From : http://www.amazing-preschool-activities.com/image-files/kid_with_orange.jpg

What is the Importance of Healthy Nutrition for Children?

What could be more important than healthy nutrition for young children? To help children develop healthy eating patterns from an early age, it is important that the food and eating patterns to which they are exposed are those which promote positive attitudes to good nutrition both at home and outside the home.

Nutrition is the most important factors in protecting and developing human health beginning from pregnancy stage of the mother. Healthy, satisfactory and balanced nutrition is essential for children because nutritional habits that are made in our early ages turn out to be our lifetime habits.


Start Them Eating Right! Guide to Healthy Nutrient for Infant 


First-year children are following individual feeding and sleeping patterns. A baby's developmental readiness determines which foods should be fed, what texture the foods should be, and which feeding styles to use. It is important to be aware of babies rapidly developing mouth patterns and hand and body control so that you know appropriate food and texture to serve them and the appropriate feeding style to use at each stage of their development.

Breast milk vs. Bottle milk


Breast milk is the best foods for infants. It offers easy-to-digest protein, the right vitamins and mineral, and important anti-infection factors to keep infants healthier. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says babies should be breastfed exclusively for the first 6 months. Beyond that, AAP encourage breastfeeding until at least 12 months, and longer if both the mother and baby are willing.


For those women not able to breastfeed or who choose not to, today's infant formulas provide a good, nutrition alternative. Most are manufactured to be easy for babies to digest and to provide all the nutrition an infant needs.

Weaning

When your baby stop nursing and get all his nutrition from sources other than the breast, he's considered weaned. Weaning should be proceeded slowly. Experts advice that you not abruptly withhold your breast, which can be traumatic. Introducing your baby to solid foods should start when your baby is around six months old. Research shows that babies need nothing but breastmilk or infant formula for the first six months of life.

First solids should be pureed vegetables or fruits, or rice (use flaked rice as it is softer when cooked). It is important to offer very small amounts of a variety of flavors and pureed or soft textures at first.

Between six to twelve months, food should be given which allows the infant to learn to chew and accept a wide variety of food textures. The texture can very gradually be changed after six months, from pureed to mashed, then to chopped up small. Eggs can also be introduced from 6 months of age. Eggs given to babies or toddlers should always be cooked until both the yolk and the white are solid.

Naturally sweet fruits (such as bananas) can be used to sweeten foods rather than adding sugars. Sugars, honey and artificial sweeteners should not be added to foods for infants.