Continued from Overweight Children in America.

Diet for Overweight Children or Eating Healthy Younger? Although many schools are reaching out to the older students in the middle and high school range, there is one program that believes it’s never too early to get kids to pick up the healthy eating habit.

That’s exactly what happened with one Recreation and Community Services Department and Sous Kitchen, Inc., a meal assembly store located in California. Through the FRESH (Fitness, Recreation, Education, Socialization and Health) grant provided by Kaiser Permanente Hospital, preschool-age children, and their parents, were given instruction on how to create healthy recipes they could take home, store in the freezer, and then eat at a later date.

“The course we ran with the FRESH program was amazing,” says co-owner Nadine Johnson. “The preschool age was so enthusiastic, and they were such good listeners. The benefit of them putting the food together is they get home and they eat it. Children who are more involved with the cooking process are more likely to experiment and try more things.”

“It’s amazing how many people keep coming back because they were exposed to the variety of foods,” says co-owner Brad Rolfe. “Parents would say, ‘This exposed my children, who normally eat hot dogs and regular ‘kid-friendly food,’ to a wide variety of food and meals and really changed their tastes, so they’re trying new things.’”

So, should overweight children go on a diet or learn to develop healthy eating habits? The latter gets my vote.