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In North America today, children are growing faster than ever before. I’m not talking about inches people, I’m talking about waistlines. The amount of junk food we are feeding our children and the little activity they are getting these days is atrocious. Unfortunately, a lot of parents find themselves in a vicious cycle of bad choices, and not wanting to say no to their kids, and many don’t know how to get out of it. Kids are smart, and sometimes you have to make nutrition and fitness fun to get them interested. There are ways to compete with the video games and fast foods though, and you can successfully turn your kids from obese to healthy and fit.
One common complaint from parents is that their kids don’t like to eat vegetables and would rather eat unhealthier foods such as hot dogs, hamburgers, fast foods and junk foods. There are two ways to get around this. You can disguise vegetables and trick your children into eating them, (they will never know that they are eating veggies!) or you can make veggies fun and interesting. Both ways will take come creativity, imagination and work to be successful.
If you are going to go with disguising the vegetables, you will need a food processor. Chances are, if your children see the vegetable, they will refuse to eat it, so you’ll have to change its look drastically! For example, instead of buying pre made hamburgers, get some hamburger meat and make your own patties. As you are mixing the meat, throw in some ground up veggies and your kids will never know the difference. If they are young enough, you may be able to get away with making veggie burgers, but if they’ve already had a few regular ones, this may not be successful. If you like making homemade juice, you can also include all the veggies you want. Fruit always trumps vegetables for taste, so they will not be able to tell that there are vegetables in their favorite fruit juice.
The second option is definitely more helpful for your kids, because you can educate them about health and the reasons why eating right is important. There are a lot of ways to make healthy foods more interesting. For example, start an international night once a week, where you learn about a different country or culture and eat their food for supper. You can even dress up like they do to make it more fun. A lot of parents have bought VeggieTales DVDs for their kids as well. These videos have vegetable characters telling stories with a moral, and your kids will learn to associate veggies with fun and humor, rather than something they don’t like.
If you are having trouble getting your kids off the couch, there are video games that promote physical activity. There is the Wii system, that has Wii Fit and Wii Sports games, and there is also a video game that is powered by an exercise bike. When the child pedals, their game character moves. The harder the child works out, the more they can do in the game.
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