Preschool nutrition -- the early years
by Charles Stuart Platkin,
I was in the supermarket the other day with my 4-year-old daughter. As we were walking down the dairy isle, she saw a yogurt with a cartoon character on the container, and she wanted it bad. No big deal, right? Yogurt is healthy. Well, this particular yogurt was filled with added sugar and loaded with calories. Raising nutritionally intelligent children is no easy task, but you have to start them young. How young? I reached out to a few experts to find out.
When do you start teaching your children about healthy foods?
"Nutrition begins with the parents. Some studies indicate that a child's taste starts to be established based on what a pregnant women eats," says Shari Barkin, professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University.