Childhood nutrition
You want to give your child a head-start in life but where do you start?!
Good nutrition is essential to optimise a child’s potential for success. Nutritional requirements change throughout the different stages of childhood and meeting these requirements is necessary to promote wellbeing and intellectual development.
Children require sufficient energy and essential nutrients each day to develop physically, emotionally and intellectually. They need to concentrate on schoolwork as well as learning to interact with their peers. Even mild undernutrition and short-term hunger can be barriers to learning.
A poor nutritional intake may also have a lasting impact on health in later life. Conditions such as heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes can often be traced back to poor nutrition during childhood.
It is never too early to consider the quality of a child’s diet. It’s not possible, or appropriate, to control exactly what a child eats but it is possible to take steps to ensure they get they nutrients they require to get a good start in life.