By Bojana Petkovic
Parents’ biggest concern is the health and wellbeing of their children. Proper nutrition significantly influences overall health, so many parents try to install good habits on their young ones.
Conventional food is often attractively wrapped and abundantly available. As tastes are concerned, it’s certainly something we’ve grown accustomed to, but eating organic will make you thrive. Furthermore, if you want your children to develop healthy eating habits, the whole family should start thinking more organic, and less conventional. Here are some examples how children can benefit from eating organic food. After all, the organic food industry is currently worth around $63 billion, so it must be doing something right.
Let’s Try Less Chemicals
Organic is more healthy, for a fact! Conventional food production includes artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and growth hormones to get the maximum possible yield value. Various additives and preservatives are added to the food to keep it fresh for longer.
And it’s not about us, the consumers. Non-organic farmers have done the math—they make a profit with minimum investment. And that is fine, we get it; everyone wants to make a few extra bucks. But there is a downside to it—food produced in this way contains over 2,000 different chemicals, most of which are bad for our children’s health.
And the perk here is that organic food does not contain any chemicals, because it is grown on organic farmland, and it is treated and processed very carefully in accordance with the regulations that are unique to each country.
Global awareness of the harmful effects of conventional food has made an impact, which forced many parents to introduce organic food to their children’s diets.
Try to See It as a Healthy Investment
Eating food that contains chemicals such as pesticides, growth hormones, and antibiotics can cause a variety of health conditions. Diseases that can affect children (as well as adults) include gastrointestinal disorders, kidney stones, gout, various inflammations, brain damage, hormonal imbalance, and even cancer.
However, none of these are likely to instantly catch up with you. It takes a lifetime of unhealthy eating to affect one’s health. However, our children are bound to live healthier and longer than us, right?
Organic food is genuinely better for your children’s health. Thanks to the controlled cultivation methods used in organic food production, the chance of your child getting sick as a result of consuming organic products is slim to none.
Try Building Healthy Routines for Your Kids
Children depend on their parents and caregivers when it comes to their food choices and behaviors. Almost 40% choose organic products when buying food for their youngest. This trend continues later on as well when kids become teenagers and adolescents.
Up until recently, not many products were available in supermarkets. However, much has changed in the past few years. New organic food products are released every day, which means there is a wider variety of organic foods you can buy for your child. Currently, France is the leading innovator when it comes to organic products, accounting for 22% of newly released organic products between 2018 and 2019 in Europe.
The right food packaging is much more appealing and makes it much easier for children to adopt healthier eating habits. Kids tend to choose food based on how it looks, rather than the taste or quality.
And what’s more, the price difference should not be of significant concern. Try adopting a perspective of quality: The number of essential nutrients in a single organic apple is almost three times as in a regular one. Therefore, a budget issue tends to melt away. Because organic eating is a thing of quality and not quantity.
And Finally, Try to Buy Smart
There are differences between organic products. If the product is labeled “100% organic,” that means that the food was produced according to the FDA regulations. If it is marked as “organic’’ only, it means that 90% of the product is organic. If the label says “made from organic,” that means that 75% of the ingredients are organic.
As a rule of thumb, organic products are 7.5% more expensive than their conventional counterparts. But there are several ways to save money on “organic” shopping. You can get organic food for less money by purchasing directly from the manufacturer, by joining a community-supported agricultural farm, or online. If the price is not a problem, you can always find organic food at local supermarkets, health food stores, and specialized organic food stores.