Healthy Eating Habits in Children

Encouraging Peaceful Mealtimes

• Fostering a positive relationship with food and promoting healthy eating habits in children requires encouraging peaceful mealtimes.

Avoiding Counterproductive Reward Strategies

• Using food items as rewards can create unhealthy associations with those foods, leading to emotional eating patterns and disrupting natural hunger and satiety cues.
• Food rewards can make children eat for reasons other than hunger, such as seeking comfort or celebrating.
• Avoid making "if-then" contingency statements, as they can reinforce the idea that some foods are "good" and others are "bad," leading to a negative relationship with certain foods.

Unhealthy Reward Practices

• Rewarding children for eating foods they already enjoy can undermine their intrinsic motivation to eat those foods and create confusion about their own preferences.
• Encouraging children to finish all their food regardless of their hunger cues can promote overeating and disregard their natural ability to self-regulate their intake.
• This practice can lead to a disconnection from their body's signals, making it harder for them to recognize when they are full.

Alternative Approaches

• Create a positive and relaxed mealtime environment to encourage children to explore different foods at their own pace, without pressure or conditions.
• Praise children for trying new foods, regardless of the outcome, to build a positive association with a variety of foods.
• Involve children in meal planning and preparation to increase their interest in eating a diverse range of foods and teach them about nutrition in a practical and engaging way.