Healthy eating habits start in childhood

It’s a topic that almost every parent talks about. How to get children to eat healtheir food – and avoid the high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar junk foods? The health experts and officials are forever throwing in their opinions, too, imploring parents to wake up to the growing problem of overweight children in the UK.

They are right, of course. Britain does have an increasingly scary statistics for childhood obesity. Being overweight as a child also means that as an adult you will have a greater chance of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dying younger.

Why do children need to eat healthily? Eating healthy foods and a balanced diet means that they will receive all the essential nutrients for brains and bodies to function efficiently and smoothly.

Children with healthy diets are also shown to:

* Do better at school

* Concentrate for longer

* Do better in sports.

Here we bring you some great tips to get children to eat more healthily.

• Eat with others. Food should be fun and sociable.
• Choose foods with nice colours. Food should look good as well as taste good.
• Cut food into fun shapes or create patterns or designs.
• Offer children a choice of healthy foods. They like to feel grown-up and make decisions.
• Involve kids in cooking. Children like to eat what they have made – and not just cakes!
• Explain why it is that some foods are better than others. Kids are sponges for knowledge.
• In the summer, grow fruit and veg with your children. let them harvest the produce and try the tastes (raw and cooked).
• Serve raw veg instead of cooked. Many children prefer veg crunchy rather than soft.
• Try sweeter "good for you foods", such as strawberries, mandarin oranges, cherries, baby tomatoes and sweet peas.·

And did you know?

• The most important food group for young kids is carbohydrates, things like bread and pasta.
• Whole fruits are better than juice.
• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Why not sing about healthy munching and crunching with your children?!

The Sticky Kids Munch and Crunch song:

It isn’t food that makes you fat

It’s eating junk, remember that.

Find out more about the Munch and Crunch CD for kids and grown ups here

Fit and healthy kids get the best start in life

The younger we teach our children about fitness the more likely they are to grow up to be fit and healthy adults. Research also shows that parents can create good habits for their children by being fitter and healthier themselves. Youngsters who grow up with a mum who jogs or a dad who plays football will be more likely to become interested in sport and fitness as well.

Both parents and children will benefit form regular exercise. Fit adults and children have:

* Better circulation

* A reduced risk of heart disease

* Less chance of being overweight

* Increased strength, flexibility and agility

* Stronger bones

* Lower chance of being stressed or depressed

* Lower rates of asthma

* And a longer life expectancy.

And kids are never too young to start creating the right exercise habits for life.

But have you ever wondered how to engage younger children in a regular keep-fit routine?

Three ways to get kids active:

1. If it’s dry visit the playpark and give your children a chance to run, jump, climb and balance. But if it’s raining why not stick on the Sticky Kids Work Out CD and do Can You Run As Fast As Me, the Bean Bag song (remember and have a sock ready!) and any other favourites.

2. We all like to dance and it’s a great way to keep-fit. Dance to any music but for some cool moves try Breakfast Boogie (on the Sticky Kids Munch and Crunch CD) or the Funky Monkey (on the Sticky Kids Bend and Stretch).

3. For an all-round warm up put on the Warm Up with the sticky Kids CD and just let it run from track 1 to 8. A note to the grown-ups: No cheating on the “stand up, sit down” action! If you’ve done it before you’ll know what we mean!

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the market leading educational music and movement CDs collection

Welcome to the Sticky Kids blog

We're really excited about our new blog. This is where we'll be telling kids and the grown-ups about what we're up to and the latest CDs we're working on. We will also be bringing you lots of tips and fun ways to stay fit and healthy. In the meantime why not take a look at our StickyKids website