Healthy World
Kids Supply & Smart Kids
Nutrition and habits for growing children.
Children are not small adults. They are growing, which means their nutritional needs per kilogram are higher than yours, and the habits they form now tend to hold for decades.
What matters most
Iron. Deficiency is very common in Indian children and it affects concentration and learning long before it produces obvious anaemia. Dal, ragi, green leafy vegetables, jaggery, and eggs or meat for families who eat them - always with something containing vitamin C alongside, which markedly improves absorption.
Enough calories and protein for growth. Calcium and vitamin D for bone. Sleep - nine to eleven hours for school-age children, and short sleep shows up as behaviour and attention problems well before it shows up as tiredness.
Outdoor play. It handles vitamin D, physical development, and there is decent evidence that time outdoors reduces the progression of childhood short-sightedness, which is rising sharply in Indian cities.
Children eat what is served, repeatedly and without commentary. Pressure at the table reliably produces the opposite of what it intends.
Talk to a paediatrician about
Faltering growth, a persistently poor appetite, extreme fussiness that narrows the diet to a handful of foods, or any developmental milestone that seems delayed. Early is always better.