As parents, we always wonder whether we have provided adequate nutrition for our kids. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is more worrying as our children are having lesser outdoor activities, more screen and snack time.
If your children have been eating more processed, high-calorie food during the pandemic, maybe it’s time for you to look into how you can provide proper nutrition.
Not only does it help to improve their cognitive development, but healthy diets are also important to support and strengthen their immune systems.
In this episode of the third season of AskMeDoctor!, we are here with Dr. Ng Yi-Ki, a paediatrician and early nutrition specialist from Baby and Beyond Child Specialist Clinic, Publika and ABC Child Specialist Clinic, Centrepoint. We are going to walk you through ways we can support our children with healthy eating habits while raising their immunity during the pandemic.
Q1: How do children’s immune systems benefit from good nutrition during a pandemic?
Dr. Yi-Ki: All of us are aware that our children’s immune system is not fully developed yet during their early years. Thus, it is common for them to catch a mild viral fever, a cough and even a cold once in a while under usual circumstances.
In fact, this is how their bodies are working through their way to build a more robust immune system portfolio. This will get their bodies ready to fight against repeated or new infections in the future.
With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, what our children are facing is not only the risk of getting infected by the virus. Due to the prolonged lockdown and physical isolations, their bodies are not exposed to the common bugs that are going to help in building their immunity. This is when a healthy diet is paramount.
Maintaining a balanced and diverse diet is capable of providing them with the required nutrition necessary for a strong immune system to fend off any health risk.
Q2: What can parents do to encourage good eating habits at home?
Dr. Yi-Ki: As parents, it’s very important for us to start providing our children with good nutritious food. While we are having a fast-paced lifestyle nowadays, a lot of parents are looking for quick and lost-cost alternatives such as ready meals and processed food. However, we should really put more effort into serving family meals.
With this, we can feed our children with diverse and nutritious diets which will support their growth and development.
Additionally, our children will be able to build healthy eating habits at the same time. Therefore, it comes back to proper meal planning so that it’s still convenient and affordable without compromising on nutrition.
Here are some tips to aid you in your meal planning:
#1: Follow The ‘Quarter-Quarter-Half” Concept
A balanced diet follows a general rule of the Malaysian Healthy Plate: Quarter-Quarter-Half or more commonly known as ‘suku-suku-separuh‘.
For each meal on your plate, you should ensure that you have:
- a quarter portion of grains, cereals and rice,
- a quarter portion of protein such as meat, fish and legumes and
- half portion of fruits and vegetables
- [not to miss] dairy products such as milk and cheese as well.
#2: Have fresh produce as much as you can
As fresh produce is adequately supplied even during the full lockdown, we can now buy fresh produce from different platforms. Whether it is in-store, online or even through deliveries, do stock up some fresh produce whenever you are available.
Then, you may also keep the produce like meat, fruits and non-leafy vegetables in the fridge as most of the nutrients and flavours in the fresh produce can still be retained in the frozen state.
On top of this, you can opt for meal preparation [or more commonly known as meal prep] in advance. You can cook large batches of soups, stews and even other dishes with fresh vegetables.
This will make them last longer, so you will have more meal options for a few days. Simply keep them in the freezer and reheat them whenever you want to have a meal.
Alternatively, you can take dried food such as dried beans, pulses and grains like lentils, split peas, rice, couscous or quinoa. Getting dried food can be one of the alternatives if you really face some difficulties in getting fresh produce.
Unlike how we negatively perceive about canned food, we can still use canned beans and chickpeas. We can even include canned oily fish like sardines, tuna and mackerel in sandwiches, salads or pasta dishes. It’s certainly acceptable for you to cook them as part of a warm meal as well.
#3: Limit highly processed food
We should really avoid sugary drinks. Instead, we should really opt for plain water. If your children think that water is too plain, you can consider adding fruits or vegetables like lemon, lime, cucumber slices or berries to the water. This is surely a great way to add an extra twist of flavour to encourage our children to drink more water!
Or, we can also go for our all-time Asian favourite which is the homemade barley drink. It’s impossible to go wrong with barley drinks in Malaysia!
Q3: How do I deal with picky eaters?
Dr. Yi-Ki: Do your children only consume certain types of food like chicken or French fries? And they keep on resisting to try new food.
We know you and we are here to suggest how you can help your children to build good eating habits:
#1 Prepare and present the food with their favourite twist
As most children are still on their way to exploring what they like and don’t like, their food choices often lead them to suffer from the lack of important nutrients such as proteins, vitamin D, calcium and zinc.
While this would impact their immune function and their health negatively, it’s very challenging at times to force our children to eat the whole food as it is. Thus, we need our creativity to incorporate these nutrients into their daily food.
For instance, some children don’t like eating fish due to the fishy smell. In order to get our children to consume more oily fish like salmon and trout which are rich in Vitamin D and Omega-3, try cooking them as nuggets or cutlets. Offer them as finger food instead. If necessary, you can offer them their favourite ketchup sauce or mayonnaise to dip the fish.
Looking into consuming natural yoghurt, we can try adding real fruits and even honey for children older than 2 years old. With this, children will be able to get an adequate amount of calcium without binging on flavoured yoghurt.
More importantly, explore a variety of food choices for each nutrient group. Taking protein as an example, we can get our children to try both animal-based and plant-based proteins to discover their preferences.
#2: Start with the food they like
You can never go wrong if you start offering new food alongside their favourite food. Commonly known as chaining, it is a concept where you start with their favourite food in a bigger ratio, while gradually offering something you want them to eat a little bit more.
Here you are now, wanting your children to try on sweet potatoes as they contain more nutrients than normal potatoes. How can you slowly introduce the food to your children then?
You may start with making homemade potato chips from real potatoes with an air fryer. Instead of binging on commercialised potato chips, you can cultivate healthier eating habits while gradually moving into sweet potato chips.
Once your children are able to accept this food choice, you can then try out other cooking methods such as grilling the sweet potatoes which retain more of its nutrients. With this, your children will be able to transition from chips to the actual sweet potatoes without much struggle.
#3: Maintain a neutral attitude
Instead of forcing and threatening your children when they refuse to listen to you during meal time, try your best to maintain a neutral attitude.
Never overreact when your children refuse to eat what we serve; instead try to give some light praise whenever they try something new, even in a light portion or whenever they try to feed themselves independently.
“If you don’t eat it, there’s no ice-cream!”
If you have said utterances similar to this, you should try not to anymore. We should never bribe or threaten our children with their favourite snacks or junk food to force them to eat.
To make eating a natural and smooth process where both you and your children enjoy, set a mealtime environment. Never run after your children to feed them; simply set the mealtime for around 20 to 30 minutes.
If your children do not finish their food then, just keep the food away without any blames or scolding. Be a responsive feeder by deciding what and when to feed while giving our children some freedom to decide how much to eat within reason.
Always remember it doesn’t worth the stress and negativity between you and your children just because of forced eating.
Q4: What should I do with my children who tells me that they are hungry all the time?
Dr. Yi-Ki: As our children are staying at home most of the time, it’s very easy for snacking to get out of control.
In fact, snacking throughout the day can actually be our family’s nutritional goals. What’s even worse? The disorganised eating patterns can make children feel a little bit out of control.
While our children may not know how to deal with constant snacking, we can do our part to help them: plan and follow a consistent schedule of meals and snack times.
By having a mealtime schedule, everyone knows when to have their next meal or snack. Just by writing and putting it at a visible spot in the kitchen, we can easily remind them when would be the next time to eat as a family.
For younger children, we can have signs to indicate when the kitchen is ‘open’ and when it is ‘closed.’
They can then look forward to their next mealtime while enjoying their favourite activities to fill up the waiting time. Your children will also be able to grasp the concept of time while learning about routine and structure.
It is exactly the same for sleep too. By helping your child to keep a consistent bedtime and wake time routine each day, it will help to develop other healthy habits, including healthy eating habits.
If at all our children are really hungry, we can give in a little bit by offering them fruits and vegetables.
Nonetheless, we should include scheduled family treats into our mealtime schedule. This really helps in telling our children that they should not feel shame about eating sweets, chips or even ice cream occasionally. Or else, your children might develop unhealthy food behaviours like hiding or hoarding food due to their shame around eating treats.
Q5: Are there any food that is good for the brain?
Dr. Yi-Ki: Undoubtedly, we need a well-balanced diet with enough macronutrients and micronutrients to support our children’s health and development. On top of this, we can look for ‘brain protector food’ too to support brain development functions.
The food types include:
- good portions of proteins from grains, legumes, eggs, poultry and meat for our body’s cellular function, growth and immunity
- green leafy vegetables rich in Vitamin K, lutein and folate such as kale, spinach and broccoli
- oily fish rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids like salmon and trout
- avocados and nuts, especially walnut that’s been found to improve our memory
- berries rich in antioxidant and flavonoids
As you are aware, we can really be creative in choosing food for our children with the food variety available in Malaysia.
Secure Your Children’s Wellbeing With Comprehensive Protection From AIA
As Malaysians, we are blessed with a variety of fresh produce available at affordable prices. While we do our best as parents to provide proper nutrition for our children, it’s also important to ensure that their health and wellbeing are adequately protected too.
In line with its commitment to support and protect families every step of the way, AIA Malaysia has introduced the Total Health Solutions ecosystem which enables Malaysians to live well through AIA’s unique health programme, AIA Vitality, protect well with comprehensive and innovative product solutions, and get well with differentiated healthcare services that provide support from diagnosis to recovery.
With A-Life Joy Xtra, you can rest assure that your child’s healthcare and protection needs will be well taken care of. This latest plan under AIA’s Total Health Solution ecosystem offers comprehensive protection from as early as 13 weeks of pregnancy and the option to enhance your protection to cover your baby’s unexpected hospitalisation within the first 30 days of birth. Not only that, the enhanced protection also provides coverage for congenital conditions and child development disorders such as Autism and ADHD in the first five years of your child’s life.
An exclusive feature that is available under A-Life Joy Xtra is the Vitality Joy Wallet, which rewards you with greater protection for your child when you join AIA Vitality and make healthy choices in your everyday life. You get to earn benefits in this wallet, which you can then utilise for your child’s vaccination, dental, optical, and hearing care expenses.
If you prefer a shariah-compliant solution, you can consider the A-Life Ikhtiar Child Solution takaful plan. For more information about AIA’s plans, offers, activities and more, check out AIA’s Anakku Sihat, Negaraku Hebat campaign at www.aia.com.my/anakkuhebat.
For more information about pregnancy, child care essentials and parenting from our group of experts, stay tuned to our next episode of AskMeDoctor!
For more insightful stories and fun recipes, stay tuned to Motherhood Story!