Food is fuel for our bodies. We cannot survive beyond a few days without eating. But we need to make smart food choices as eating mindlessly can only lead to health issues.
When it comes to nutrition in kids, it becomes an even bigger challenge. As parents, you face the challenge of filling their stomachs with all the required nutrients via their limited intake. However, unaware of their body’s needs, they continue to levitate towards lucrative unhealthy foods.
So, as parents, it becomes essential to have comprehensive knowledge of nutrition in kids. A lack of awareness and improper food intake can lead to malnutrition in children.
Continue reading to know all about malnutrition and how to protect your child from it.
Malnutrition is a condition caused by the deficiency of certain essential nutrients in an individual's diet. The deficiency leads to a failure in meeting the nutritional demands of the body.
This failure further results in a negative impact on the growth and physical health of the body along with several other functions. Malnutrition has been found to affect more children and elderly.
Malnutrition also involves conditions where a person’s diet does not deliver the right balance of nutrients. Thus, a diet high in calories can probably be deficient in vitamins and minerals.
People consuming such imbalanced meals might be overweight or obese but would still be considered malnourished. Therefore, being malnourished does not necessarily mean that the person is underweight or skinny.
The causes of malnutrition include:
Malnutrition can result in the development of several diseases and chronic health conditions.
Long-term effects of malnutrition include a higher risk of obesity, heart diseases and diabetes.
Researchers also suspect that undernutrition in childhood can cause changes in the metabolism that may increase the chances of developing a chronic disease later in life.
Since the long-term effects of malnutrition can increase the risk of obtaining certain diseases, it is essential to prevent and treat malnutrition to help reduce the prevalence of chronic health conditions.
A balanced diet simply said, refers to a structured meal plan that incorporates all the nutrients required for your body to function properly.
To ensure that your children get nourished with a balanced meal, you need to add the following nutrients to their diet:
The above-mentioned nutrient list might look exhausting but things get simpler when you plan your meals as per food groups.
Following are the types of foods you should include in your child’s diet to incorporate all the required nutrients.
All of the nutrients and consequently food types are required in varying proportions, but a good rule of thumb is to have your child consume most of the calories from fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.
So, in order to protect your children from malnutrition you need to ensure that they consume a balanced diet.
Make sure you add more diversity to their plate and include more fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. This will prevent you from avoiding any particular nutrient and thus prevent any deficiency in your child.
Apart from wise food choices, you also need to make wiser brand choices when selecting a particular food product for your home. You should only select premium quality food products like the ones offered by Vikram Mills.
Vikram Roller Flour Mills Limited is a pioneer name in the Agro-products manufacturing, packaging, and delivery in India. The company specializes in manufacturing supreme quality wheat products that are consumed by top-level bakers, caterers and FMCG suppliers in the country.
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