Household Eating Habits and their Effect on Children

Greetings Everyone!!

  I hope everyone is enjoying the summer so far, although the heatwave is making everyone in the house a bit cranky (including yours truly). With the Fourth of July around the corner, people are getting the barbeques fired up and clearing out the snack isles at the grocery store. Today in the blog, I wanted to talk about how eating habits exhibited around the house has an effect on your children.
   According to a recent study done by Duke Medicine, kids whose moms encourage them to exercise and eat well, as well as model those behaviors themselves, are more likely to be active, healthy eaters themselves. “Obesity is a complex phenomenon, which is influenced by individual biological factors and behaviors,” noted study author Truls Ostbye, M.D., PhD, professor of community and family medicine at Duke. “But there are variations in obesity from one society to another and from one environment to another, so there is clearly something in the environment that strongly influences the obesity epidemic.”
  By recording info like access to junk food vs healthy food, children's levels of physical activity, children's environments including family policies around food and exercise, researchers were able to find strong links between obese parents and obese children. Now, a lot of this might seem like a no-brainer, but obesity in children being such and epidemic (1 in 4 children ages two to five are already overweight, yikes) its worth looking in to.
  I believe it goes back to the old parental saying "do as I say not as I do". This concept is pretty difficult for young children to understand. If Mom or Dad is wolfing down burgers they are going to question why they have to eat carrots and broccoli. I know how difficult it is for a parent to make time for healthy food choices. Between work, kids, household duties, food often comes last on the priority list. But sacrificing a bit more of that time to insure your kids are healthy is well worth it. Kids need to get used to fruits, veggies and other healthy foods so they can live a full, healthy life.
  For my family, its all about balance. I will let them pig out on junk but I make sure they are going outside to burn it off instead of sitting down in front of the TV afterwards. I also make sure every meal has at least one veggie in it, or offer fruit as a healthy dessert. The most important rule, in my opinion,  in my house is NO SODA. Soda is one of the biggest factors of overweight children so it is never available at the house.

 I wish everyone a happy and safe holiday!

-Debbie

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