How Healthy are Our Children?

I happened to come across a report on yesterdays  children's programme 'Newsround' which to be perfectly honest completely astounded me. After a recent survey, the program reported that over half of kids don't even eat one portion of vegetables each day!

I'm sure that we are all aware of the growing numbers of obese and overweight children, with 1 in 3 children now being classed as such. Listening to this report and reading the results, I find it astounding that so many kids out there don't seem to understand what constitutes good food choices or even why they should choose one food over another. Whilst I don't for one minute believe its too late to start educating (as seen in the fact that 8/10 of the children surveyed have made changes to their diet) surely we need to teach our children about good food choices as part of their healthy lifestyle from the off. How many of us discuss the food we eat with our children and its nutritional value? If we all take more time to do this we will all start to develop a healthier relationship with our food.

I have quite often heard it said that some parents are giving chocolate bars each day as a treat. Let's also consider that say 1 chocolate bar costs around 60p: some children (as in the report) have up to 5 a day. This would work out as £3 per day , £21 per week equating to £1092 per year just on chocolate for one child! If something is given as often as once a day it is no longer a treat it's a routine. Routines can be adapted, let's look for healthy alternatives instead and spend that £1092 on something else like swimming lessons, a bike and running shoes!

Check out the report here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/32009740