Better Health, Healthier Families

Healthier Families is a fabulous website which is packed with family friendly information and ideas about making health food choices.  It has lots of recipes, interactive quizzes and fun family challenges to help you all eat well and move move.

Click here to link to their website https://www.nhs.uk/healthier-families/

It's so important children maintain a healthy diet, it plays a vital role in how children develop physically and mentally.

Here is the Eatwell Guide from Public Health England, showing what a healthy balanced diet looks like.

Sugar

Children are having over 2 times more sugar than is recommended, with half of it coming from snacks and sugary drinks.

It can often be really difficult to know what a healthier choice might be, check out the Healthier Families website for all the info, tips and advice you need to help your family be healthier and happier.

The maximum recommended daily amounts of sugar are:

• 4 to 6 years old: 19 grams (5 cubes)
• 7 to 10 years old: 24 grams (6 cubes)
• 11 and older: 30 grams (7 cubes)

Too much sugar is bad for children's health as it can lead to the build-up of harmful fat on the inside that we cannot see.

This fat can cause weight gain and serious diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

Having too much sugar can also lead to painful tooth decay – every 10 minutes, a child in England has a tooth removed in hospital.

Salt

Most of us are eating more salt than we realise, and it's not just the salt added to our cooking or at the table that we need to watch out for.

In fact, three-quarters of the salt we're eating is already in the foods we buy. These can contain a lot of salt even if they do not taste salty.

The maximum recommended daily amounts of salt are:

• 4 to 6 years old: 3 grams (6 sachets)
• 7 to 10 years old: 5 grams (10 sachets)
• 11 and older: 6 grams (12 sachets)

Too much salt can put us and our children at risk of high blood pressure and heart disease later on in life.

Saturated fat

We all know too much fat is bad for us. But we do not always know how much or what type of fat we're eating – and there can be a surprising amount of saturated fat in the everyday food and drink we buy!

There are 2 main types of fat in the food we eat: saturated fat and unsaturated fat.

Saturated fat is the one you need to watch out for, while having unsaturated fat (found in things like oily fish, avocado, unsalted nuts and seeds) can help lower blood cholesterol to protect your heart.

The maximum recommended daily amounts of saturated fat are:

• 4 to 6 years old: 18 grams
• 7 to 10 years old: 22 grams
• 11 and older: 28 grams

Too much saturated fat is bad for our and our children's health. We might seem fine on the outside, but a build-up of harmful fat on the inside can lead to serious health issues like:

• heart disease and stroke
• type 2 diabetes
• some cancers

As well as this, because fat (both saturated and unsaturated) is high in calories, eating too much can make us more likely to put on weight.

Being overweight or obese can also increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and bowel cancer.

Healthier food swaps

There are lots of simple food swap ideas, that can help cut down on sugar, salt and fat in your and your family's diet, plus discover easy ways to make a swap when you next shop.

Even just 1 or 2 everyday swaps can really make a difference and go a long way to making each day healthier – but the more you make, the better!

Click here for healthy food swap ideas

https://www.nhs.uk/healthier-families/food-facts/healthier-food-swaps/