Our children are often and mostly exposed to fast food and those easy to cook instant food that are basically processed food and come in convenient and really enticing packages for young kids.They are exposed to a diet that will sooner make them vulnerable to getting high cholesterol level at a young age. According to a study, children as young as nine years old should already be tested for high cholesterol. Obesity is also a common concern for very young kids given the easy access to fattening food, sweetened beverages and those not so healthy kind of food. Trans fats should be avoided as much as possible.

Our pedia has advised us to avoid all processed food as much as possible. We tried going around the grocery and I think I could hardly find any unprocessed food unless we look for organic veggies and fruits. But there are also concerns on the kind of veggies and fruits that we have in that grocery. I don’t think they are organic. More of fertilized and had probably been touched by chemicals and pesticides.

While we try to introduce healthy eating habits, our kid is exposed to the influence of seeing other kids at school getting to eat processed food and drink beverages which are sweetened and high in sugar. It takes an effort to explain and make the little kid understand why he cannot have the bottled juices that some kids at school buy at the small canteen that they have. Though at least I appreciate the school tells the kids that chocolate is not allowed in school.

The pedia also pointed out that we must give only unsweetened, fat-free milk, while sweetened beverages should be limited or best totally avoided. I cannot even imagine seeing one mom at a restaurant letting her probably one year old child drink soft drinks.Then the child hardly ate anything but only a few spoonful of food.

A reminder goes to parents that for the first six months of a baby’s life, they should be exclusively breastfed. Continued breastfeeding is recommended to the age of 12 months. Another reminder I want to share and remind parents like me as well is that TV time should be limited to one to two hours of quality programming a day. This is kind of a concern for me now that the kid is on Christmas holiday break. But when school resumes in a few days, we had to limit if not totally avoid it.

Another important point to note is that between the ages of 5 and 21, kids and young adults alike should have at least one hour a day of exercise or engage in physical activities like sports. We had implemented this on our kid but we had to stop his soccer class in order for him to get well when the pedia told us he might have developed mild asthma last October after a cough that lasted for about a month. With that concern to watch out for, I hope we don’t have to deal with any concern on him regarding high cholesterol. We want him to be healthy just as any parent would want for their child.