A Gift that Keeps on Giving
Want to give your children a gift that keeps on giving? Teach them how to eat right as early as possible in life, advises one nutrition and health expert.
A study of children in Finland is only the latest of several studies showing that children taught at a young age to eat more nutritious diets can benefit from this teaching for the rest of their lives.
The study showed that those who were taught to focus on healthy fats principally derived from fish, nuts, seeds and plant oils had slightly lower cholesterol than those who ate an unrestricted diet.
But perhaps the most important insight of all associated with the study is that the findings underscore a widely held belief among nutritionists that children begin forming their lifestyle habits early in life — a view shared by Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutrition and health specialist and Auburn University professor of nutrition and food science.
“This isn’t the first study to show that diet and eating habits are established early — as early as age 3,” says Keith.
There is a pervasive belief throughout society that everyone has a role to play in reinforcing good lifestyle — government, schools, the health sector and food manufacturers — and this is true, Keith says. But early in children’s lives, parents have the most crucial role to play in promoting healthy eating and other positive lifestyle habits.
“For young children, parents are the most important variable,” he says, adding that the most severe child obesity problems are more likely to be experienced by children who were least exposed to healthy eating and lifestyle practices in early childhood.
“If parents can get healthy eating patterns started early in life, these tend to carry over into the teenage years and even into adulthood.
So, how can parents reinforce good eating habits? For starters, by finding creative ways to make healthy eating fun. A lot of that calls for plain, old-fashioned persistence, Keith says.
“They need to make their meals fun, but even if they don’t succeed the first time, it is no excuse to quit emphasizing these foods,” he says.
“Over time, with repeated exposures to healthy foods and seeing their parents eating healthy foods, they will too.”
The need to emphasize outdoor play and other types of exercise is equally important, Keith says — and the sooner the better. As children mature, the chances of reversing poor eating and exercise habits grow increasingly bleak.
“If they’re overweight or obese by the time they are 15 or 16, they’re likely to be that way the rest of their lives,” Keith says.
Many children who miss these essential life lessons early in life often pay a heavy price later, Keith says — a fact reflected several years ago in an extensive study of children in Alabama’s impoverished Black Belt region, involving more than 400 fourth- and fifth-graders in three counties.
An estimated third of the children in this region are overweight or in danger of becoming overweight. Type II diabetes, a disease also commonly known as adult onset diabetes, is now being diagnosed in children as young as two, according to Dr. Jean Weese, an Extension food scientist and Auburn University professor of nutrition and food science who served as the study’s principal investigator.
Much of the problem stems from the fact that many of these children are not exposed to healthy eating habits at critical ages, Weese says.
Keith says our experience with eating habits of other cultures should underscore just how much habit plays into food preferences.
“Many of us have visited homes of people who don’t eat standard American fare and wonder why they like the foods they do, but it’s because it’s a part of their culture, just as certain foods are to ours. And, like us, they have been eating the foods since they were children.”
Posted by Jim Langcuster at August 17, 2007 02:33 PM