Below is a guide to help you choose foods that will enhance your child's mental and physical health.

• Proteins are essential to growth and repair of muscle and other body tissues and are readily found in all meat, tofu and legumes
• Fats - one source of energy and important in relation to fat soluble vitamins. Good fats include olive oil. Limit animal fat intake if you can or use unsaturated fats in your cooking such as sunflower or rice oil.
• Carbohydrates - our main source of energy found in fruit, pasta, rice, bread and potatoes, to name a few.
• Minerals - those inorganic elements occurring in the body and which are critical to its normal functions. Found in all food although occur in abundance in vegetables, dairy and the like.
• Vitamins - water and fat soluble vitamins play important roles in many chemical processes in the body and are found in fruits and vevegtables.
• Water - essential to normal body function - as a vehicle for carrying other nutrients and because 60% of the human body is water.
• Roughage - the fibrous indigestible portion of our diet essential to health of the digestive system found in fruits, grains and vegetables

Making sure that these food groups are consistently in your child's diet is an important part of their development.

See you next month,
Cath

For more information on nutrition, health and education for your 0-8 year old, visit www.yummybubby.com