. Toaster pastries (pop tarts), muffins, and cinnamon buns aren’t much better.This defiantly does not make an acceptable breakfast for children.
9. Crackers
All crackers are loaded with processed white flour, preservatives, unhealthy oils, trans-fats and high salt content. They are full of empty calories and make your children tired and cranky.
Endnote
Someday your children will come to realize that you have their best interests at hart when it comes to food. For the love of their kids, parents should know what’s best for their kid’s diet. On more important key factor is that you should control you kid’s portions so that they don’t become overweight.
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