Getting Creative and Making Healthy Snacks for Kids
Children tend to eat as much they play. This is can be a problem, though. Kids do not always eat healthy snacks between meals. Sweets, especially the sticky ones that adhere to teeth, are the primary causes of cavities in kids.
To help prevent cavities, parents have to be proactive, and sometimes a bit creative, when it comes to devising alternatives that appeal to children and that can fit their family budgets.
The way food looks strongly influences a buying decision. Children become very excited when they see a food package depicting their favorite cartoon character or a scene from a video game. Many foods like this, however, are not healthy snacks for kids.
This often leads to embarrassment for the parent who takes his or her child to the store. The child sees the label and begins to beg for the item. The parent either caves in, or the child leaves the store stomping the ground and crying angry tears.
We would like to help prevent this by making a few helpful suggestions on how to make healthy snacks that are both good and appealing to kids.
An easy way to do this is to visit the store and buy something nutritious. Hide it in the kitchen. Then, while the kids play video games, agitate the pets, or play outside, you can put the new healthy snacks in cheap, plastic zipper bags. You can also package these foods in reusable, environmentally friendly containers that kids can carry with them to school.
Another thing you can do is to buy something that is not so healthy for children, dump out it out, and fill it with a nutritious substitute. The old label will still attract attention, but this time it will attract attention to something that is good for your child.
Once your kids develop a taste for healthy snacks, you can create some real quality time with your kids by having them help you make them. You can cook rice cakes and top them with peanut butter and bananas. You can also spread peanut butter or cream cheese over celery sticks, and you can mix pretzels and peanuts with cheese cubes. Other healthy snacks are graham crackers and peanut butter, apples and peanut butter, all kinds of cheeses, and yogurt spread over canned fruit.
There are also genuinely healthy pre-packaged foods that you can buy. Applesauce, fruits, pudding, string cheese, and trail mixes with dried fruit are very popular snacks with kids of all ages. Be sure though, that tooth brushing and flossing are always strictly observed. No matter how good a food source is, food of any kind will form plaque on the teeth that will create tartar and cavities. Never forget the basics of teaching kids sound dental self care.
posted by Dental Expert at
12:28 PM
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