It’s Never Too Early To Instil Healthy Eating In Children

Don’t you agree with me?

Last week I was told that my niece who is 7 yrs old has high cholesterol. It was diagnosed with a simple blood test. Nowadays, not only adults have high levels of cholesterol, children also may have it.

In my niece case, she is not overweight or obese. Her cause of high cholesterol might be due to her eating habits. Since young she loves to eat chicken skin, chicken feet, fried chicken wings, fried ‘yau char kwai’ and other oily and crunchy stuff. All these food are very yummy but they are certainly not good for health if taken regularly.

I’m rather fussy when it comes to food selection especially Sharlene’s daily food. Good nutrition and a balanced diet are very important for a growing child. I always follow these basic guidelines when it comes to preparing or choosing food for Sharlene –

· Limit salt and sugar intake. Sharlene has been trained from young to take bland food. For example, she takes hard boiled eggs without adding soya sauce. Recently, I start to put in a little bit of soya sauce on her soft-boiled eggs so that it taste better. She’s still taking barley drink without sugar.

· Limit fat intake by keeping away from deep-fried foods. We do take fried stuff once in a while. As it is quite impossible to avoid deep-fried foods totally, what I do is – take some tissues to dab away excess oil on the food (at least it helps to remove some oil).

· Limit fast food and junk food. Children love all these, aren’t they? I don’t completely ban her from eating all these. Instead, I let her indulge in it once in a while. How can she resist when she sees her cousins taking french fries and chips :(

· More fruits and vegetables. Luckily, she’s not choosy and likes to take fruits. But she can be quite picky when it comes to vegetables.

I hope I can encourage Sharlene to have a healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.