10 Tips to Help Kids Make Healthy Drink Choices

Common Drink Choices for Kids

Drink
Serving Size
Fat
Sugar
Calories

Whole Milk
8 oz
8 g
11 g
150

2% Milk
8 oz
5 g
12 g
120

1% Milk
8 oz
2.5 g
12 g
100

Skim Milk
8 oz
0 g
12 g
80

Hershey’s Choc Milk
8 oz
4.5 g
30 g
200

Gatorade Thirst Quencher
8 oz
0 g
14 g
50

Coca Cola Classic
8 oz
0 g
27 g
97

Crystal Light Lemonade
8 oz
0 g
0 g
5

Tropicana Healthy Kids Orange Juice
8 oz
0 g
22 g
110

Diet Coke
8 oz
0 g
0.1 g
1

Minute Maid Coolers
6.7 oz
0 g
27 g
100

Minute Maid 100% Apple Juice
6.7 oz
0 g
21 g
100

Water
8 oz
0 g
0 g
0

Help Your Kids Make goodly Drink Choices

Set a good exemplar and establish healthy drink choices for your family at family. here are examples of guidelines and tips you can follow together :

1. Drink milk: Follow the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations for milk servings for children :

• 1 to 2 years old: 2-3 cups of whole milk
• 2 to 5 years old: 2 to 2.5 cups of skim or low-fat milk
• 5 years and older: About 2 to 3 cups of skim or low-fat milk

2. Limit juice quantity and only allow 100 percent pasteurized fruit juice. even 100 percentage yield juice has a draw of sugar, with about 100 calories per six-ounce service. The AAP recommendations updated in 2017 suppose :

• Whole fruits are encouraged instead of fruit juice as they provide fiber.
• When you give your child juice, it should be 100 percent pasteurized fruit juice and not fruit drinks. Unpasteurized juice products are strongly discouraged.
• Don’t allow your child to carry a cup or box of juice throughout the day. Do not give juice at bedtime.
• Infants under 12 months of age should not be given juice. Breastfeeding should be the sole source of nutrition for infants under 6 months of age. Babies get enough fluid from breastmilk or formula.
• Toddlers aged 1 to 3 years should have only 4 ounces of juice a day (1/2 cup).
• Children aged 4 to 6 years should limit fruit juice to four to six ounces per day (1/2 to 3/4 cup).
• Older children and teens aged 7 to 18 years should be limited to 8 ounces of juice a day (1 cup).

Remember that these are n’t recommendations to drink juice. They are limits to not drink more than these amounts. Kids are normally better off eating hale fruits and avoiding fruit juice all in all .

3. Drink water. Encourage water as the beginning choice to quench crave .

4. Avoid sugary, high-calorie drinks such as pop, fruit drinks, and sports drinks ( unless your child is actively involved in a sporting natural process at the time ) .

5. Teach your kids about serving sizes. For example, while a bottle of Gatorade might say it has 50 calories per serve, it is authoritative to keep in mind that a unmarried serve is supposed to be precisely 8 ounces. Since these and many other drinks, such as fountain drinks you can buy at appliance stores, can often be bought in a lot larger 32-ounce or even 64-ounce servings, you can get a lot more calories than you think if you drink the hale thing .

6. Limit the amount of money that you provide for your kids that they could use in school vending machines or after school to buy pop, diet pop, and juice .

7. Compare nutritional values : When you are choosing what to drink, you are n’t just looking at calories and boodle. Getting other vitamins and minerals from your drinks is significant besides, such as the calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin A you get from milk and arm orange juice. Or the vitamin C you can get from 100 percentage fruit juice .

8. Avoid caffeine. Your kids may be tempted to drink caffeinated sodas, coffee bean, department of energy drinks, and even high-caffeine department of energy shots .

9. Talk to your kids about what they are drinking at school. many parents are surprised that their kids are buying pop or juice in between classes from vending machines or coffee on the manner to school. Talking to your kids about how to make healthier choices and your expectations for what they should be drinking can help make certain they choose healthier things to drink, like low-fat milk and water system .

10. Keep a drink diary to get a commodity estimate of what your kids are actually drinking each day. many kids get manner excessively many calories from things they drink, including fruit drinks, tea, and pop. Drinking diary can help you figure out how many calories your child is getting each day from milk, juice, and so forth, and why they are fleshy .