5 Fantastic Low Fat Foods for Kids

Keeping your kid on a healthy diet can be quite a challenge sometimes. No matter how much you try at home, kids tend to snack and love sweets and you can’t really know what is it they eat while they are in school. Still, do your job the best you can and try these 5 fantastic low fat foods for kids.

1. Home Made Sandwiches

Instead of letting your kid buy the food at school, make a sandwich and pack it in a lunch bag for your child. Accompany it with a box of organic fruit juice and an apple and your child is ready to go.

Make sandwiches out of whole grain bread and avoid using butter or mayonnaise. Still, remember that even though margarine can be lower in calories than butter, it contains saturated and trans fats and is actually a lot worse. If you’re choosing between the two, rather go for butter.

Use low fat cream cheese or cottage cheese, smoked chicken or turkey and fresh vegetables for the sandwich. Avoid putting bacon or yellow cheese, as neither of those can be counted as low fat food.

2. Fruits and Vegetables as Snacks

Kids love to snack, that’s a fact, but they learn that from you. If you want to teach your kid to eat healthy snacks, cut the chips and similar stuff out from your house completely. Don’t hide it away, once your kid finds them, they’ll feel quite betrayed.

Offer baby carrots, dried fruits or nuts instead of snacks from the store. Determine portion size and don’t let your kid have too much. Make fruit skewers by cutting bite size pieces of fruit and threading them to skewers. This is really interesting for kids and they will love having it.

If you really can’t survive without snacks, try baked potato chips instead of fried, or low sodium pretzels. Popcorn can also be good, but only if air popped or if popped on really little oil. No butter and absolutely no cheese.

3. Wholegrain Pancakes

You can’t really force your child to eat only steamed vegetables. Kids need a variety of food, but you can still be creative and make it low fat. Try making wholegrain pancakes instead of regular ones.

Just substitute a part of the flour you would put in pancakes for wholegrain flour. Add some seeds, like sesame, sunflower and pumpkin into the batter and make healthy pancakes. Do not under any circumstances serve them with bacon. Why would you bother making them healthy in the first place if you’re going to serve fatty bacon with them? Serve with low fat cream cheese or organic jam.

4. Oatmeal instead of Cereals

oatmeal with strawberry

For a healthier breakfast serve your kid oatmeal instead of cereals. Cereals are advertised as a healthy meal, but some of them, especially those made for kids, can be full of sugar and have zero nutritional benefits.

Oatmeal cannot be easier to prepare. Just take one cup of oat flakes and three cups of milk and cook until it thickens. If your kid likes it sweeter, sweeten it with honey instead of sugar and add raisins or any other fruit.

5. Try Low Fat Desserts

Ok, you can’t completely ban cookies and sweets to your child, it’s not cool and after all it’s not healthy. Kids need sugar too. Still, keep the desserts low fat.

Fruit salad is always a good choice. As long as you make it look fun, your kid will be fine with eating it. Try oatmeal or rice cookies instead of chocolate chip and try to make as much desserts with honey instead of sugar. Treat your kid with a proper ice cream and chocolate cake every now and then, but only for special occasions and in small portions.

Did your child love these recipes? I bet they did!

About the author

Sarah

I’m a free spirit who likes to travel, cook and fly. Licensed paraglider pilot, I spend all my spare time flying. In the meantime, I like to share my recipes and travel experiences.

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