Healthy Foods

I’ve always tried to be diligent about teaching my kids good nutrition. I believe knowing how to care for ourselves is very important. And what we eat plays a huge role in our health.

Healthy Food Activities

How to Use the Healthy Food Activities

There are 10 pages included in the set.

The first page is a food pyramid poster. It shows where each type of food belongs and about how much of your diet it should take up.

The next page is a food pyramid puzzle so your kids can color and put together the food pyramid on their own.

After that there is a ‘color the nutritious foods’ page. Color the more nutritious foods red and the less nutritious foods blue. I’d encourage you to start a conversation on this page about why some of these foods are more nutritious and others less nutritious.

I Spy Nutrient Dense Foods! This I Spy Page is full of nutrient-dense foods

How to Teach Your Kids About Food

There are many theories going around about the best way to teach kids about food.

I believe in the 80/20 principle. 80% of our food should be nourishing, healthy, good for us kind of food. And 20% can be everything else.

Life is all about balance but that balance doesn’t have to be 50/50. You don’t need a piece of chocolate for every piece of broccoli. On the opposite note, never having something you find delicious because it isn’t healthy isn’t balanced either.

Good Food and Bad Food

When I talk to my kids about food I try not to focus on good food and bad food. Instead we might focus on how it makes us feel. We try to limit pizza because it makes us feel sluggish the next day. And, for some of us, it hurts our stomachs.

We try to limit soda because that’s a LOT of sugar. And that much sugar can make us feel tired and grumpy.

Food is food. It is not good or bad. And furthermore, what is good for one person can be very bad for another person. We have a family friend that is highly allergic to cashews. To him, they’re a bad food. To many others, they’re a great source of protein, vitamins, fiber, and fat.

Our culture has a warped view of health and a lot of that stems around food. By focusing on what the food does for us, I think it’ll make our kids more aware of what they’re eating and why.

Also, I don’t think people should feel guilty about eating candy. It tastes good! We have taste buds for a reason.

I know that when I feel like eating candy, I do. And I don’t feel guilty about it. And when my kids are adults and want to eat candy, I hope they don’t feel guilty about it either.

Get Your Printables Here

Go here to grab your copy of the Healthy Food Activities pages