Healthy eating for kids

"Children are born with an ability to eat to their energy needs and then stop," said Alexis Wood, an assistant professor of nutrition at Baylor College of Medicine.

Thus you can create a structured environment that enables kids to learn to trust their own bodies, allowing them to self-regulate their appetites to prevent obesity in children.

Rather than focusing on how much their child eats, parents should model how they want their children to eat and create a home environment structured to foster positive habits.

In trying to coerce kids into eating healthy foods such as whole grains or vegetables and having healthy eating behaviors, parents could inadvertently make their children overeat and past their point of fullness. But it is important to eat for their own internal satiety, not for an external reward.

By modeling, parents can give kids a framework to help set their little ones up healthy eating habits as they mature.

Pairing nutritious foods like carrots and parsnips with something sweeter, like a dipping sauce, is a way of helping kids warm up to healthier choices.

Besides just serving children foods naturally low in salt, you can instill a taste for healthier seasonings by using herbs, spices or lemon juice in your cooking instead.

Incorporate healthy foods into things they already like: you can pair healthy foods with more delectable ones. If your kids like ranch dressing, for instance, roll with that. Give them carrots and celery and broccoli to dip in the dressing to make the healthy stuff go down easier.

Model right eating behaviors: make sure to "enthusiastically enjoy" those foods as you eat them.

Serve healthy food consistently: kids with a sweet tooth might not gravitate toward vegetables, but you can nudge them along first by serving healthy foods without expectation that kids have to eat them and also create a household environment where "less desired” food choices are just not around.