Surprisingly, our society, which is increasingly informed and aware of everything related to food, does not seem to know how to stop the trend towards the Americanization (I mean fast food) of food. Instead of promoting our Mediterranean diet, which is the healthiest, we let ourselves be carried away by a fast food chain: we reward the children with a pre-made pizza every Friday and we can’t imagine seeing anything in the cinema without a bowl of salted popcorn .
«We reward the children with a pre-made pizza every Friday»
What to eat, and what not
—What are the most frequent mistakes when making menus?
—Often we observe in the consultation that some parents of little eaters are in check: that the child eats whatever, but that he eats. That should not be so. Children who have food in the fridge do not die of malnutrition, so children who have a small appetite should eat little, but balanced.
At the other extreme, children who eat well, who never seem to be satiated, if we do not give them enough carbohydrates to obtain the necessary energy, whether in the form of bread, pasta, legumes, potatoes, or rice, will tend to Snacking outside meals, and what is most within your reach, are often pastries and snacks loaded with fats and salt. Those, along with sugar-laden sodas and poor-quality fast food, are, in my opinion, the worst enemies of children’s health, because they lead to being overweight.
“What should a growing child eat?” How should your menu be? What should never be missing and what should almost always be left over?
—We nutritionists repeat ourselves endlessly, but the reality is that there is no better way to eat than with the Mediterranean diet. This diet is characterized by having a high content of vegetables, legumes, cereals, traditionally wheat, it is rich in fish and poor in red meat and dairy, unlike other countries further north. And, of course, use olive oil.
The amount and variety of fruits, vegetables and legumes that children eat in our country is below the recommended. And, on the other hand, the second courses, so to speak, the protein of animal origin, which is usually associated with the presence of fat, is excessive. But the older ones also eat too much meat (not as much fish as would be desirable, but this data is variable in different areas of Spain).
The greater variety of these foods that make up our diet we can offer children, the easier it is to provide various nutrients. A child’s menu, in amounts appropriate to his age, must provide between two and four servings of milk or an equivalent dairy product, must contain a serving of carbohydrate both at breakfast and at snack and at lunch and dinner , between one and two servings per meal between 5 and 7 in total. The recommendation on fruits and vegetables is in five daily servings, and two servings of protein food.
“The ideal is five daily servings of fruits and vegetables”
And the fewer the candy, the better. Because many of the foods they eat already have sugar in their composition, from tomato sauce to breakfast cereals or sliced bread. Sometimes it is not so easy to know how to make a balanced menu, so your Nutrition Website has a menu preparation service for those parents who want to adopt a healthy diet but do not know where to start, even if it is only to complement the School menus with the ideal dinner.
Cooking mistakes
—What mistakes do we make when cooking food or combining it?
—In the purchase I recommend to read the labels of the products well, not to look at the showy letters that promise vitamins (of which, by the way, our children do not have deficiencies but excess, and that the fruits and vegetables have in quantities almost always superior ), but in the amount of added salt and sugar, in the type of fats it contains (that does not contain trans fats, palm oil or coconut or animal fats). And fill our pantry with a variety of fresh and healthy foods.
The best forms of cooking for everyone are the oven, cooking with water or steam, the microwave (it makes time easier and preserves the properties of the food very well) and the griddle. The fried foods and batters that children love so much should be reserved for rare special occasions. And olive oil is always better for cooking and frying.
As for the combinations, I recommend educating the taste of children by offering variety, not combining, for example, different carbohydrates in the same food (macaroni first and cutlet with chips second, I have a particular crusade with children’s menus of restaurants in that sense), but we should teach them to eat vegetable garnishes, for example.
“What suggestions do you make to balance the scale?”
—Education of children and parents is basic. We eat five times a day, and many people are unaware of the rationale for a balanced diet, sometimes they ask me at the clinic if they can exchange breakfast milk for juice, or believe that juice is a valid substitute for fruit. We try to make a nutritional education not of imposition, but of explanation, because what is better known is what is adopted as our own. If instead of advising children to eat fruit we tell their parents how to overcome the reluctance of their children, it will surely be easier to adopt that habit. Parents who come to the consultation often ask us, precisely, for ways to approach the foods that are usually rejected, usually fish, legumes, fruits and vegetables, the healthiest!
And our recommendation is to start working on healthy eating habits from the beginning, as soon as complementary feeding is incorporated into breastfeeding. Because as soon as boys and girls reach adolescence, creating healthy habits is practically impossible, we have to have done it before. Their socialization makes parents have little weight in their decisions, and that includes the type of food they choose.
We try to provide families with the tools that facilitate them, precisely, the creation of these habits, how to organize purchases and menus so that healthy eating is available at home, learn to have discretion when choosing between one or other types of food depending on their nutritional properties. We do not forget that, despite all the nutritional education in the world in schools and in the environment, if the child opens the door of the pantry of his house and finds industrial pastries within his reach instead of a sandwich and an apple, that will be what you will eat.
For children to eat well, it is essential to reduce the number of goodies, industrial pastries, salty snacks, and fast food. And once this is done, start offering fruit and / or vegetables in all the meals of the day, return to the spoon plate, and I mean the legume, the cooked soup and the healthy traditional cuisine.
