How to Establish Good Eating Habits for Your Baby

Helping your child to learn to eat healthy at an early age is essential. The food that your child is given now will determine how they eat as an adult. A child who never develops a taste for bland or baked goods will never complain about healthy varieties. The longer that you hold of on introducing your child to sweet foods the better it will be for them. Most babies who have will not only accept such healthy food, but they will also learn to love them. You will want to limit the amount of fruit that is given.

Make sure your baby has had something that is not sweet before giving them the sweeter variety. When you introduce your child to sweetened cookies, cake and other treats do it gradually. If would actually be ok for you to ban sugar from your child’s diet for the first year or even the second year. This is what I did and my children now prefer to eat healthy foods over the junk. So it really does work. If you allow your child to have sugar sweetened snacks from the start it will be much harder to moderate the sugar intake later.

Did you know that by sprinkling wheat germ on your baby’s cereal or yogurts will add a large amount of vitamins, minerals and proteins to their food. It will also help them to be more versatile when selecting their foods when they are older. When your doctor tells you it is ok to begin giving your baby cows milk, you should begin by only giving them small amounts, and make sure not to give them chocolate milk. Chocolate milk has been known to cause an allergic reaction to some children. One thing that you want to keep in mind is too keep salt out of your baby’s food. This is one thing that babies do not need in their diet. This would include avoiding salty snacks.

The fact that you are providing your child with a variety of food at a young age, does not mean that they won’t go through a phase. Such as eating only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for about two months like my son did. Most children go through some type of food phase. Of course you do not want to totally deprive your child of having an occasional sweet treat every once in a while. If you totally forbid your child to have any sweets this will only cause your child to crave it more. All of the efforts that I have mentioned above won’t work if you yourself do not practice what you are teaching.

If you eat healthy, your child will too. Remember also not to give into guilt. The one thing that your little toddler will definitely do is make you feel guilty about not giving them sweets 24 hrs a day. Just try to hand in there and stand your ground.