We continue with our Special on Infant Feeding and, following our examples of planning for the weekly menu today we take care of a menu for four year olds.
With four years the child you must eat with us at the table and enjoy all the food offered to the rest of the family, always trying to avoid excess fats, fried and spicy. With salt we must be cautious and, if we use pastries and dairy posts, they should be homemade and made with healthy fats.
Four-year-olds can now take nuts, but, there are better chopped, to avoid the risk of choking.
We also propose for children who spend more energy, small snacks. It is appropriate not to abuse them and make them with homemade bread preferably homemade and sausages or low-fat and quality cheeses.
A balanced diet should include 5 pieces of fruit or vegetables daily, but in adequate proportions to the child's appetite, combining several varieties and without forgetting that salads and vegetables should also count as vegetables, including them, in one way or another, in all meals.
There are general recommendations for the children's menu that we must always keep in mind: ingest 500 ml / day of milk, prioritize vegetables, include hydrates in the form of cerales and legumes, use the protein properly and choose low-fat pieces, fry as little as possible, use olive oil, do not buy processed foods and limit saturated fat, sugar and salt.
Prevent obesity
The childhood obesity It is a very serious problem in our society. The best way to prevent it is a balanced diet, without industrial products loaded with sugar and saturated fats and with a high presence of vegetables. In addition, of course, adequate physical activity. To achieve this goal, which is a healthy diet and body, the family is essential for good nutrition education and healthy habits. For that reason, eating as a family and eating well is a priority.
Balancing the menus with those of the school
If the children are already in school and if they eat at school it is important to have the dining menu present and make the other meals balance it in what it lacks, especially if we detect that there is a low proportion of raw, cooked vegetables or an excess of fried or protein.
Breakfast It is a very important meal for the child to face the day with energy. If necessary, you have to get up half an hour before you can have a quiet and appetite breakfast and supplement it with a mid-morning food intake that will depend on what the child has eaten early.
Organize our own menu
The dairy products they are still important in the child's diet and, to complete the intake, we may have to add a glass of milk before going to sleep or on the snack. That need for dairy products is less or even disappear in the case of children who are still breastfed request.
The food combinations of menu for four year olds We propose you can change them according to your needs. We have proposed the heaviest and strongest dishes that can be taken as a single dish at lunch and comforting dinners where fish and eggs appear as protein.
In addition to keeping in mind the need to maintain good amounts of fruits and vegetables It is also important to include cereals, tubers and legumes, which will provide healthy energy in the form of hydrates supplemented with vegetable protein and fiber.
Sugar, always in moderation and preferably integral and ecological when we use it in milk or desserts or homemade pastries.
The importance of using adequate fats, especially extra virgin olive oil, and avoid the fried.
Also, if we want to include sometimes some sweet bought, bauble, candy, even chocolate, it is important to keep in mind that they are not daily foods and limit them to the maximum. But since children like them a lot, if we want to offer them to them and they are not obese or overweight, we can do it, but it is always better make them at home, to guarantee product quality. Nor do they need to drink daily industrial juices, sodas, milkshakes, or drinkable dairy products, no matter how much they promise to improve their defenses. What helps the defenses is a balanced diet, with protein in its right measure and many fresh vegetables.
He Weekly menu for four year olds It is an example with which we want to reiterate the importance of offering a varied, tasty diet that can also be cooked and food for the whole family. Remember that you can enlarge the table to print by clicking on the image above.
