Preschooler Healthy Eating Challenge

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2007 Preschooler Healthy Eating Challenge

We began the year with the Preschooler Healthy Eating Challenge - Eight Steps to a Healthy Preschooler Diet. It's easier to make small changes, so the challenge is to make one small change each week. The focus is on family meals, limiting sugary foods and drinks, making healthy snacks and getting the right foods on your preschooler's plate. Start the challenge today!

Week 8 Challenge - Fruit, A Healthy Favorite

Sweet and convenient, fruit is popular with many preschoolers making this week’s challenge one of the easiest! If your preschooler eats one piece of fruit and drinks a little fruit juice on a typical day, the challenge is met. To boost nutrition, offer a variety of fruit, choose fruits in season, and use fruit to create healthy snacks and meals. [More]

Week 7 Challenge - Keep Serving Vegetables

The next healthy eating challenge is to set the stage for a vegetable-eating preschooler. Vegetables may be an integral part of a healthy diet, but they aren't known as a favorite food among preschoolers. If you are offering vegetables in the form of bland, quickly-cold, side dishes each night, try new and appetizing options. You might find that meeting the preschooler vegetable goal is not so hard. [More]

Week 6 Challenge - Meet the Preschooler Dairy Goal

Dairy foods are an important source of many nutrients for your preschooler. Depending on your preschooler’s age, two cups of milk provide most or all of the calcium, protein, and vitamin D your preschooler needs each day! Find out what foods count toward the preschooler dairy goal, the best dairy food choices, and tips to make sure your preschooler meets the dairy goal. [More]

Week 5 Challenge - Choose Whole Grains

Grains - the foods in this food group resemble a preschooler top ten foods list: cereal, bread, pancakes, waffles, crackers, bagels, muffins, rice, noodles, tortillas. Your preschooler may eat plenty of grains each day, but choosing the right type of grains is key. As often as possible, offer whole grain foods in place of the refined grains found in white bread and most bagels, crackers and pretzels. [More]

Week 4 Challenge - Make Snacks Healthy

Serving healthy snacks to your preschooler is a great way to improve his/her overall diet. Preschoolers are often hungriest between meals and eating a couple snacks a day is common. Take advantage of voracious hunger at snack time by serving healthy options - you might be surprised at what they’ll eat. For this week’s challenge, we’ll make preschooler snack time healthy. [More]

Week 3 Challenge - Family Meals with Preschoolers

Eating family meals together is good for children and the family unit. But do you ever feel like your attempts at family meals are diverted by short-attention spans, sporadic hunger, food dislikes and battles over table manners? If you have preschoolers in the family, soften your vision of family meals and incorporate these tips for making family meals a success. [More]

Week 2 Challenge - Just a Bit of Juice

For this week’s challenge, we will take on another beverage - juice. Unlike the empty calories of soda and other sweetened beverages, 100% juice ("fruit juice") isn’t banned from your preschooler’s everyday diet. Limiting juice is important, however.

 

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by Kati Chevaux