Healthy Meal Plan for Kids Any Parents Can Make
Making healthy meal plans has less to do with buying expensive groceries and more to do with balancing food groups and portion control. With your everyday groceries of choice, you can creatively generate healthy meal plans to sustain your kid’s health long term.
How to Balance the Major Food Groups?
When looking for the best food for children in Calgary, you have to account for the balance. Meal plans are only healthy if there is a proper balance of food groups so that your child is getting all the necessary nutrients for a healthy body. The major food groups you should account for are proteins, starch, and vegetables. In serving portions, you need to have a higher portion for vegetables than the other food groups. In a plate, divide four portions, where one goes to proteins, the other to starch, and the remaining two to vegetables. You can also choose to add vegetables and fruits to the last two portions.
Effective Timing of Eating
There are three major periods to eat food, accounting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Technically, breakfast should be taken at about 7 am. Your family should get started on breakfast about 30 minutes after waking up. Anything served later than 10 am is not considered breakfast.
After about 4 hours, you should be ready for your next serving, that is, lunch. It should be about 1 pm when you serve lunch, not extending beyond 4 pm. Your next meal should be ready at about 6 or 7 pm, that is, dinner. Do not delay your dinner past 10 pm, since you need about 3 hours between your meal and your bedtime.
However, those are not all the times that your child should be eating. It is a good idea to have a healthy snack between meals. After breakfast, kids can have a snack at around 9:30 or 10 am. After lunch, they can have another snack at 3 or 4 pm.
Proper Portions for Children
As you begin planning out healthy meals, you will need help from a food caterer in Calgary, majorly to help you with portioning your meals. Meal portions for children cannot be the same as those for adults. Further, the age of your child will impact the amount of food they have. Besides, when the food is too good, children tend to overeat. Some tips to help with proper portion control for your child are:
- Use small plates – serving food on small plates instead of big ones will make food portions look bigger than they are. It may, in turn, discourage you or your child from wanting to serve more food.
- Portion your food before storing it – ensure you portion any leftovers you store in the fridge correctly. This way, should anyone want to grab food right from storage, they do not need to worry about portion control.
- Do not skip meals – skipping even one meal leads to an urge to eat more food than is necessary. If anything, you should incorporate healthy snacks in between meals.
- Increase the quantity of vegetables and fruits over other food groups. They can help give a feeling of fullness, which will reduce the urge to overeat.
- Do not force your child to complete the current serving. It is okay if they feel full before they clean their plate. Allowing them to feel full when they are will also teach them how to portion food without your help.
Why A Kids’ Healthy Meal Plan Matters
Planning meals for your kids may not seem like it pays off at the moment, but it does. For one, you have an easier time determining what the next meal will be, so you can concentrate on other things about your child other than the next steps for preparing food.
Besides, children easily stray from healthy food choices. If it were up to your child to choose what they want for lunch or dinner, it would almost always certainly be sugary foods or drinks. With healthy meal plans, you narrow down the choices for your child to select. Eventually, they will have favorite food groups among the healthy meal plans you have.
Planning healthy meal plans also helps sustain consistency in your household, where you are sure that all your meals are healthy and wholesome for your family’s well-being.