Changing our diets for a healthier life

A lot of kids might not realize it, but your body is the most important thing to take care of. It’s you!

Taking care of your body can be specified in many different ways, such as exercise, sleep, and healthy food choices. If you don’t know a lot about good food choices, don’t be shy — get on the healthy food train ride.

Let’s start with everybody’s favorite snacks. Snacks are very useful to get around the day with full energy. But are you getting the wrong snacks, and are you getting too much of them? A lot of students will get a bag of chips and a soda for a sport practice or even just for lunch. Some schools aren’t helping with this either. Many snacks and drinks at school are of poor nutrition value.

Here are some tips on healthy snack choices. If you’re feeling hungry, fruits can be very refreshing and can fill you up fast. Water will be the best choice of drink because sugary juices and soda can leave you still very thirsty.  If you’re not in the mood for fruits, granola bars with low sugars and sodium can be good, too.

Now, time to make some changes. First change, bread. If you want a healthier lifestyle, white bread wouldn’t be the best way to go. Instead, try whole wheat or whole grain to make sandwiches more healthy.

Now this might take some convincing with your parents, but ask them if they can replace white rice with yellow rice. You should do this because white rice has its brown husk removed, and the husk contains most of its nutrients. Although, yellow rice is just white rice that has saffron added to it. Then, after replacing your rice, try to have some fruit and salad; they weren’t lying when they said veggies make you grow big and strong.

Last but not least, cereal. Many kids in the morning grab a bowl of cereal to eat, but a lot of those cereals contain a large amount of sugar. Instead, try whole grain cereal with fruit.

If you want to help your body to become healthier, you should talk with adults in your life and try to start switching to healthy food. Making these changes may help with your appearance, but you should really do it to give your body the vitamins and nutrition it needs.

Maria Lennon and Erica Schultheis’ writing club, Candlewood Middle School, Dix Hills