Nutrition

1. Nutrition

2. What Does Licensing Say? • Handout • Internet site for standards: http://www.tdprs.state.tx.us/Child_Care/Child_Care_Standards_and_Regulations/pdf/final746.pdf

3. Causes of Childhood Obesity • Genetics • A medical condition that increases fat storage and weight gain • Medication that has weight gain as a side effect • Lack of exercise more commonly contributes to weight gain than eating • Not recognizing (feeling satisfied), often due to adults overriding cues • High fat and/or high calorie intake, due to exposure to highly palatable foods • Cultural or family imperatives to overeat • Eating for non-nutritional reasons • rewarding with food • consoling with food • eating out of boredom • eating to procrastinate • eating as a substitute for love • eating for entertainment

4. Nutritional Needs of Children • Let’s look at serving size…what do you think? • Handout on serving size • The Food Guide Pyramid!

6. Ericson’s Stages and Feeding Children in Group Settings • Take your handout or go to http://iws.ccccd.edu/shirschy and the section you are assigned and by poem, song, or acting out teach us what we should and shouldn’t do!

7. Principles for Feeding Children in a Group Setting • 1. Adults should eat with children. • 2. Adults choose what is served and how it is served. • 3. Children choose how much to eat. • 4. Children need a variety of foods. • 5. Children should serve themselves. • 6. Adults set the feeding environment.

8. When Feeding Children in Groups…. • PROVIDE SPACE • TRUST CHILDREN TO EAT AS MUCH AS THEY NEED • MAKE SURE ADULTS EAT WITH CHILDREN • FEED CHILDREN OFTEN • PROVIDE PRACTICE WITH CHILD SIZED UTENSILS • PROVIDE FOODS THAT CHALLENGE EATING SKILLS • LET CHILDREN SERVE THEMSELVES • SET THE ENVIRONMENT SO CHILDREN DO NOT WAIT TOO LONG. • PRESENT FOOD THAT IS COMMONLY KNOWN TO CHILDREN. RELATE NEW FOODS TO THOSE THE CHILDREN ALREADY KNOW. • KNIFE, FORK, SPOON, or FINGERS!! • A WORD ABOUT GAGGING AND CHOKING

9. WHAT ARE THE ROLES OF ADULTS AT THE TABLE? • CHILDREN NEED ADULTS TO EAT WITH THEM! This provides opportunities for modeling. Adults help teach children hygiene and social conventions. When a relaxed adult is near, children are more likely to feel relaxed and secure. Children need adults to keep them safe, including giving support to hygiene, possible choking hazards, and conflicts that children negotiate. • USE PARENTS AS VOLUNTEERS AT MEALTIMES • TALK, LISTEN, and WATCH • Learn children’s thoughts about food by analyzing the vocabulary they use. Note how they put foods into categories. Listen to what children say.

10. HOW MUCH??????? • Teach children about how to determine bite size. • Talk with them about serving size and how much they pick up with their eating utensils. • Make child size eating utensils available. • Choose serving utensils that hold a small serving size. (An ice cream scoop works great!) • Children need smaller servings than adults do. If you serve children’s plates, make seconds and thirds smaller than initial amounts. • If you serve the children’s plates, ask them to tell you how much to put on the plate. • Let’s Practice!

11. Avoid Choking! • Eat with children and model taking small bites and chewing thoroughly • Use preventive teaching to the children • Serve food that is safe for children to chew and swallow • Encourage small bites and chewing completely, • Cut foods into small pieces (less than ¼ to ½ inch) • Avoid presenting food to children that is round and firm, sticky, or cut into large chunks. Food should be no larger than ½ inch in diameter for preschoolers and ¼ inch for toddlers. • Careful: Avoid These Foods NUTS AND SEEDS, Whole berries, Raw carrots and celery, Grapes, unless they have been cut in half Firm, hard raisins, Hot dogs not cut in small slices, Large chunks of meat or cheese, Popcorn, Hard candy, Chunks of peanut butter • If they are choking deal with that first and talk about it later • Use class rules to help prevent choking: sit on your bottom while you eat; finish chewing and swallowing before you leave the table; stay out of other children’s space while they are eating. Insist on children sitting

12. KNIFE, FORK, SPOON, or FINGERS!! • Give children knives, forks, and spoons. The opportunity to use all three allows children to exercise muscles, develop skills that are socially valued, and be more efficient in eating. Remember that children’s muscles are under construction! Strength and endurance are not yet established. Provide child size serving utensils, pitchers, and bowls. Teach about how to hold and use utensils when children are relaxed and their muscles are not fatigued. Talking about how to use the utensils works best when children are not too hungry and not too tired. Small group times are good for talking about serving yourself and using utensils.

13. Handwashing…again • 15 second handwashing checkup! • Teach about what is YOURS, MINE, and OURS. Make opportunities for children to learn the rules about eating and hygiene that are appropriate for “yours”, “mine,” and “ours.” • Teach about hygiene when children serve themselves. Help children determine what is “mine,” “yours,” and “ours,” and how to avoid cross contamination. • Teach children to thoroughly wash hands before and after eating. Teacher’s can model this! As children wash their hands, be sure to describe what they are doing. “You are using warm water and soap. You are washing between your fingers.”

14. Teaching Them to Try It! • Help children learn about food. • Model tasting foods that are new to children. Remember the food may be new to the children, though it is commonly known in the environment. • Give names to foods. Talk about how foods are similar. Talk about the characteristics of food and help children make food categories. • Integrate food activities throughout the day. Include food and food “talk” in dramatic play, stories and books. • Teach about foods and categories in the food pyramid. Typically, young children do not think in the abstract. Most do not understand the hierarchy of the food pyramid. They can, put foods in categories. • Avoid using the terms “good food” and “bad food.” Talk instead about how our bodies need grains, fruits and vegetables. Be sure to help children assign names and discover similarities and differences as they learn about food.

15. Be Careful! • AVOID FORCING CHILDREN TO EAT Do not force children to eat. Monitor comments to children about amounts they eat. Subtle forcing is as hurtful as is obvious forcing. Have someone make notes of comments you make at the table with children. • SERVING SIZE If you must serve the children’s plates, do not serve large portions. Give the child a choice of how much! • ADULT ROLE Do not make lunch break time. This is time for adults to respond and support children’s attempts at successful eating. Avoid standing, walking around the tables, or doing multiple tasks while the children eat. Arrange people, the serving bowls, and the children so that the pleasure of sitting down together is assured.

16. Conversation that Helps or Hinders? • Yes, these radishes are crunchy! • You have to take one more bite before you leave the table. • This is kiwi fruit. It’s sweet like a strawberry • Do you like that? • Carli, look at Maria. She ate all of her bananas. • Would you like more? • You’re such a big girl; you finished all your peas. • Is your stomach telling you that you’re full? • Eat that for me. • Use your napkin • Move the serving bowl closer to your plate • See, that didn’t taste so bad, did it?

17. Skills for Serving Self • Handout • Also found at: http://iws.ccccd.edu/shirschy/Fall04Courses/CDAIIHANDOUTS.htm

18. Scenarios 1. Maria is three years old. She is new to your center. Her mother is very impressed that children serve themselves at mealtimes. She is also impressed that you have the philosophy that children decide how much they will eat. Maria’s mom eats lunch with her daughter at your center on the first day the child arrives. When the bowl is passed, Maria takes four portions of mashed potatoes. 2. Children are taking more ketchup, mustard, and salad dressing than is reasonable or even eatable. You are using child-size, plastic squeeze bottles. 3. Sarah serves herself at lunchtime. She takes only bread and butter. She eats four pieces of bread. Her mother reports that she eats mostly bread at home, though she usually eats cereal and bananas for breakfast. 4. Three, four, and five-year-old children in your center eat where the food is served cafeteria style. Each plate is prepared for the child. The cook says it is not possible for the children to serve themselves at this school. 5. You have infants through older toddlers (age 42 months) in your center. The staff ask you how they can make the concept of family style dining work with these young children. 6. As children pass the food around they table, they are putting their fingers deep in the bowls as they grasp the rimless bowls. What will you do?