Obesity In America

As A Parent - What Can You Do?

1. Buy and serve more fruits and vegetables instead of convenience foods.
2. Limit the consumption of soft drinks, sweetened beverages and high fat sugar laden snack foods. Alternatively offer water or low fat milk and healthy snacks.
3. Change your cooking methods to reflect lower fat immersion. Try baking, broiling and steaming instead of frying.
4. Decrease the portion sizes.
5. Try not to use food as a reward or bribe to your children.
6. Make sure your child eats breakfast. Skipping this meal may lead to overeating later in the day.
7. Try eating at the table. It is thought that eating in front of the TV or computer screen promotes consumption and lessens the awareness that you are feeling full.
8. Encourage the kids to do activities that are physical in nature such as riding the bycicle, playing ball games, and skipping rope.
9. Reduce the time spent watching TV, using the computer and playing video games.
10. Plan outdoor family activities such as visiting the zoo, swimming and playing ball in the park.
11. Give the kids chores to do, it will also lessen the household duties so you can spend more time with the children later.
12. Be an example to your family by eating healthily and exercising, it will be one of the greatest gifts you could give to them.
13. When you do your grocery shopping do not buy the fatty and sugar laden foods, if it isn't in the pantry your family can´t eat it. replace them with foods that you know are low in fat and sugar, it may take some time for them to accept the new tastes but eventually they will.
14. Start to actually read the nutritional information on the products you buy, you will be surprised and eventually horrified at how much of the "bad stuff" is in the food we buy.
15. Educate yourself - do you realize how much nutritional value has been lost to our foods over the years of over farming of the soils? Are you aware of the correct calorie intake suitable for your body? Have you calculated your Body Mass Index (BMI)? Etc Etc