Making healthy choices
Try and remember it’s not about good food and bad food – but about energy balance – matching what you put in, with what you get out.
Children have different nutritional needs to adults and require more energy to help them grow.
Young people are also susceptible to a lot of pressure associating food intake with appearance, and indirectly, popularity. If you reinforce these connections eg. worrying about weight, using words like diets, bad foods and naughty treats, you run the risk of younger children associating healthy foods with unpleasant tastes and unhealthy foods as treats or rewards. In the same way older members need reassurance that they will look and feel their best if they are getting the right nutrients at the right time.
Top tips for younger members, Top tips for older members, Top tips for all ages
Top tips for younger members
- Start slowly. Introduce one 'new' food at a time.
- Encourage socialisation with everyone at the table during breakfast. Teach them that mealtimes are about sharing and talking as well as eating. And that you will absorb the most goodness from your food if you eat slowly, are relaxed and don’t ‘eat on the run’.
- Involve children in the preparation of the 'new' food where possible (ie ask them to count enough ‘taster bites’ for everyone, serve the new fruit juice, or stir the fruit salad).
- Make it fun. Sometimes children will try a new food if it's fun to eat. For young children try cutting foods with solid textures into various shapes with cookie cutters.
- Talk together about the food's colour, shape, size, aroma and texture — but not about whether it tastes good.
- Have patience. Children often need at least 10 exposures to a new food before they accept it, so be persistent.
Top tips for older members
- Encourage socialisation. Try and get members to sit down with each other and teach them that mealtimes are about sharing and talking as well as eating. And that you will absorb the most goodness from your food if you eat slowly, are relaxed and don’t ‘eat on the run’.
- Make the links. Eating well will help to reduce teenage growing pains like headaches and muscle cramps, give you more stamina (useful on the sports field!) and make your hair and nails shiny and strong. Put posters up round the room that link each food with what it can do for you.
- Teenagers are ALWAYS hungry! Remind them that eating enough is important and normal, they need it because they’re burning off so much energy. But remind them about the ‘superfoods’ that will give them energy for longer.
Top tips for all ages
- Always provide food that your members like (eg toast, cereal) in addition to the 'new' food. It’s important not to alienate them.
- Have taster days which focus on a new flavour or different variety of food type, eg. brown pitta instead of white toast or different exotic fruits. Chop up ‘taster foods’ into small pieces and encourage everyone to try a small piece – they will have more confidence to do this than take a whole portion.
- Offer healthier versions of favourite foods, eg. no added sugar brands or brown toast instead of white. Where you can make or grow your own food, it’s much easier to keep down sugar and fat content and teaches members cooking skills too.
- Involve your members. Do a survey of new foods people might like to try or encourage them to bring in something for others to share. This can be a great way of learning about what different cultures eat and helping children to encourage parents to try buying different foods.
- Be a good example. Children and young people often mimic adults. The more frequently you eat a particular food, the more likely your members will be to eventually try it.
- Mix and match. If you are really having trouble weaning them off sugar and junk try and encourage them to have something with it that will help slow down energy release. Mixing foods with high protein content will help to do this.
Check out our useful links page for loads more ideas and inspiration.