Food Navigator – Mary Ellen Shoup
How can you encourage kids to eat more vegetables? A recent study conducted in Australia found that offering a variety of vegetables rather than just one option resulted in increased vegetable intake among kids.
Moms – Jessica Sayers
Some parents consider the kitchen to be a kid-free zone when they’re cooking a meal, while other parents love getting their kids to help out and get their hands messy. There is no right or wrong answer to letting your kids help out in the kitchen, it’s truly up to each parent and the maturity level of the kids.
https://www.moms.com/pros-cons-letting-kids-help-kitchen-cooking/
Medical X-Press – Staff Writer
Leading medical and nutrition organizations recommend breast milk, infant formula, water, and plain milk as part of a new set of comprehensive beverage recommendations for children, outlined by age (birth through age 5). They caution against beverages that are sources of added sugars in young children’s diets, including flavored milks (e.g., chocolate, strawberry) and sugar- and low-calorie sweetened beverages, in addition to a wide variety of beverages that are on the market and targeted to children such as toddler formulas, caffeinated beverages, and plant-based/non-dairy milks (e.g., almond, rice, oat), which provide no unique nutritional value.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-09-healthy-kids-first-ever-consensus-young.html
Psychology Today – Alison Escalante, M.D.
Children who struggle with impulsive behaviors want to do well, but find themselves repeatedly getting in trouble. Kids with ADHD find that their bodies want to move and they act before they think, not because they lack self-control, but because of the way their brain works. Current thinking holds that the impulsivity that is a hallmark of ADHD has to do with deficient inhibitory mechanisms in the brain. In other words, the brain doesn’t turn off the kids’ impulses the way it does for the rest of us. A new study gives us insight into some practical things parents can work on at home to help their kids do well.
Outside – Molly Hurford
Between finicky eating habits, constantly changing bodies, and a glut of kid-focused food-and-drink marketing, it can be tricky to figure out exactly what (and how much) to feed an active child. We know that children aren’t just scaled-down adults, but research is still sparse in youth sports nutrition. Solid nutritional research is hard to conduct even among adults, and the challenges are greater with prepubescent kids. The subjects rapidly outgrow specific developmental phases, and the ethics of using children as test subjects—particularly if the eating patterns in question could be unhealthy—are murky, explains Brian Timmons, research director of the Child Health and Exercise Medicine Program at McMaster University. But scientists and nutritionists agree on one major point: how you feed your active child now will impact them for decades to come, both physically and psychologically.