[Smart Farmers] Children's Day丨How can we make children eat healthily?

1. The purpose of childhood diet

Childhood is an important period for children's growth and development. From early childhood to pre-adolescence, normal children grow about 5 to 7 cm in height each year, and their body morphology and structure continue to change. Children's nutritional status and eating habits during childhood may even affect their lifelong height and physical condition in adulthood. Therefore, diet during childhood is particularly important.

There are two important purposes of feeding during childhood:

First, ensure the normal growth and development of children. In addition to ensuring the energy metabolism supply for daily activities, children also need to provide some additional energy supply for growth and development. For children with long-term chronic diarrhea and repeated respiratory tract infections (chronic diarrhea may lead to poor absorption of dietary nutrients in children, and repeated illness may cause repeated consumption of body energy reserves), parents should pay attention to monitoring changes in their children's weight and height, actively treat the primary disease, ensure dietary nutrition, prevent and treat diseases, and ensure the normal growth and development of children.

Second, let children develop good eating habits, which will benefit them for life. Adults' dietary preferences and eating habits are mostly formed in childhood, and healthy eating concepts and eating habits will affect a person's life. On the contrary, many metabolic diseases, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, etc., are largely caused by unhealthy eating habits. Therefore, parents should urge children to develop good eating habits and establish healthy eating concepts during this critical period of their children's lives.

How to feed obese children

In people's minds, obesity is closely related to genetics, but in most obese children, eating habits, bad living habits, and insufficient physical exercise are also important factors leading to childhood obesity.

In most clinical cases, clinicians and parents focus more on the obese children themselves, often ignoring the fact that children’s eating behavior habits are closely related to the entire family environment and the habits of family members.

Therefore, we suggest that the healthy eating behavior pattern guidance for overweight and obese children should be applied to relevant members of the whole family, not just overweight and obese children. How to feed such children? We provide the following suggestions:

1. Caregivers should provide more low-calorie, nutritious foods.

2. Reduce screen time: It is not recommended for children under 2 years old to watch mobile phones or TV; for children aged 2 to 5, screen time is 1 hour per day.

3. Drink less sugary drinks, do not drink caffeinated drinks, and drink more boiled water.

4. Choose snacks wisely: Snacks, as a supplement to staple food, often have high sugar and calorie content. It is recommended that children eat more healthy snacks, such as fresh fruits, cheese, milk, and yogurt.

5. Ensure sleep: go to bed before 22:00.

6. Eat less for dinner and do not eat before going to bed.

How to feed emaciated children

In contrast to the feeding strategies for obese children, parents are more concerned about how to get thin and anorexic children to eat more. There are also some differences in feeding strategies for children of different ages. For infants and young children, how to get children to accept healthy and nutritious food is an important challenge for parents. Studies have shown that 25% of mothers of children under 3 years old only provide their children with 1 to 2 opportunities to contact the food before judging whether the children like it, and 50% of mothers provide the food 3 to 5 times.

In fact, most children may not be fully exposed to and accept new foods. Parents should believe that children's food preferences can be changed. In the absence of parental coercion, children may accept food after being exposed to it 8 to 10 times.

Parents need long-term persistence and patience in this process, and understand that this is a normal process of accepting food. Do not force children to eat, and encourage them when they try new foods, read aloud characters and stories related to food, and use some dipping sauces when necessary to help children accept new foods.

As children move from toddlerhood to preschool, they pay more attention to changes in the eating environment, especially the social interaction function of eating. Preschoolers quickly learn and develop good eating behaviors (through imitation) by observing adults and other children eating and interacting with them. The eating styles and preferences of parents and others (such as teachers, peers, etc.) have an important influence on children's eating behaviors. When they reach school age, children's memory and logical thinking abilities are significantly improved, and basic nutrition concepts can be introduced to children at this stage to help them develop good eating behaviors.

Do children need to take multivitamins?

For a healthy child with a diverse diet, there is no need to take additional multivitamins. Parents and friends should note that multivitamins are also medicines, and taking large doses of vitamins (especially vitamin A and vitamin D) is harmful to the body.

Some children may benefit from a multivitamin in certain special circumstances:

Children with anorexia, poor appetite, or severe picky eating;

Children with chronic diseases (colitis, liver disease, etc.);

children with developmental disabilities;

Children from households with limited food sources.

5. Feeding Guidelines

1. Provide a variety of healthy foods at home while limiting unhealthy foods;

2. Set up a good dining environment, including appropriate dining utensils (chairs, tables, cutlery, cups, etc.), and no distractions (such as screen media, etc.);

3. Parents themselves should be role models for their children;

4. Food should be provided to children repeatedly (8-10 times), requiring sufficient patience;

5. Avoid excessive control of children’s eating behavior, including pressure, coercion, and extreme restrictions.

References

Ronald E. Kleinman, Frank R. Greer. Child Nutrition[M], 8th edition, translated by Shen Kunling, Science Press, 2022

Author: Ma Jia, attending pediatrician, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Oriental Hospital

Review expert: Wu Liqun, Director of Pediatrics, Oriental Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine

Editor: Wu Yuetong and Xie Yun