Simple ways to improve your child’s diet this New Year

Knowing what to feed your child to keep them healthy is only half the battle. As part of Loughborough University's 2018/19 Christmas and New Year campaign, we’ve collated all the latest Loughborough research related to child nutrition in a bid to help you get the best out of your youngsters’ diets.

Knowing what to feed your child to keep them healthy is only half the battle.

As any parent knows, there is no guarantee that just because something is in front of them it will get eaten.

So, as part of the 2018/19 Christmas and New Year campaign, we’ve collated all the latest research carried out by Loughborough University which is related to child nutrition in a bid to help you get the best out of your youngsters’ diets.

Click on the links below to get more information about each of the topics:

How to prepare a perfectly nutritious primary school packed lunch for your kids

Loughborough University’s Dr Clare Holley, an expert in healthy eating behaviour in young children, has assembled the ingredients and amounts needed to give youngsters the correct amount of nutrition for their packed lunches.

How to make your child less picky at mealtimes

Fussy eating youngsters could be encouraged to be less fastidious by sharing mealtimes with their parents, a new study has revealed.

Children who are choosy over what they eat should also eat their breakfast, lunch and dinner without toys or television distracting them, and they should be given some level of choice over what they eat as well as how much.

Screen time linked to unhealthy eating behaviour in children

Excessive screen time has been linked to unhealthy eating behaviour in schoolchildren.

More than 95% of 11 and 12-years-old who took part in a Loughborough University study reported unhealthy behaviour related to low fruit and vegetable intake, high-fat snacking or too much screen time.

Two-thirds of youngsters who completed questionnaires admitted to at least two of the detrimental health issues, while a third confirmed they participated in all three (low fruit and vegetable intake, high-fat snack intake and high screen-time).

Three effective methods for encouraging your kids to eat their vegetables

This is the advice of researchers at Loughborough University who found that ‘repeated exposure’ to vegetables at snack and mealtimes worked when trying to improve a child’s diet.

The study, which reviewed a number of previously proposed methods for increasing the number of vegetables children eat, recommended the three most effective approaches for parents to take.