Easy Tips to Help Your Family Eat Healthier

Children, teenagers and even adults are exposed to a range of high sugar and fatty foods in today’s world whether from television commercials, peer pressure from friends, specific promotion of products in shops or just our hectic lifestyle that leaves us time poor and needing to snatch quick takeaway options for family meals.

It can be tough to navigate but the key is to make nutritious choices appealing so they become a first preference for our kids (and us!). 

Below are Hearty Health’s top tips for encouraging your family to eat healthier:

Less packaging – Try to buy food that has minimum packaging and is as close to its natural form as possible.   A simple rule of thumb – less packaging equals less processing.

Lead by example – Kids love to copy so make sure you and the carer’s of your children are making healthy choices as well and save any sweet or savoury treats for special occasions.

Play hide and seek –  be creative and add vegetables to a spaghetti Bolognese or mash carrots up with mashed potato, or add a sweet dip to slices of apple.

Cook at home – not only are restaurant and takeaway meals more expensive, they have more added sugar and unhealthy fat, so cooking at home can have a huge positive impact on your family’s health (and budget). Plus, if you make extra, you can save leftovers for work lunches or for more meals and snacks during the week.

Get kids involved –  a great way to get the kids engaged is to ask them to prepare a meal plan for the week ahead.   Then you can all shop for the ingredients and can go one step further by helping to cook meals too if time permits.

Snack on –  when we are hungry we are hungry.   Have plenty of quick snacks on hand for your tribe including fruit, vegetables like carrots and cucumber and some home cooked baking too.     After all, it is all about balance and taste that keep us coming back for more.