When your child is at the elementary age, it is a prime time to instill healthy eating concepts into his daily life. The way he eats as a child will most likely be how he eats as an adult, so it is essential to teach him how to make nutritious choices. The USDA Food Pyramid, called MyPyramid, is a handy way to help determine how much food your child needs from each food group, and gives you and your child a visual reminder of what healthy eating means.
Benefits of MyPyramid
Achieving nutritional balance is an important way to ensure that your child gets all of the vitamins, minerals and antioxidants she needs to grow and develop. MyPyramid is designed to help you offer your child a variety of foods. The benefit of using the food pyramid is that you can easily determine how much of each food group your child needs each day to get all of the nutrients necessary for good health. Using MyPyramid will also help you teach your child how to eat nutritious foods, as well as how to identify the difference between them and unhealthy choices.
How MyPyramid Works
MyPyramid is divided into six different sections. Each section represents a different food group so you get a visual representation of how much you should eat from each. The orange section represents grains, including cereal, pasta and bread. The green section represents vegetables and the red section represents fruits. The blue section encompasses dairy foods like milk, cheese and yogurt. The purple section is for meat, beans and fish. The yellow section is tiny, but represents the small amount of oils and fats elementary children need for proper growth.
Suggested Foods
From the grains group, offer your child whole wheat bread, pasta and cereal, as well as brown rice. Younger elementary children need 5 oz. and older children need 6 oz. each day. Your child needs between 2 and 2.5 cups of vegetables and 1.5 cups of fruit each day. Offer him brightly-colored ones like carrots, melon, berries, apples, bananas, broccoli, squash and green beans. Younger elementary children need 2 cups of milk and older children need 3 cups of milk each day. Skim milk supplies all the calcium he needs without all the fat. Low-fat cheese and yogurt are also included in the dairy group. Serve your child 5 oz. of lean meat, such as chicken, beef and fish, or beans each day as well.
Suggested Activities
Doing some activities with your child will help you teach her about MyPyramid, as well as how to make healthy eating choices. Take your child grocery shopping and encourage her to pick some new foods from each section of MyPyramid for the family to try. Have your child cut healthy foods out of magazines and glue them to a blank food pyramid, so she can learn where each food belongs. Keep a blank food pyramid on the refrigerator and allow your child to put stickers in each section as she eats those foods during the day.
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