When To Take A Child To A Nutritionist
Does your child eat poorly, suffer from an intolerance or is he or she overweight? These are some reasons why you should take a child to a nutritionist. In this article we will tell you why it is important for your children to eat well and when to go to the nutritionist, since not only adults should go to the nutritionist but also children.
Why take a child to a nutritionist?
Acquiring healthy eating habits from a young age is essential for them to last for life. Thus, we will ensure that our child has proper growth and development both physically and mentally.
In addition, maintaining a varied and healthy diet will help prevent short-term health problems, such as overweight and obesity, malnutrition, stunted growth, anemia, and tooth decay. And in the long term, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some types of cancer.
Parents are essential in this learning process, as well as their educators and nutrition professionals. A child can be taught to eat healthy, but if the parents do not eat healthy, it will be difficult to change these habits, as this study published in Nutrients shows .
When to take a child to a nutritionist?
What a nutritionist will do is re-educate the child to eat, analyze their current eating habits, their eating habits and physical activity, to identify the mistakes they are making in their diet and teach the child and the family to eat healthy.
When to start complementary feeding
The sooner we teach the child to eat well, the easier it will be for him to learn good habits. Therefore, from the first moment that the child begins to eat solids, we can take him to the nutritionist. Thus, the professional will teach the family how and when to introduce new foods, as well as different recipes and ideas so that the child begins to eat with pleasure and does not reject food.
The child does not eat
Your child does not eat, he does not like anything and you no longer know what to do. That is when you should take him to a nutritionist for advice on how to introduce food and make him eat healthy foods, because a child cannot be nourished only on juices, cookies, chocolate and pasta. The child may be deficient in vitamins and stunted.
Are overweight or obese
This is probably one of the main reasons why parents take their children to the nutritionist. Even so, there are parents who do not worry about the weight of their child, because they think: “it will hit the stretch” , but many times it is not like that. What can happen is that the child becomes an obese adolescent, since he will continue to eat poorly.
Suffers from any disease
Children who have diseases such as diabetes, asthma, digestive diseases, autism, Down syndrome, epilepsy, or any other neuronal or metabolic disease, should see a nutritionist. This is because their diet must be adapted to their situation. For example, studies show that childhood epilepsy can improve on a ketogenic diet.
Take a child to a nutritionist if they have food intolerances or allergies
Does your child feel bad about some foods? In that case, going to a nutritionist would serve to guide the family that they may suffer from an intolerance and, later, refer them to the doctor for appropriate tests.
If an intolerance (lactose, fructose, gluten, etc.), allergy or celiac disease has been detected, the nutritionist will recommend what foods you can or cannot take and what recipes to include so that the diet is not boring and does not suffer from nutritional deficiencies.
You are in some special situation
For example, children who practice some sports discipline and compete, since the energy and macronutrient requirements will be different. Also, in the case of vegetarian or vegan families, so that the children have a complete diet without deficiencies.
Detect eating disorders
Although it usually occurs more in adolescence, each time these types of disorders begin to occur earlier, and most of the time they go unnoticed by parents. Therefore, the nutritionist could detect them or, if they are already detected, help them in their recovery.
As you have already seen, a nutritionist helps not only when the child is overweight or obese, but in many other situations. Therefore, if your child is in any of these situations, do not hesitate to go to one.
