Fighting Unhealthy Eating – Helping Your Kids

Out of all the problems currently facing the western world, one of the major issues is obesity. There is a huge obesity epidemic; with there now being more obese people in the world than there are starving, making it evident just how much of a problem this is.

What makes this far worse is the number of young children who are obese and eat incredibly unhealthy diets. Most schools that you go into, especially in America, have a huge number of children who will literally eat pizza at almost every meal, making for an incredibly unhealthy lifestyle overall.

The media has also tried to draw attention to this in some ways. Jamie Oliver did a campaign in America attempting to draw attention to the huge amount of obesity in schools and in general around the country, with limited success – it did, however, make people aware of just how much of a problem the lack of healthy eating education was in America.

Other Media

Supersize Me is another very famous documentary on the plight of fast food companies in America, showing just how unhealthy it can be when eating too much fast food. It is this kind of thing that we really need to make sure our children avoid, especially due to the fact that there is so much negative media promoting the idea of fast food.

Commercials, for example, are a huge problem. When children watch TV they will be exposed to adverts for common fast food companies like McDonald’s for example, without something to counterbalance this. This then means they are far more likely to want to eat fast food, and avoid anything that is seen as not tasty as it is too healthy.

Helping Your Kids

So what can be done? It is not always easy to know exactly what is best to do in terms of helping your children in this regard. With TV being such a large part of their life it can be hard to compete with all the adverts telling your child to get fast food all the time.

But there is a way in which you can fight this, simply through suggesting alternatives to fast food. Say if your child likes burgers – I know mine does – instead of constantly going to a fast food restaurant to get one, instead suggest that you can make them at home. Doing this is actually far easier than you might think – the first thing to do is to simply look out for the best home meat slicer, and other appliances that will help the preparation.

The brilliance here is that there are so many benefits:

• You will save money by making the burgers at home

• You source the meat so you know exactly where it comes from and how healthy it is

• You can add in extra ingredients that you wouldn’t see in fast food chains – such as tomato, lettuce and other vegetables, ones that are actually fresh.

[box type=”note”]Simply by doing this you can give the best of both worlds, by letting your child have the food that they want, without making it too unhealthy. Especially if you add in something on the side that is also healthy and falls into a good food group, you’ll really be on your way to ensuring that your child stays healthy in everything that they eat.[/box]

Other Ideas

You may want to include your child in the creating process of their food. If they can see how it works and what makes it healthy then they will be far more likely to keep eating healthily, and to actually take an interest in healthy eating.

Just remember, it was Buddha who said that it is our duty to keep our body fit and healthy, so that our minds can be too. Following this advice is a great way to really give your kids a great start to life, keeping them healthy and happy, despite all the media hype.

About the Author:

Melissa Cameron loves to cook – any type of food is great but especially more exotic. Healthy ingredients make for a healthy and tasty meal, especially one made at home – hence why she always keeps a kitchen meat grinder around.