‘Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it’

As a young teenager I was in the local running club. Every Saturday it was between me and my best friend who would win the women’s race. A couple of times during the week we would go down to the club and Noel, a great runner himself, would spend hours training us to run faster. Looking back, I feel humbled by his dedication. We didn’t pay him and I don’t even remember saying thank-you.

Tonight I am watching the All Blacks, who are NZ’s fabulous national rugby team (as of this moment ranked No. 1 in the world by the IRB), play France. They know all about training – it’s hard work and it takes time. Let’s hope they trained extra hard this week!

So what’s running and rugby got to do with healthy eating? As parents, we need to train our kids to make healthy food choices. Training is more than telling. If the All Blacks coach just told the team what to do then headed home, how well do you think they would do? If we just tell our kids to eat more fruit and vegetables, is that enough? Training takes time, effort and often thankless dedication.

Follow these 10 healthy eating training tips to set your children up for life:

1. Be Adventurous

One of the best gifts you can give your kids is to train their taste-buds to enjoy many different flavours, not just sugar, fat and salt. Children may have to try a new food up to ten times before they start to enjoy it. So don’t give up too soon. Tell your children that when they try a new food, even one bite, it’s a sign that they are growing up. And praise them lots.

Tasting samples at the deli or supermarket is a fun food adventure. I once left my 4 year old with his grandmother at a deli sampling table of various oils, marinades and sauces. A few minutes later I returned to find my son excitedly dipping the last of the bread into onion jam and thyme infused olive oil! They had tried almost every sample and eaten all the bread. That deli doesn’t do samples now!

Let your child choose a new food at the supermarket. Serve it with foods they love and they may love it too.

2. Eat five or more colours a day

All the wonderful colours in fruit and vegetables come from natural plant chemicals that have super-health effects on our body. Different colours have different effects so it’s good to eat lots of different colours each day. If the only colour your children like is red tomato sauce, then this may be where to focus your training.

Get your kids to list their favourite fruit and vegetables and class them into colours. Chose which colours they want to eat at each meal through the day, and give them coloured stickers to match.

If you have fruit trees, a vegetable garden or even a few herbs, involve your children or grandchildren in planting, watering, weeding and most importantly, eating. A child may leave the peas and carrots on the plate and tell you they hate tomatoes but chances are they will at least take a little bite if they have pulled the carrot from the ground, prized the peas from their pod or popped a ‘moon squirter’ (baby tomato) in their mouth. Food tastes so much better with a fun name or if you have just plucked it from a tree, vine or bush.

3. Drink Water

Buy your children a cool water bottle or two and encourage them to take them whenever they go out. Give them only water with their meals. Keep juice and other sweet drinks as ‘sometimes’ food, not ‘everyday’ food. Juice has valuable nutrients and gives a concentrated energy boost for active, fast growing children who can’t seem to eat enough food. But the bigger picture is that we want our children to go for water when they are thirsty, not insist on some sugar sweetened drink.

Talk to them about how their body needs plenty of water for sport and their brain needs plenty of water to concentrate. Put a sponge in some water and compare it to a dried out sponge. If our brain and body are dried out, it’s no wonder we get headaches, muscle cramps, and feel sluggish at school and on the sports field.

Part 2 of this series here…