Healthy eating children's songs

The core value of healthy food nursery rhymes is never to let children recite nutritional knowledge points, but to use low-threshold rhymes to express professional dietary requirements into small eating habits that children can implement. Currently, mainstream creations are mainly divided into two major directions: behavioral guidance for young children under 3 years old, and nutrition awareness for school-age groups over 6 years old. There is no absolute advantage or disadvantage, and adapting to children's acceptance is the first priority.

Last week I went to my best friend's house for dinner, and I happened to catch her chasing her 2 and a half year old daughter to feed her. She ran down the living room and scattered half of the rice, and the baby was still hiding with a frown on her face. Later, I found a short children's song commonly used in daycare centers and played it to her. It just had four lines: "Little rice bowl, hold on tightly, little spoon, hold it tight, one bite of food, one bite of food, ah ah ah ah, eat it all up." The tune was a clip from "Little Star" that the child often listened to. She knew how to hum it after two times. After only three days, her best friend posted on WeChat that the child was finally willing to sit on the dining chair and hold the bowl to eat.

Don't tell me, this kind of children's songs for young children don't seem to have any "technical content" and don't even have the words "vitamins" or "dietary fiber". In fact, they violate the cognitive rules of young children - they don't understand complex nutrition concepts at all and can only remember concrete actions and simple rhymes. Many parents even change the words themselves and add ingredients that their children don't like to eat, such as adding "broccoli, crispy and fragrant". The more you chant it, the more your children will be less resistant.

However, when I participated in a children's nutrition science salon before, many school-age nutritionists also raised objections, saying that such "silly and sweet" children's songs are useless in elementary schools. Children already have their own cognition, and they need to be taught something real.

Speaking of which, the last time I went to the District Center for Disease Control and Prevention as a science popularization volunteer, the children's songs they used to promote primary schools in the area were completely different. I can still recite a few sentences: "Red, yellow, green, white and black, the dinner plates must be well matched, the fried skewers are fragrant and not greedy, the ice water should not be touched in the mouth, the coarse food can be chewed, and the person will grow taller." The "red, yellow, green, white and black" here is not made up casually. It is a popular classification of five types of high-value foods in the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)". The red ones are red-fleshed tomatoes, the green ones are green leafy vegetables, the yellow ones are whole grain pumpkins, the white ones are egg, milk and soy products, and the black ones are wood. The black-eared sesame seeds do not mention the big words of "diet pagoda" or "nutritional balance". Instead, they capture children's most common problems of "eating fried skewers" and "stealing ice drinks". It also binds children's most important need of "growing taller", and the acceptance rate is much higher than the popular science manual we printed before.

Oh, by the way, there was an interesting debate before. Many parents said that classic children's songs always say "a good baby is not picky about food." In fact, many nutritionists are opposed to this point - some children are born with allergies to certain foods, and some children develop slow chewing skills and cannot bite vegetables with high fiber content. Forcing children to set the standard of "not picky eaters" will cause them psychological pressure to eat. Therefore, most of the new children's songs about healthy eating that have been released in the past two years have changed "not picky about food" to "try more", because they are afraid of putting unnecessary shackles on children.

I adapted a version for my nephew who is in the first grade, and added his favorite Ultraman into it: "Ultraman must first eat enough meat to fight monsters, vegetables to replenish energy, and tomatoes are the best." He now sings it at the top of his voice every time before eating, and after singing, he takes the initiative to pick out the tomatoes in the bowl. Before, he would pick them out and throw them on the table.

In fact, there is really no need to worry about which version of the healthy eating and drinking children's songs is the most "authoritative". It is not necessary to get full marks in the exam. As long as the children are willing to sing along, they can really change a little problem after singing. Even if they only ate white rice and are now willing to take a bite of green vegetables, the songs will play their role. Our original intention of doing this is to let the children eat well and grow up healthily.