Food and Environment

Creating Healthy Food Fun for Kids By Maria Prihtamala Omega Sugary drinks and sweet treats have many calories but contain small nutrients. It’s a fact that  the added sugars can be found in sodas, juice drinks, sport drinks, energy drinks, candy, ice-cream, cakes, cookies and sweets. By decreasing these foods and beverages (less than 6 teaspoons of added sugars for female and 11 teaspoons of added sugars for male daily), you help the kids to develop healthy eating habits and avoid health issues, for instance, as follows. 1. Provide small amounts of sweets. It is recommended to gradually minimize the amount of sweets, candy, ice-cream or biscuits your kids eat a day. Serve these kinds of treats in smaller plates, can go along throughout the whole day, and encourage them to share with others. 2. Prevent check-out lanes displaying candy, so we don’t tempt kids who might ask to buy some candy. 3. Drink smarter healthier beverages such as water, fat-free milk, 100% jui...

By Maria Prihtamala Omega The food groups consist of fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and dairy that have been used as a basic guidance to eat balanced and healthy meals. Firstly, vegetables have essential nutrients that are needed to grow and stay healthy. For example, dark green vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and collard greens have calcium which the bodies need to grow strong bones. Carrots, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, squash, and beets have vitamin A which helps to protect and heal the bodies. Beans are also part of vegetable groups. They are good source of protein which is needed to build strong muscles including the heart. Humans should eat different vegetables in order to get different nutrients. Children should get about one-and-a-half cups of vegetables a day, including a small salad at lunch and vegetables at dinner. Secondly, fruit is also an important part of a balanced meal. For instance, fresh apples, oranges, bananas, and o...

by Yadav Sharma Bajagai Today, developing countries are facing severe problem of household food and nutrition insecurity caused by multifaceted reasons ranging from low agricultural productivity, limited livelihood opportunities, inefficient food distribution system, weak market linkage, poor infrastructure and lack of awareness on healthy food and care habit. Demographic and Health Survey reports from these countries have shown that proportions of underweight children, prevalence of stunting among children and micro-nutrient deficiency in children, pregnant and nursing mothers are high and widespread. The situation is more severe in the countries affected by conflict and the countries in the transition. Fortunately, many international development partners and the state governments are working together to fight against this problem and working through several global and national initiatives to attain objectives of Millennium Development Goal 1 by 2015. These initiatives ad...

                                  by Maria Prihtamala Omega There are differences among normal and autistic children in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt to the environment, to learn from experiences, to engage in various reasons, to overcome obstacles by taking thoughts and solutions. Therefore, the child’s intellectual performance is various depending on different occasions and criteria. For example, intelligence is attempts to organize the complex set of phenomena and systems of abilities which can be captured by standard psychometric tests (Neisser, et al ., 1996). The psychometric approaches include the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (a childhood verbal intelligence) and Raven’s Progressive Matrices (a non-verbal inductive reasoning about perceptual patterns). Another psychometric analysis of Halstead-Reitan Categories test (a non-verbal abstract thinking ability) and Wechsle...