A diet chart helps your child make healthy food choices. Depending on the purpose of the chart, you can work with your child and your child's caretakers to identify a food allergy or intolerance, track intake for a medical condition or simply teach your child to understand what food groups exist.
Function
A diet chart tracks a child's nutritional intake. It can serve a number of purposes, from tracking allergic responses to charting calorie intake to ensuring that your child is eating enough of a particular nutrient, such as calcium. In addition, if your child has multiple caretakers, a diet chart helps communicate clearly what your child has eaten.
Types
An elimination diet chart helps identify allergic responses. When a child is on an elimination diet, certain food substances are removed from a his diet, either one at a time or as a group, and then added back in. An elimination diet chart notes what allergic response, if any, the food triggers.
A nutrition diet chart helps track a child's intake in terms of either caloric needs or food groups, depending on what she needs to track. Diabetic children, for example, need to track their carbohydrate intake to ensure that their insulin levels are appropriate to what they eat.
Time Frame
Diet charts typically track daily food intake. Some charts allow kids to write down what they ate at each meal or snack, along with nutritional information such as calories or carbohydrate. Other charts allow children to color in food groups throughout the day, without specifically tracking by meal.
Considerations
Decide what you most need from a diet chart your child is using. If you're seeking to help her make good food choices, a daily pyramid chart, such as those available from the USDA at MyPyramid.gov can be very effective. These free, printable sheets allow kids to clearly identify what food groups they have eaten. If you are using a diet chart for medical reasons, work with your child's doctor to ensure the chart is both easy for you to read and easy for your child to fill out.
Significance
If a child needs to manage his weight, a diet chart focused on basic food groups can be helpful in teaching him to track his intake without making him too conscious of calories. Calorie counting may be too abstract for kids and may lead to unhealthy habits. If a child needs to learn to track specific nutrients, a diet chart can help educate her so that she can learn to manage her condition.
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