Healthy Drinks for Kids

The best drinks for children are milk and water. Drinks that are not considered healthy for your children will include sugary drinks like pop, vitamin-enhanced water, Fruit drinks, energy drinks, flavored water and sports drinks.

The Healthy Drinks For Toddlers, Older Children, And Pre schoolers

Most of the time, you should be providing your children with water, milk or an unsweetened and fortified soy beverage. Children do not need sugary drinks and this will not help them have a balanced or healthy diet.

Water best health drink for child

Water is always the best choice when it comes to satisfying thirst. You need to ensure that your child is drinking water regularly throughout the day to ensure that they are hydrated. This is particularly important if your child is active and when the weather is hot. Drinking a lot of water will also help your child avoid constipation.

Tips For Encouraging Your Child To Drink Water

The best tip is to have everyone in the family drinking water. When your child sees that you are doing this, they are more likely to do this. You should also make water easily accessible for younger children by providing them with water bottles at home and showing your older children how to get water for themselves. At meal and snack times, you should have water on the table.

You should also look at having a jug of chilled water in the fridge. To make it more inviting, you can look at adding a slice of orange or lemon to the water to add some flavor. Adding small pieces of chopped fruit to ice block and adding them to water is something to consider in the summer months. If your child does not like the taste of your local water, you can look at getting a water filter. You should also take water bottles with you when you go out with your child.

Milk

Plain milk as well as unsweetened fortified soy beverages are a good option for children because they contain a lot of nutrients that the body needs. These nutrients will include vitamin D and calcium.

Fruit Juice

Unsweetened and 100% natural Fruit Juice is very nutritious, but it can be high in natural sugar as well as calories and acids which harm the teeth. If you are going to give your child fruit juice, you should limit this to 125ml or half a cup of 100% fruit juice each day. Teenagers should not have any more than 250ml or 1 cup of 100% natural fruit juice per day. In regards to dental health, fruit juice should be had with meals instead of between them. You should actually look at encouraging your children to eat fresh fruit instead of drinking fruit juice.

Sugary Drinks

As the name suggests, these are any drinks that contain added sugar. Added sugar will be syrups and sugars which are added during the preparation or processing of the drunk. These drinks will have little nutritional value for your child and only contain additional calories.

These drinks will also tend to replace the more nutritious drinks and food that your child should be having. The extra calories in these drinks will also add up and this can lead to unhealthy weights.

Sugary drinks will include fruit drinks, pop, energy drinks, flavored water and sports drinks. They are unhealthy choices for your children and you should avoid them. Energy drinks and pop will also contain caffeine which will increase your child’s energy levels before leading to exhaustion.

Flavored milk and other flavored yogurt and soy drinks will also contain added sugar. This is why you should look at giving your child plain milk instead. You should also avoid tea and coffee because of the caffeine content.

Tip: Healthy Kids Drinks , want to know how much sugar you are drinking? Learn with Sugary Drink Sense.