Balanced diet and healthy growth blackboard

For children who are in the growth and development period, a balanced diet is never about following a uniform recipe and eating enough "standard nutrients". It is about adapting to individual differences on the basis of food diversity so that children can eat comfortably and happily. This is the core of long-term healthy growth.

I helped three primary schools around the community to do a three-semester diet science bulletin, and I have seen too many parents who stepped into the trap: some fed their children high-protein foods every day, resulting in indigestion, bad breath, and constipation. Some strictly controlled sugar and even refused to eat strawberries. In the end, the children secretly saved their pocket money to stock up on sugar at the canteen, but instead ate more three-no products.

I just met Xiaoyu’s mother, who is in third grade, last week. She told her that she would have a cup of pure milk and an egg every morning and evening, and she must cook deep-sea fish for lunch. The result of the physical examination was that she was not only deficient in vitamin D, but also suffered from constipation for half a year due to insufficient dietary fiber intake. When she received the report, she was completely confused and said, "I followed the top-level children's nutrition menu in Xiaohongshu." You see, the problem lies in this "eating to order" - Xiaoyu himself is lactose intolerant and cannot absorb most of the nutrients from pure milk. He is usually coaxed to eat more meat and less vegetables. Of course, protein supplements alone are useless. According to the recommendations in the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)", children aged 7-12 should consume 1,000mg of calcium every day. In fact, just drinking 300ml of milk and eating some soy products or green leafy vegetables is enough. There is no need to forcefully drink uncomfortable pure milk, Shuhua milk, sugar-free yogurt or even cheese sticks without additives, the effect is not much different.

There are actually two popular schools of thought regarding children’s diet, and both sides are reasonable. On one side are the precision nutritionists, who advocate calculating the daily proportions of carbohydrates, protein, and fat for children, even down to grams, and strictly controlling salt and sugar. This method is really useful for children with obesity, malnutrition, or basic metabolic problems. We previously treated an overweight fourth-grade child who ate the precise recipe given by a pediatric nutritionist for three months, and his body fat rate dropped back to the normal range, and he was able to concentrate a lot more in class. But the views of the natural eating school on the other side are also very practical: as long as the child has no special health problems, there is really no need to be stuck. As long as the child can eat different types of food every day, just follow the appetite. After all, the amount of exercise the child does every day varies greatly. Today, he ran 800 meters and played football for half an hour in gym class, so he naturally eats more. Tomorrow, if it rains and he does not go out and sits for a whole day, he will naturally eat less, which will hurt the spleen and stomach.

This time our bulletin board did not include those dense nutrient comparison tables. Most parents were confused and their children did not like to read them. I posted a big "rainbow pick-up and check-in list", red (tomato, strawberry, wolfberry, etc.), yellow (pumpkin, corn, orange, etc.), green (green vegetables, okra, broccoli, etc.), white (milk, yam, lotus root, etc.), black ( Fungus, black sesame, black rice, etc.) five categories of food, as long as you get 3 of them every day, you will be considered successful. You don’t have to eat them all, and you don’t have to eat a certain amount. If you like to eat more, you can eat less if you don’t like it. It’s no problem to substitute the same category - Don’t like broccoli? You can replace it with rapeseed or kale. Don’t like carrots? There is a lot of beta-carotene in sweet potatoes and mangoes. If you don’t like eating them, you don’t need to eat them. There is no need to force your children to get emotional every time they eat.

Oh, yes, we specially left a "Snack Whisper" section in the corner of the blackboard. We didn't say no snacks were allowed, but wrote a "Weekly Happy Quota": you can eat the "happy food" you want once a week, such as spicy sticks, cola, and potato chips. You can eat it in front of your parents. You don't have to sneak around and eat too much at once, which will hurt your body. After all, when we were young, we secretly saved up money to buy ice packs and Tang Monk meat for 50 cents a bag, but we completely banned them. When the children's rebellious psychology develops, it becomes even more difficult to control them.

We also left a blank comment area at the bottom of the blackboard. On the first day it was posted last week, a fifth-grade child wrote a crooked line, "My mother forces me to eat carrots every day, and I feel like vomiting when I smell it." We added a small note next to it that day. The next day, the child came over and stuffed us with an orange-flavored hard candy, saying that someone finally spoke for him.

In fact, after doing diet science for so long, my biggest feeling is that everyone thinks of balanced diet too complicated. It is scary to say that you need to eat 12 kinds of food every day and 25 kinds every week. In fact, if you drink millet porridge and a boiled egg in the morning, there are already 2 kinds. At noon, you can eat stir-fried vegetables and meat with half a corn, which is 5 kinds. In the evening, drink lotus root soup and eat some strawberries. You can count them casually. To put it bluntly, it's like building a Lego building. You don't necessarily have to use designated building blocks to build a good-looking house. As long as the structure is stable, you can use any blocks. If you are really not sure how to prepare meals for your children, you can also leave a message on our blackboard. We will update several small recipes suitable for different situations every week. They are all recipes that we have tried and are easy to make without picking out the ingredients. You don’t have to look through Xiaohongshu for a long time and step on the traps.

By the way, we also printed a small portable version of this issue of the blackboard newspaper and placed it in the security room at the school gate. You can just take what you want. It’s all free~