Family Meal

Children learn a lot from their parents. They tend to pick up their parent's exercise habits. They tend to copy their parent's food choices in the long run. But they also learn a lot from us about how eating should happen. Do we sit down together and eat? Do we eat on the run, in the car or in front of the television? Do we answer our phones or check emails during dinner? There is a lot of evidence suggesting that children who sit down to eat with their families on a regular basis actually stay healthier.

Our eating behaviors teach our children more than just which foods are healthier for their bodies. When we sit together, to share a meal, our children can learn valuable communication skills like, how to listen to other people and to share their ideas in an effective way.

Throughout the history, mealtimes have also been an important way for families to pass on traditions and stories from one generation to the next. For older children, the dinner table can be a safe place to talk about anything that's worrying them, and to get advice from the people they trust most. Besides all of this, dinner time can be so much fun.

But in the meantime, here are some tips to get you started. Firstly, have everything you need at the table ready at the start of the meal. Then, have a story ready about your own day. Tell them something that happened to you, and how you reacted, and ask them what they think. This helps them to share their own experiences, if they ever want to, at the table. Finally, if you have enough food to share, try inviting some friends to the meal. Having friends of any age at the table helps make dinner fun and can teach your children that meals are a good time to relax and enjoy good food in good company.

It may not be realistic for some families to sit down to a meal everyday. But in general, the more often we can sit down with our children to eat, the better it will be for their health. There is pretty good evidence that
children who regularly eat with their families do better at school and have better health outcomes than those who don't. And of course there are many ways for us to spend quality time with our children, but eating
together can protect the whole family's health and add so much value to our lives.

Hunger and Glycemic Index

Lets see what is glycemic index and how it works in our body.

Have you ever wondered why you can eat a bag of candy and feel hungry just 30 minutes later? It has to do with something called the glycemic index of the food or the combinations of food that you choose to eat. So let's compare two snacks.

First, let's look at a candy bar. Then, the alternative snack, a bowl of brown rice with some stir-fried broccoli on top. The candy bar is high in simple sugars like sucrose and glucose which are carbohydrates that your body can quickly break down and absorb. This means that your blood sugar after you ate the candy bar raises very quickly, which means that the food has a relatively high glycemic index. When the blood sugar goes up like this, the body senses it and starts releasing the proportional amount of a hormone called insulin, that works to lower blood sugar and bring it back down to its normal level. So when blood glucose, or blood sugar, shoots up, insulin will also shoot up, but there'll be a bit of a time lag. And because of that time lag, there's going to be a period of time where the blood sugar dips lower than it should, and this is the time you feel hungry.

Now, if on the other hand, you choose the broccoli and brown rice as your snack, your body would have to work harder to breakdown the carbohydrates in that food. So, right after you had the bowl of broccoli and
brown rice, your blood sugar is going to go up more slowly than it did when you ate the candy bar. This also means that your insulin levels aren't going to shoot like they did when you ate the candy bar. They're going to be released in proportion to the amount of sugar entering your blood and the speed at which it enters into the blood. Blood sugar will go down but it probably won't go under the normal range of blood sugar. The result is that you're going to end up with a more stable blood sugar over a longer period of time.

So, choose foods with a low glycemic index whenever possible. Things like chicken and brown rice even
whole grained bread with cheese are good combinations. If you combine your carbohydrates with a bit of fiber, protein, or healthy fats, it will slow down the release of sugar into your blood.

Home Remedies to soothe our child's cold:

Cold usually lasts for one week to ten days. While none of these home remedies will cure your child's illness but they can help them to feel better.

Lots of rest: 

Child needs lot of energy to fight against an infection. So only when your child is under rest, he is healing. Bed is not necessarily the best place to take rest. If your child finds hard to take rest, allow them to sit and watch their favorite videos, rhymes, etc.

Turmeric milk:

Turmeric has natural antibiotic properties. Mixing a little amount of turmeric with a warm milk is considered as a best remedy for cold and cough due to its antiviral and antibacterial properties. It gives instant relief to sore throat, cough and cold.

Steamy air:

Breathing moist air helps to loosen the mucus in the nasal passages. Give your child warm bath in a steamy bathroom. If it is not a convenient time for bath, simply turn on the hot water shower, close the bathroom door, and sit in the steamy room with your child for about 15 mins.

Keep your child hydrated:

Drinking water at regular intervals will help your child to fight against the infection. Other fluids in the form of a warm soup or a fresh juice are also beneficial for replenishing the body's lost energy.


These are some of the home remedies to soothe our child's cold. Usually i used to try these things  for my son instead of giving medicines. :)

Essential Nutrients for Kids

Some vitamins, minerals and nutrients are especially critical for healthy growth.

Vitamin D:

A lack of this vitamin can cause serious illness such as rickets, a disease that weakens bones. This vitamin is present in fish, dairy products and egg yolks. Your child can also obtain vitamin D from being exposed to sunlight. The daily recommended intake of vitamin D for children ages 1 to 18 is 15 micro-grams per day.

Calcium: 

Sufficient calcium is essential for strong bones and good health. Toddlers need about 700 milligrams and teens about 1300 milligrams of calcium daily. Good calcium sources include milk and milk products or milk alternatives fortified with calcium, green leafy vegetables and fish. As a guide, 8-ounce glass of milk contains about 300 milligrams of calcium.

Iron:

Not eating enough of this important mineral can hamper your child's growth. By the age of six months, your baby has depleted the iron he or she received in utero. As you start to introduce solids, make sure to include pureed green leafy vegetables, meats, beans and keep including iron rich foods in your child's diet.

Healthy Fats:

Before the age of 2, your toddler's diet should be high in fatty acids to ensure healthy brain development. Good sources include whole milk products, fish and olive oil. After age 2, you should switch your child to low fat foods.

Sugar: Too much is not good

Most of the processed food that we find in a supermarket shelf today contains some form of sugar. And sugar can have many different names. It can be called corn syrup, glucose,dextrose,brown rice syrup, or even evaporated cane juice. But these ingredients are all really just variations of sugar.

When our children consume large quantities of sugar on a regular basis, they have a higher risk of developing Type II diabetes, and they have a higher risk of becoming overweight or obese. And when our children are eating a lot of processed food, it's easy for them to take in too much sugar without really knowing it.

Many scientists are starting to think that the large amount of sugar in the average American diet is actually one of the main reasons why we see so many people with obesity and diabetes. Small amount of sugar are almost certainly not going to cause problems for a healthy child who's eating a balanced diet. But when our children consume too much processed food, then they end up eating too much sugar as well. Sweetened drinks like sodas and energy drinks, and even fruit juices are very high in sugar.

The fact that fruit juice is on this list often surprises parents, because many of us have grown up thinking that fruit juice is healthy and it can be, if it is in the right amount. So a small glass of freshly squeezed orange juice can be a great source of vitamin C, and fiber, and a really nice way to start the day. But when our children are drinking juice at every meal, or as a thirst quencher during the day, then the sugar really starts to add up.

We know that it's important for children to stay hydrated, especially when they're active or when they're
spending time in hot weather. But for a healthy child, it's usually best to stick with plain water from a clean, reliable source.

Cow's milk: When and how to introduce it

There are several reasons to delay the introduction of cow's milk until your baby reaches his first birthday.
Babies can't digest cow's milk as completely or easily as breast milk or formula. Cow's milk contains high concentration of protein and minerals, which can tax your baby's immature kidneys. In addition, cow's milk doesn't have the right amount of iron, vitamin C, and other nutrients for infants. It may even cause iron-deficiency, anemia in some babies, since cow's milk protein can irritate the lining of the digestive system, leading to blood in the stools. Finally, cow's milk doesn't provide the healthiest types of fat for growing babies.

Once your child gets ready to digest it, milk becomes an important part of his diet. It's a rich source of calcium, which builds strong bones and teeth and helps regulate blood clotting and muscle control. And it's one of the few sources of vitamin D, which helps the body to absorb calcium and is crucial for bone growth.
Milk also provides protein for growth, as well as carbohydrates, which will give your child the energy he needs to toddle all day. And if your child gets enough calcium, he'll have a lower risk of high blood pressure, stroke, colon cancer, and hip fractures later in life.

How much milk should my toddler drink?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), most kids will get enough calcium and vitamin D if they drink 16 to 20 ounces (2 to 2 1/2 cups) of cow's milk a day. Offer whole milk to 1 year old child (unless they're at high risk for obesity).

Don't offer more than 3 cups of milk a day because your child may not have room for the other foods. If your toddler feels thirsty,offer water.

What are the most nutritious food?

When we look at different types of food and different levels of processing of foods, we can start on one hand looking at highly processed junk foods. Processed junk foods are things like potato chips and you know, candy bars, and they would probably be the lowest nutritional content.

If we then look at the next best foods for our bodies and our growing children's bodies we see that if we look at things like processed canned foods or processed flours, these ones will provide us with a little bit more, in terms of nutritional content.,but, you know, they are not perfectly ideal, when you see what the next category has to offer.

So, we get even more nutrition when we are looking at foods like unprocessed or less processed types of.
Unprocessed grains and things like root vegetables,like beets and carrots,also allium vegetables,those are things like onions and garlic come under this category. Those things also offer us substantially more nutritional
value than processed junk food or processed canned food.

The last category, the one that gives us the most nutritional bang for our buck, are the very famous and very important things like fresh fruits and vegetables. So, these are obviously unprocessed. And these guys really give our bodies the most nutritional value, the highest nutrient density.

So what that means is that the foods on bottom row are low in nutrient density, are low in nutrition, and they're also foods that don't spoil very quickly, so they last for a really long time. And this is one of the reasons why they're so profitable for processed food manufactuers to make and sell.

And then on the other end, if we look up at the top here we see that these foods are very high in their nutrient density, or in their nutritional value to us. And at the same time they are going to spoil quickly because other sort of pests are going to compete for these foods. So what that means is, if we have something that we call a spoil rate, or the rate at which a food is going to go off if we leave it in our homes, then the spoil rate is going to go up with increasing nutrient density. So, if at all possible, we should choose foods that spoil quickly. Because that usually means that they're going to be better for us.