I am sure that this post is going to rub some of you the wrong way, but I am willing to risk it for the health of our future generation.

Two of my biggest pet peeves revolve around food and kids. The first pet peeve is when incredibly health conscious parents that eat very well and exercise religiously feed their children something other than (and much less healthy than) what they themselves eat. The second is very much like the first in that it drives me nuts when parents wanting to become healthy, lose weight and eat better continue to buy junk food and blame it on their kids.

Why anyone would want to pass their bad habits onto their kids is beyond me. If you are trying to be healthy, don't you want your kids to be healthy too? If you are trying to cut out chips and soda and cookies, shouldn't your kids cut them out too? If it's not good for you to do, why do you think it IS good for your kids? They will develop a taste for what you feed them, so if you start them out on convenience foods, that's all they are ever going to want. If everything you give them as a baby has added sugar, they are going to shun anything that isn't sweet.

Start your kids off on the right foot by not even having junk food in the house. If you are trying to be healthy, just don't buy it!

Kids can have fruit, smoothies, peanut butter, raw veggies with dip, and other healthy whole food snacks just as you can. They don't need little bags of crackers or cookies or fruit snacks. Don't let them convince you that they do. Show them that you enjoy eating healthy foods and they will learn to enjoy it to. Tell them that you are being deprived because you have to give up snack foods and they will think they are too. Set the right example!

If you are making a big change in your eating habits, it's going to be hard for your kids to get used to it at first, but they will get used to it. It's like I've heard so many times before: if they get hungry enough, they will eat! Don't cave and give them junk because they are holding out. That will just reinforce the trend.

This also doesn't mean that they can't ever have junk food. They will have it sometimes wether they get it from friends at school or while at a friend's house playing or if you choose to let them have a treat every once in a while. That's fine and practical, just don't make it a daily occurrence.

And don't get me wrong, I struggle with figuring out what to feed my kids too. I have a 3 year old and a 15 month old and I swear that something they love one day, they refuse to eat the next. And they like different things. Something that one really likes, the other hates. It's not easy figuring out what to feed them.

A good starting point is to know how much of each nutrient that your kids need. As far as actually getting those nutrients into them, the following are some good resources:

I ran across a chart that gives two meal plans that will allow kids to get all of the nutrients that they need in a day.

As far as getting kids to eat vegetables, personally I love to bake vegetables into my foods. I put zucchini in baked oatmeal and carrots in pancakes. Just this morning I added some zucchini to our pancakes and I plan to try making fruit popsicles with puréed carrot this afternoon.

My major point is this: don't short change your kids' health while trying to better yours. If you shouldn't be eating it, they shouldn't either.