Healthy nutrition in childhood lays the foundation for optimal growth, learning, and well‑being in the years ahead. As children’s bodies and brains develop at a remarkable speed, the foods they eat play a crucial role in fuelling that progress. Yet in a world filled with convenience snacks and busy schedules, helping children build balanced eating habits can feel challenging.

My name is Lynette Rhodes, and I am the founder of Rhodes to Health nutritional therapy practice. I have a BSc honours degree in Nutritional Therapy (along with a secondary school teaching background in English and Psychology), and it is my mission to support individuals and families in achieving optimal health through diet and lifestyle change.

Understanding what children truly need, and how to make nutritious choices appealing, empowers families to support their children’s health in a way that’s both practical and enjoyable.

Key childhood nutrients

So, let’s take a look at some of the key nutrients needed during childhood and what they do…

Protein

Protein is a macronutrient that is vital for growth and development. It plays a role in the development of muscles, tissues, organs and a strong immune system.

Specific amino acids in protein also support cognitive development and learning. Of the 20 amino acids that make up proteins, the body can produce 11. The other 9 must come from our food. Key sources include meat, fish, eggs, dairy, beans and lentils. Protein-rich foods are often packed with other essential vitamins and minerals, including iron, zinc, and B vitamins.  

Healthy fats

Our brains are nearly 60% fat, and omega-3 fatty acids (found in oily fish, walnuts, flaxseed and chia) are particularly associated with healthy brain development and function.  

Although walnuts, flaxseed and chia are good sources of omega-3 fats and hold many health benefits, the body needs to convert them to a longer chain form, which is more beneficial for brain health. Not everyone is good at making this conversion, making oily fish the ideal choice. SMASH is a handy acronym for remembering the best fish for the job: salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines and herring. Fish pie or salmon fishcakes are often the winners with younger eaters.

Raising healthy eaters: Nutrients for healthy bones

When it comes to bone health, calcium, vitamin D (which aids calcium absorption) and vitamin K2 (which ensures the calcium we eat gets deposited in the bones, rather than in the soft tissue) are the top trio. Although meat, dairy, eggs and natto are all good sources of vitamin K2, healthy gut bacteria can also produce it!

Plant foods: Eat the rainbow and opt for wholegrains

This brings us on to one of the most valuable things we can do for our children to ensure they’re getting:

• a broad range of vitamins and minerals,
• antioxidants to protect their cells from damage,
• fibre to support their digestion, keep them fuller for longer, and most importantly, promote healthy gut bacteria

The answer is to include as broad a range of colourful fruit and vegetables as possible!

Carbohydrates supply essential energy, but try to choose wholegrains with fibre (eg oats, brown rice, buckwheat, quinoa), rather than refined white flours.

The challenges for parents

The question is, how do you get a ‘discerning’ eater to expand their repertoire? This can be especially tricky if your child has the ‘super-taster’ TAS2R38 gene variation, which means they are born with a greater ability to taste bitter substances and are more likely to avoid them.

Stress and anxiety can also drive appetites towards high-starch and sugary foods, and temporarily offer comfort. As toddlers struggle to develop a sense of autonomy (which extends to feeding themselves and choosing what goes on their plate), pressure from us as parents can cause them to dig their heels in and refuse to eat!

Top tips for developing healthy childhood eating habits

Here are 10 of my top tips to get children more engaged with their food and increase their intake of healthier food options:

1. A simple hack to increase vegetable intake and variety is to take 10-15 vegetables, blend or chop them up small, and freeze them in cubes, using an ice tray. You can then start by adding just 1 cube per day to a soup, stew or sauce your child enjoys,  gradually increasing the number of cubes over time.
2. Ensure a balanced meal is on the plate at the start of the meal: protein, starchy carbohydrate (ideally wholegrains or potatoes, which contain fibre) and vegetables/fruit, along with a small amount of healthy fat (found in nuts, seeds, avocado, olive oil and oily fish, which also counts as protein!).
3. Pin up a tick off checklist of different coloured fruit and vegetables on your fridge – set a weekly family challenge and build slowly.
4. Get your child involved in choosing a recipe and then finding the ingredients at the shops –they could have their own mini trolley. This gives a sense of autonomy and control in making the dish, which may encourage them to try something out of their comfort zone!
5. If you enjoy gardening, involve your child in food sourcing by growing your own vegetables or herbs. They always taste better from your own garden!
6. Read stories together featuring positive messages about healthy foodse.g. Oliver’s vegetables
7. Try new vegetables away from meals (this takes away emotion at mealtimes).
8. Eat together as a family, with you as the parent leading by example. Don’t underestimate your influence as a positive role model in your child’s eating behaviour.
9. Although this is very difficult to do as a parent, try to let your child’s appetite, rather than your desire to feed them, be the governing factor.
10. Finally, don’t give up! Although young children are naturally neophobic, meaning they’re not big fans of unfamiliar foods at first, most do come around with plenty of calm, pressure-free exposure.³  It can take 8-15 tries to accept a new food!

Want to know more about raising healthy eaters?

If you would like further support in healthy eating for you and your family, relevant to your particular dietary choices, lifestyle and circumstances, Rhodes to Health offers a one-off diet MOT, which includes a 1-week family meal plan.

I also provide longer-term support packages for various chronic health conditions across all ages. You can find all the details of my services and how I can help on my website.

Head to the homepage to read the latest articles about parenting, wellbeing and adoption.

Yes, it’s that time of year again where we all have a go at giving up the booze. For some of us it’s easy, life changing in fact. For others we last about a week before that bottle of wine that’s been staring at us on the shelf gets cracked open.

Dry January can be an enlightening experience, not to mention being great for your health. It can be a good indicator of our relationships with alcohol and whether we need alcohol help or we can take it or leave it with no problem at all.

Many of us have tried and succeeded – here are some top tips to help you navigate dry January in the most effective way possible…

Get rid of alcohol at home

It may sound an obvious one, but actually few people rid the cupboards of alcohol when trying to do dry January, after all, it can be expensive.

However, having alcohol in the home is more likely to lead to temptation and finally caving in. So if you can, rid your home of it, or at least the drinks you are likely to consume more frequently. You might be fine leaving the expensive bottle of champagne you’re saving for a special occasion where it is.

Make alternative arrangements to the pub

While the pub or bars might be the regular hangout spot for you and your friends, make alternative arrangements in January that don’t involve alcohol. Firstly, it will help you to avoid drinking any, but secondly you’ll also have more fun.

There are so many great activities to enjoy that don’t involve alcohol. It could bring you closer together as a friendship group and help introduce you to a healthier hobby that you’ll enjoy way beyond the month of January.

Create a Dry January team

You’ll get much more gratification out of doing dry January if there’s a group of you doing it. You’ll feel like you are a part of a team, in it together and get encouragement and support to see it through to the end.

You can meet up regularly, form text groups and share your progress as you navigate the month, and come January you can also review how you feel from doing it, whether it’s something you are going to continue, or whether it’s time for a well deserved “cheers” with all your buddies that have been through it together.

Head over to the health and well-being section to read more about creating healthy habits.

Being able to fit in exercise is something I thought would be so much easier when I started working for myself. But so far, it hasn’t worked out like that. I’ve had to accept that at the moment, I can’t get up early enough to exercise before the school run. And now that the nights are longer and it gets dark earlier, exercising in an evening doesn’t work for me either.

That leaves during the day when the kids are at school. Despite my best intentions, it just isn’t happening for me. I’m still in the early days of my business and I feel like I need to be working on or in it, all of the time. And at the moment, I feel that I can’t justify spending time exercising during the day.

So, what’s the solution? I need to do something to keep my body and my mind healthy and the longer I leave doing anything, the harder it will be to get back into it. Here’s some options I’ve found for exercising at work.

Work out at your desk

This is an option I hadn’t thought of but on the face of it, it ticks all the boxes. Perhaps one of the benefits of lockdown and more people working from home, is that the fitness equipment industry has created products that we can use at our desks.

There’s a range of equipment you can buy that’s designed to be used at a desk. I like the idea of getting a cardio workout while I’m typing by using desk exercise equipment such as a stepper or minibike. The beauty of these machines is that they fit under your desk and can be used easily while you’re there. If I’m focused on work, I don’t want to have to get up to access a piece of equipment so these desk machines would be perfect.

A walking desk

Unfortunately, a walking desk doesn’t do the exercise for you, but lets you walk (or run) while you work at your computer. At first glance, this is an expensive option. But with many of us now being given the flexibility to work from home and an equipment allowance, this is a sound investment if you’re serious about improving your fitness while you work.

I would imagine it takes a bit of practice to be able to jog and type at the same time, but if you’re an experienced runner, this may be a great option. Running isn’t my thing, but I love to walk and like the sound of this. So, it’s on my wish-list.

A stand-up desk

Standing up while you work can help to improve your circulation and posture. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to go straight into a day of standing but building up gradually and even doing an hour a day will be of benefit. You’ll need a desk that’s adjustable so you can get it at the right level for you.

If you’re feeling in need of an added challenge, why not add a balancing board into the mix? They’re great to use with a standing desk and can help to improve your brain function, balance, and develop core muscles.

Desk exercises

If you don’t want to buy any equipment, there’s a lot of exercising you can do at your desk. You could try wall or desk push-ups; calf raises and knee squats; or triceps stretches and neck rolls. There are many blog posts and online desk workouts you can try that are free.

I’d love to know whether you exercise at your desk and if you do, what do you enjoy the most? It’s definitely something I need to start doing to help improve my health and well-being.

We all know that seafood is good for our health, but it’s often hard to figure out exactly why. Some people absolutely love the idea of trying new foods, but when it comes to seafood there’s always people who hesitate first. 

It’s not that they particularly don’t like the taste or have even tried it, it’s just that when you look at wild tiger prawns you might not be able to help but envision them swimming around the ocean. Oysters always have a place on a luxury table, but have you ever considered sucking one down? There were plenty of benefits to eating seafood and it’s why it’s one of the most popular foods for people to eat. In this article, we’ve put together some of the reasons why you should try seafood and have more of it in your diet.

Image source: Pexels

It’s all about those Omega threes

You may have heard it a lot, but omega-3 is not just another buzzword. It’s one of the biggest benefits of eating seafood, the Omega threes. Consumption of this particular mineral has been found to help treat inflammation and help eyesight. It’s also a good way to help to treat the symptoms of depression. It’s not going to be a cure, but it’s certainly going to taste good and it’s going to help.

It will help your cholesterol

There are two different types of cholesterol, and LDL which is low density lipids it’s considered bad. Fish like salmon are packed with HDL, or high-density lipids, and these help to break down the LDL and help decrease your risk of cardiovascular illnesses. This is the kind of cholesterol fighting stuff you want to be eating and knowing that it’s going to taste good when you smother it in sweet chili or lemon is just one of the many reasons you should say yes to having more salmon in your diet.

Seafood is a very lean source of protein

Without a healthy source of protein, your muscles are not going to heal properly after injury. When you work out strenuously, you need to be able to recover, and that means you need to have a good amount of protein in your diet. Fish is an excellent source of protein and even the fattiest types of fish are often healthier than some other meats. There is an immense variety of fish out there for you to choose from, and there are so many options to decide which is the best fish that you could eat to suit your individual protein needs.

There are no hormones or antibiotics or filler in fish

There are things in some meats that have been known to cause allergic reactions, and there are links out there to show an increase of antibiotic resistant bacteria. In fish, there are no hormones or filler in the same way that there are some meats, which means you can feel safe to eat this food and enjoy it.

You can prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes

Often associated with obesity, type 2 diabetes is something that you will have for the rest of your life once it develops. Fish like salmon and black card can help those who are at risk of type 2 diabetes to stay healthy. When you consume this kind of fish, you will enjoy lower glucose concentrations, and replacing your red meat in your diet with fish can help to lower that diabetes risk by up to 35%.

In my late teens and early twenties I was an international gymnast competing as a middle of a women’s group in Sports Acrobatics. Training at such an intensive level meant I didn’t have to watch my weight. I’ve grew up with a balanced diet mixed with treats in moderation. I was a bit more careful with what I ate as we approached competitions but on the whole, I ate what I fancied.

That all changed when I retired from gymnastics in my mid 20s. I soon piled on the weight and struggled to find a form of exercise I enjoyed as much as gymnastics. The next 2 decades have been spent on a quest trying and then discarding a wide variety of activities.

I have a home DVD exercise collection that would support a large gym. I enjoy this type of exercise, but the size of my collection reflects the fact that I get bored easily. Usually with the music rather than the dance. An actual dance class is your answer, I hear you cry. It probably would be if I didn’t have to get changed, leave the house and travel to do it. I’ve had my eye on several classes and I even went to one for a while. But they’re at set times and those times usually don’t fit in with my life.

Swimming is something else I enjoy. Once I’m in the water, it’s quite relaxing and a joint friendly way to get fit. Unfortunately, I’m not one of the privileged few that has a pool in their back garden. That therefore means I have to travel to go swimming. And then get changed. And then get dried and changed at the end of it. Before I was a mum, that was actually quite a nice way to spend a few hours. Now I just don’t have the time.

We’ve had an exercise bike in our spare room for years. It is something I used regularly but it was quite uncomfortable and felt like a chore to do it. I felt good afterwards but much like my dalliance with running, I hated doing it.

So what is the answer? As is often the case when you can’t see the wood for the trees, it is actually very straightforward. Running gave me absolutely no pleasure at all. I used to feel jealous of who runners who constantly bang on about how great they feel after a run. It’s their space to think and breath. For me it was torture but I felt it was the only sport I could do outside. I was missing a trick and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find the simple answer. Which of course is walking. I love being outside. I love the freedom of losing myself in music while I soak up the atmosphere around me. Walking is the perfect answer.

Two things have happened over the last few months which have been lightbulb moments for me and my fitness. The first was to do what I vowed I was never going to do again and join Weight Watchers. I did it for a lot of reasons. After a very dark and long winter, I was extremely unhappy with my weight and uncomfortable in my skin. For a while I felt that so many areas of my life was outside of my control. I hate not being in control and I’d dealt with that by sitting on my backside and eating rubbish.

Making some small changes didn’t really make a difference. I knew Weight Watchers would. However, this time I’ve gone into it with a different mentality. I’ve always done it before thinking it was a short term thing. Losing weight was the aim, but when that was achieved, I’d go back to doing what I did before. Unsurprisingly, that led to the weight going back on. This time it’s more about re-educating myself about healthy food and cooking healthy and enjoyable meals.

The second thing that happened was signing up for a walking challenge at work. For 8 weeks, we’re challenging ourselves to walk 10,000 steps every day. For some people, that’s the norm. They have active lifestyles that mean they do that before lunch. I’m not lucky enough to have a job that allows me to do that on the 3 days I go out to work. I work in a courtroom and getting up every so often to do some steps is generally frowned upon.

The challenge has really made me think about my lifestyle. It’s become easy to not move around very much. I did the challenge last year and managed 10,000 some days but was usually only doing around 8,000. That’s still good, but I felt this year I needed to up the anti and take it seriously. We’re currently in week 7 and I’ve done at least 10,000 steps every day except 2 which were still both over 8,000. Pushing myself to do the steps has been the kick up the bum I’ve needed. I’ve lost weight but more importantly, I feel so much better in myself.

So, once the challenge is over and my subscription to Weight Watchers runs out, I’m going to stick with it. Healthy eating, relaxing things a bit at weekends. The most important thing though it keeping up exercise. I’m determined I’m going to fit 10,000 steps into my daily life. Whatever the weather.