Your baby should have good eating habits that include the necessary nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, along with reducing highly processed and sugar-rich food. Parents of young children need to monitor their baby’s sugar intake. The best primary care pediatrics in Cumming recommends limiting sugar intake in kids as it can lead to obesity, risk of diabetes, cognitive decline, and other issues. Also, eating sugary snacks can lead to tooth decay, and affect your kid’s dental health, but it can be challenging for parents to limit their kids from eating the same. So, here is some tip to help you.
Why Restrict Kids from Eating Sugary Snacks?
Nowadays, kid’s sugar intake has increased drastically as they enjoy snacks like chocolate, cookies, cakes, etc. It is a potential threat to the healthy development of your child. Some studies revealed that sugar and different forms of it present in your snacks can impact your baby’s growth and enhance the chances of various diseases. Also, kids who enjoy sugary snacks become obese. So, it’s best to limit the sugar intake of your baby.
5 Tested Tips to Limit Your Child’s Sugar Intake
- Keep Track of Extra Sugar
Sugar can be present in any form which makes it hard to monitor your baby’s sugar intake. Also, about two-thirds of the packaged food in the market contains added sugar. Therefore, when offering any packaged food to kids, check its nutrition labels to see the quantity of sugar in it. - Limit Eating Processed and Packaged Food
Sometimes even the health food you buy in market includes the added sugar. Smoothies, yogurt, juices, granola, etc. contain more sugar. So, primary care pediatrics in Cumming recommends limiting the purchase of packaged food and restricting the sugar intake. Your baby will be tempted to eat unhealthy snacks more when these are already available in your home, so avoid buying packaged and highly processed food. - Choose Beverages Wisely
For young kids milk and water are the right kind of beverages. You should restrict your kids from drinking sodas, packaged fruit juices, etc. Instead, encourage them to eat fresh fruits in moderate quantities. - Decrease the Frequency of Eating Outside
Today, families often eat outside and your kids get tempted to eat food with sugars more when they are outside. Also, there can be multiple snacking options when going out. Therefore, it is wise to reduce your frequency of eating outside and try to prepare different meals at home so your kids don’t get bored at home. - Be a role Model
Your kids learn from you, hence you can’t expect them to eat something healthy if you don’t do it yourself. So, you need to practice eating healthy, sugar-free snacks to encourage and make them understand why they need to avoid sugary food. Eat healthy together as a family and brush your teeth two times along with the kids to teach them healthy habits.
In the End
According to primary care pediatrics in Cumming, it is essential to teach your kids to understand why they need to avoid sugar-processed food. Teach them about how to make balanced food decisions and avoid completely banning sweets as it can enhance their sugar cravings.