10 healthy and sustainable habits for kids
Instilling healthy habits in children isn’t always easy, it is a joint effort where the family, educators and entities should join forces and get involved to try to teach and reinforce these values. Below, we present 10 healthy and sustainable habits that children can implement at home and outside of it. Do you want to know what they are?
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According to the latest report from the Aladino Study (“Surveillance study of growth, diet, physical activity, child development and obesity), obesity in our country is one of the major health problems. In the case of children, it is even more concerning, since this disorder continues to be prevalent among children aged between 6 and 9 years.
The main factors associated with obesity are a poor diet and lack of physical activity. What can we do to remedy this?
How to create healthy habits in children?
To instil these healthy habits in the youngest members of the family, it is important for the family, educators and entities to get involved and reinforce these values. The family is the most important by far, since children see their parents as a benchmark and as role models. But, how do we create these healthy habits in kids? According to the Ministry for Health, we can do the following:
- Get children used to eating a proper breakfast before going to school.
- Eating as a family or sharing some meals of the day with our children.
- Avoid eating in front of the television or while looking at a mobile phone.
- Plan menus in advance and try to involve children in preparing meals.
- Younger children aren’t always interested in trying new foods, so we can offer them new foods in small portions.
- Avoid offering children foods as a reward or as a punishment.
- As far as possible, restrict the use of fast food restaurants.
- From the age of 5, we can start to select semi-skimmed dairy products, since they contain the same nutrients and contain less unhealthy fats.
- Limit the time that kids spend on sedentary activities, especially being in front of a screen.
- Doing all types of physical activities or gymnastics with children, we are their best role models!
10 healthy life habits for children
Healthy food habits
1. Drinking more water and reducing or limiting sugary drinks.
2. Eating 5 portions of fruit or vegetables each day, even better if they are in season!
3. Reducing the amount of processed meat we eat, such as burgers and derivatives.
4. Eating more dried fruits, pulses and fish.
5. Limiting the number of biscuits and cakes we eat and swapping them for different types of cereals and healthy breads.
6. Ensuring a varied diet and eat as wide a range of foods as possible, this makes it easy to cover children’s needs in terms of nutrients.
7. Setting 5 meals a day and avoiding snacks between meals, especially sweets!
Healthy habits related to physical exercise
8. Rejecting a sedentary lifestyle and spending less time on our mobile phones and other types of screens.
9. Doing aerobic activities at least 3 days a week and outdoors or in nature.
10. Reducing time spent on public transport or in the car and replace it with walking or cycling to places, like school, for example.
“Play and educate” with Hispacoop
Hispacoop, the Spanish Confederation of Consumer Cooperatives and Users, offers us a didactic guide, containing a series of goals and resources to promote healthier and more sustainable life and diet habits during childhood. This guide forms part of the “Play and educate” project, subsidised by the Ministry for Consumption and which falls within the priority line of consumption habits and healthy and sustainable diet among the child and youth population. Additionally, it offers an interactive game so younger kids can learn healthy habits in a fun way.
Discover healthy habits with Team Consum
Another initiative, orientated towards children and adolescents, is The Consum Cooperative’s World Consumer Day video competition, aimed at schools and colleges, where children and young people are encouraged to explain in a video the small actions they carry out, from their schools or workplaces, to practise healthy habits and follow are more sustainable model of consumption.
This year, the video competition celebrates its 4th edition, with the motto “Small actions for responsible consumption”. This year, Team Consum’s goal is to join forces to contribute to achieving SDG 12, with small actions that promote a more sustainable model of consumption for everyone.
