Let's start with the foods they eat when they are not at home, or more importantly, what they eat when they are at school. School provided lunches are high sugar, high fat, high dairy, highly refined and processed, high salt, and high animal protein meals. This type of meal is going to contribute to a child's obesity, and not give them the health or building blocks they need to stay at an optimal weight.

Helpful Resources: Poor Food For Children This is a great site that lists foods that are poor for children to eat, and foods that are good for children to eat, as well as some reasons why. Poor Nutrition This is a great site that discusses some of the problems that come from poor nutrition for your children. It offers links to other articles and information about eating and children. Overweight Child This site will help you deal with the psychological side of putting a child on a diet, and it helps parents see how to best approach and handle the issue of an overweight child. Mayo Clinic This is an article by the Mayo Clinic that helps you understand how to help a picky eater child eat right, and teaches you some of the things you can do to change your child's eating habits. Children's Nutrition Research Center This is information provided by the children's nutrition research center. It provides good tips for children diets, as well as some specific recommendations. There are also links to other helpful articles. Tools and Resources for Childhood Obesity This is a site dedicated to fighting the problems of childhood obesity, and has many helpful tools and resources for figuring out what diets are best for kids, and changes you can make to avoid childhood obesity. Childhood Obesity This site addresses the concerns and risks that occur if you allow your child to eat an unhealthy diet. It discusses the affects of childhood obesity, and some diet changes that can be implemented. Fight Against Childhood Obesity This site offers updates on new diets for children, discusses the fight against childhood obesity, and provides links for other options, statistics, tips, etc. World Health Organization This is the World Health Organization's website, and they have updated information, studies, concerns of world health, etc. You can click into "Child health" and find tons of information about how to keep children healthy. Child Health With the Center for Disease Control and Prevention This is for the center for disease control and prevention. It discusses child health, and you can click on links to learn a lot of tips for how to prevent disease starting with your child and their diet.

Unfortunately home packed lunches are rarely much better; parents are plagued with being busy and sometimes finding time to feed their children the right foods is difficult. McDonald's Happy Meals, fast and easy microwave meals, and anything quick tends to reign king in children's diets. Many lunchboxes are overloaded with fat, sugar and salt and are missing fruit, vegetables and whole grains. Throwing in a lunchables, a Little Debbie's Snack Cake, and a bag of chips is typical.

Since a handful of foods do most of the damage to children's diets and health, a handful of changes can go a long way toward improving them.

Here is a list of some of the most common, and yet worst foods to feed your child:

10 of the Worst Children's Foods

• Soda pop


• Whole milk


• Hamburgers


• American cheese


• Hot dogs


• French fries and Tater Tots


• Ice cream


• Pizza loaded with cheese and meat


• Bologna


• Chocolate bars

Replace these items with some of the following, which are much better choices, but still fun to eat.

10 of the Best Children's Foods

• Fresh fruits


• Fresh vegetables


• Whole grain, low sugar cereals


• 100% fruit juice (no sugar added)


• Seasoned air-popped popcorn


• Whole wheat crackers


• Whole wheat pasta noodles


• Legumes


• Nuts (if they do not have an allergy)


• All-natural (no sugar) peanut butter

We all know a child would rather eat a bag of fruit snacks then a bowl of cantaloupe. So, what can you do to help your child eat right?

First and foremost, sugars, fats, and other poor quality foods are somewhat of a developed taste. If you start your child out eating plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, low fat foods, etc. they will enjoy them throughout their life. So, start early. But, if bad habits have already been developed, there is still hope. Try the following:

• Include at least one serving of fruit in every lunch. Fruit goes over a little better than vegetables, and is very good for your child. Also, because of the advances in the food industry, we have the ability to have fresh, ripe fruit all year long. So, be sure to try buying a few new types of fruit each week to let your child taste new things and discover new favorites. This will give them more choices, and make this healthy choice much easier. Good places to start are with apples, oranges or bananas, but you can also try pears, sliced melon, cups of applesauce, grapes or pineapple (fresh or canned in its own juice).
• Add a few more vegetables to their diet. You can do this by sneaking vegetables - like lettuce or slices of cucumber, tomatoes, etc. - onto sandwiches. Add an extra carrot stick to the bag they usually take, or consider giving them a mixed vegetable drink option, if they won't waste it. Eating vegetables reduces your child's chances of heart disease, cancer, blindness and stroke later in life. So, make a concerted effort to introduce some veggies into their diet, the more the better. Just be sure that as you add a few veggies to their sandwich, you also cut down on the mayo and other fatty, unnecessary dressings.
• Use whole grain bread instead of white bread for sandwiches. Choose breads that list "whole wheat" as the first ingredient. If the main flour listed on the label is "wheat" or "unbleached wheat flour," the product is not whole grain. It may take a few weeks for your child to adjust to whole grain bread, but if they have no other option they will, and the benefits are worth the struggle. Just be aware that most multi-grain, rye, oatmeal and pumpernickel breads in the U.S. are not whole grain.
• Limit cookies, snack cakes, cake, doughnuts, brownies and other sweet baked goods. It is okay to let your kids have snacks now and then, but not if that is a huge percent of their diet. Sugars, sweets, etc. are addicting, and while restricting them completely is not a good idea, limiting them is. Sweet baked goods are the second leading source of sugar and the fourth leading source of saturated fat in Americans' diets. Low-fat baked goods can help cut heart-damaging saturated fat from your child's diet, but even fat-free sweets can crowd out healthier foods like fruit, so instead, use them as a "treat" every now and again, but not at every meal, and not every day.
• If you are going to give your child a snack like chips, be sure they are baked chips. Consider options like pretzels, Cheerios, bread sticks or low-fat crackers instead of potato, corn, tortilla or other chips made with oil or Olean. Avoid fat-free chips. They are made with Olean (olestra), a fat substitute that can cause abdominal cramping and diarrhea and can rob your body of carotenoids and other phytochemicals that may lower the risk of cancer.
• If you pack a drink, make sure it is juice, and make sure it's 100% juice. All fruit drinks are required to list the "% juice" on the label. Watch out for juice drinks like Sunny Delight, Hi-C, Fruitopia and Capri Sun. These generally offer no more than 10% juice, and are not good for your child.
• Limit animal based proteins, and make sure the ones you do provide are low fat and not highly processed. There is a common misconception that you need to feed your children extra protein because they are growing. This often leads to diets that consist mainly of animal protein, and lacking other kinds of foods. So how much do they actually need? Babies grow faster than any one else, as they double their weight in about six months. What do infants eat when they double their weight in the first six months? Breast milk or formula. The average protein intake for infants is 2.5-6%. Some mothers produce more protein in their breast milk than others, which is why it differs. WHO (world health organization) recommends that the protein intake for adolescent and adults be 5%, that the exception to that is nursing mothers that is 6%. When children consume too much animal protein they mature too fast, and age faster than they should. This leads to higher rates of breast cancer in girls. You may have noticed that girls are developing breasts faster than they did in your day, and are going through puberty sooner. This is a result of the chemicals fed to animals to make them grow faster being passed to us when we eat these animals.

If you ignore the problems with your child's diet, you may find that their dietary lifestyle is contributing to the high rates of childhood obesity, ADD, poor growth, hyperactivity, and other problems.

The best diets for kids are diets that they will eat, but that include plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, and high nutrition foods. Limit anything that is highly refined or processed, or that does not have a high nutrient value for how many calories it has. Gradual changes are better than no changes at all, so introduce a little more fresh fruits and vegetables each week as you gradually reduce the amount of packaged, processed, snacks and foods.