Health Supplement for You: Junking Your Kids’ Junk Food

Marketing has a huge impact on the appeal of junk food to kids. The whole milieu of print and video advertising, packaging, sponsorships, and the like are highly culpable for rising obesity rates, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and a host of other illnesses related to the chronic consumption of junk food.

Kids are especially drawn to visuals and are easily led to love junk food for the emotional appeal the ads generate. It doesn’t help that it is also pretty difficult not to love the super duper taste of cheese flavoured potato chips and the sweet, bubbly spirit of soda.

As parents though, we have a responsibility to raise our kids with good health habits. One of these has to do with junking our kids’ junk food or training their palates to favour real food. With hectic schedules and a fast paced modern life, this is a gargantuan task for many; but, if you care for your kids’ healthy development, it is worth all the effort.

For your own and your kids’ health, your home must be a junk food-free zone most of the time. The best ways to ensure this is to:

Lead by example

As a role model, you have got to walk your talk. How can your kids believe that eating Oreos all the time is not good for them if you have been scarfing some down when you think they are not looking? Children do not turn a blind eye; they wise up. From now on, limit the amount of high sugar, low nutrient foods from your pantry. And no secret stashes.*smirk*

Get into the habit of planning out your menus and grocery list every week so you can serve home-cooked meals daily. This way you will have control over your kids’ nutrition and portion sizes. Snacks should also be made at home so they do not have to be sourced from packaged junk treats or fast foods that serve empty calories. Fruit and trail mixes can be great substitutes for fast food snacks if you are pressed for time. Having real food available all the time will ensure that your kids will develop their taste for these foods and ingrain them with good eating habits.

Do not use junk food as a bargaining chip

You will be shining a delectable light on bad food by offering it up as an enormous treat or reward. Junk food should be viewed as unhealthy not a delicious must-have. By rewarding a child with junk food for good behaviour, you are conditioning him to look forward to junk treats much like a dog would in a Pavlov experiment. Rewards should be non–food in nature if possible.

Get Them to Like Moving

Limiting their screen time will also limit their exposure to appealing ads and get them to do something more active. Enroll them in sports programs, dance classes, or other physical activities of their interest. You may have to step up to the plate as well and get moving. Remember, children love to imitate and would have more fun if their role model is also involved. Besides, exercise will do wonders for your health just as well.

Make Homemade “Junk Food”

Whose mouth doesn’t water at the sight of a nice juicy burger and crispy fries on the side? Well these do not have to be junked at all; just don’t buy them from fast food chains or restaurants which mix in a lot of preservatives, additives, sugar and fats. The trick here is to make your own. There are tons of recipes out there that offer better ingredients and the know-how of how to replicate store-bought food at home.

You can beat the allure of fast food at its own game by providing delicious substitutes. Instead of ordering up a fast food chain pizza, you can make some tortilla pizzas with corn tortillas, shredded cheese, and homemade salsa. It is the cheese in pizza that kids love so instead of low nutrition dough, you’ll be serving more nutritious corn chips. You can bake a batch of oatmeal cookies instead of buying a package. In lieu of chips and dip, you can serve up fruit and homemade dip.

There is a barrelful of homemade snack varieties that is sure to delight your kids’ palates while keeping them nutritiously healthy. After all, this is the whole point of going the extra mile for your kids’ growth and development. Here are other alternatives that keep the junk out of food: