Easy Kids Recipes

Easy kids recipes provides a variety of delicious and easy recipes that will help you to give your child a well balanced and nutritious diet. Good nutrition benefit your child's health, behaviour and well-being. Good nutrition has an impact on future health and development of your child and it is vital that healthy eating habits are established early, they will last a lifetime. The World Health Organization agree that we all need to eat a minimum of five portions of fruit and vegetables each day to help maintain a good standard of health.

What children eat affects their physical, mental development and fighting off illness. As an ideal, children should have plenty of energy, good capacity for mental concentration, as well as healthy teeth, skin and hair. Many fruits and vegetables are rich sources of vitamins, potassium, magnesium and folic acid as well fiber.

Your approach to food and eating affects the way your child views food. Avoid expressing a dislike for any food and make an effort to eat together as a family. Avoid excluding any food from your child's diet, but keep food such as processed to a minimum. Cook your child's food from scratch with fresh ingredients. Do not use food as a bribe or a reward, include healthy "treats" in your child's diet.

Presentation is the key to interesting your child in new foods. Vegetables may be very healthy, but many children find them unappetizing, so avoid this problem by "hiding" vegetables in pasta sauce or on home-made pizzas and soups.

Getting children involved in cooking is also a great way to encourage them to try new foods. The experience can be a fun way to help develop your child's palate and promote a healthy interest in food.

A healthy diet includes a diversity of foods, which ensure that your child gets an adequate amount of all the major food groups.

- Proteins;
- Carbohydrates;
- Fats;
- Vitamins;
- Minerals.

You always can find more information here!

Check our Health and Nutrition section.

It is important to monitor the amount of salt and sugar that your child is eating, they can affect your child's health. In May 2003, the The Food Standards Agency (UK) issued maximum recommended levels of salt for children.

The maximum amount of salt children should be having varies by age:

* 4 to 6 years – 3g a day
* 7 to 10 years – 5g a day
* 11 years upwards – 6g a day

The maximum amount of sugar children should be having varies by age:

* 4 to 6 years - 40g per day
* 7 to 10 years - 46g per day
* 11 to 14 years - 50g per day.

Easy Kids Recipes - Intolerances and Allergies.
Research into intolerance and allergies suggests that many may be controlled or eliminated by the right diet or restricting certain types of foods. If there is a history of allergies in your family or you suspects that your child may have a serious allergy, speak with your doctor. Take expert advice on compiling a diet that may restrict certain food as necessary. Avoid giving any nuts or nuts products to children under the age of three, in any case.

Easy Kids Recipes - Strategies for healthy eating.
A diet reliant on processed foods or with little fruit and vegetables can serious affect a child's physical development, behaviour and concentration levels. So having established that fresh food is best, how can you make sure that your child eats the food that you choose ?

- It is important not to become obsessive and stressed over what your child is eating. As soon as your child reach the ages of one year, your goal should be to increase the variety of foods offered.

- Don't overload their plates.

- Don't press children to eat what they obviously dislike and don't give in to pressure to give them just what they want.

- Encourage them to try new flavours.

- Avoid commenting on what your children eat or discussing weight or calories in front of them.

- Avoid classifying food as children's or adult's food, because adult's food may appeal to many children because they often like strong flavours.

- There is nothing quite like creative presentation to tempt the palate of a young child or fussy eater. Open sandwiches into attractive shapes, funny faces on pizzas, alphabet pasta shapes into soups, home-made burgers and fish cakes into fancy shapes. The limit to what you can create is your own imagination.

Easy Kids Recipes - Your 5-a-day target.
Getting your child to eat the required five portions of fruits and vegetables a day seem like a challenge, but once you realize that a portion is not too big, it will seem less daunting.

A useful way to judge a child's portion is the amount the child can hold in one hand, increase the amount as the child grows. If you consider that you can actually often incorporate a significant amount of fruit or vegetables in one recipe, the 5-a-day goal becomes more realistic.

Easy Kids Recipes which incorporate vegetables rather than serving them as a side dish, tend to be more acceptable to children generally.

Be creative and add vegetables to kids favourites such as mashed potatoes, add other root vegetables or puréed greens without much extra effort.

Children often prefer their vegetables raw, so colourful strips of raw vegetables are ideal for lunch boxes, also includes fruit in as many desserts as possible. You can make very healthy pure fruit lollies by freezing fresh puréed fruit such as mango, strawberry and raspberry.

Make sure you vary the fruit and vegetables. mixing up the colours, find beautiful easy kids recipes here to help you.

Another good strategy is letting your children help you choose what to buy and also helping themselves at the table makes them feel that they have some control.

It is impossible to regulate everything that your children eat, but by encouraging good habits early on, you stand a much better chance of your children carrying them through to adulthood.

Easy Kids Recipes developed a BOARD GAME to help you and your children to have a healthier diet. With 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day your children will grow healthy and strong. This game encourage the child to eat more fruits and vegetables with lots of fun.

Click on the image to download and Print the (.pdf) file for the game for you and your KIDS - Have Fun.

If you don't have a PDF Reader click here and download