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Parents & Caregivers

Nutrition en Español

Parents play a big role in shaping their children's eating habits. The resources in this section can help you teach your daughter about healthy eating. The resources here include the Federal government's latest nutrition guidelines, which can be used as a guide to help you plan and cook healthy meals for your family. Your daughter can use the tools in this section to learn more about healthy eating on her own or you can use the resources together. Your daughter can also calculate her Body Mass Index (BMI) to see if she's at a healthy weight. Other resources in this section can help you spot a possible eating disorder or help your daughter make better food choices when eating out.

Featured articles

1.   Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans
2. Nutrition and Teens: A Guide for Parents
3. Helping Teens Make Healthy Choices

Web sites

1.   girlshealth.gov: Nutrition - We have created the girlshealth.gov section on nutrition to help adolescent girls learn more about some of the unique health issues and social situations they will encounter during the teen years. This section provides information, resources, and links to help your daughter learn more about nutrition and staying healthy.
2. Kidnetic - Kidnetic.com is a web site that communicates healthy eating and active living information in meaningful and useful ways to kids aged 9-12 and their families. Kidnetic.com is intended to encourage kids and their families to begin the process of behavior change toward healthy lifestyles.

Publications

1.   BodyWorks: A Toolkit for Healthy Girls and Strong Women - This program is used by trainers to help parents serve as role models for their children. The toolkit provides parents with hands-on tools to make small, specific behavior changes to prevent obesity and help maintain a healthy weight. The BodyWorks Toolkit is distributed through community-based organizations, state health agencies, non-profit organizations, health clinics, hospitals, and health care systems.
   
   http://www.womenshealth.gov/bodyworks/
2.     For Strong Bones...For Lifelong Health...Milk Matters! - This publication contains information about the role of calcium in childhood nutrition.
   
   http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/upload/strong_bones_lifelong_health_mm.pdf
3.   Healthy Eating and Physical Activity Across Your Lifespan: Helping Your Child: Tips for Parents - This on-line guide from the Weight Control Information Network provides information on how parents can encourage their children to eat healthy and stay active.
   
   http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/child.htm
4. Children's BMI-percentile-for-age Calculator (Copyright © KidsNutrition.org) - Use this BMI calculator to find out if your child is at a healthy weight for his or her age. This tool also provides information on how to interpret results and track your child’s weight.
   
   http://www.kidsnutrition.org/bodycomp/bmiz2.html
5.   Helping Your Teenager Make Healthy Food Choices (Copyright © NCEMCH) - Teenagers are spending more time and eating more meals away from home. Here are answers to important questions you may have about your teenager’s nutrition.
   
   http://www.brightfutures.org/nutritionfamfact/pdf/BWEng/ADbw.pdf
6.   Parents Can Play a Role in Preventing Childhood Obesity (Copyright © National Academy of Sciences) - This fact sheet from the Institute of Medicine provides background on the importance of nutrition and exercise in the prevention of obesity and action steps for parents.
   
   http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/22/617/0.pdf
7.   El peso de su hijo (Copyright © CNRC) - El control de peso es un problema familiar que requiere una solución familiar. Esta publicación da consejos a padres sobre cómo pueden ayudar a sus hijos con el reto del control de peso siendo un ejemplo positivo con sus actitudes, sus hábitos de alimentación, y sus costumbres sobre actividad física.
   
   http://www.kidsnutrition.org/images/pdfs_nyc/cwspan.pdf

Organizations

1.   Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HHS
   
   http://www.cdc.gov/
2.   Food and Nutrition Information Center, NAL, USDA
   
   http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/
3.   Nutrition.Gov
   
   http://www.nutrition.gov/
4. Kids With Food Allergies
   
   http://www.kidswithfoodallergies.org/

 

= This article, publication, web site, or organization is from the U.S. government.

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Content last updated November 11, 2007

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