The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate is a visual guide to encourage children to eat well and keep moving. It was created by nutrition experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, based on the best available science. The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate is designed to enhance the visual guidance provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s MyPlate icon and – like the Healthy Eating Plate – its primary focus is diet quality.
- The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate provides a blueprint to help kids make the best eating choices.
- Along with filling half of our plate with colorful vegetables and fruits (and choosing them as snacks), split the other half between whole grains and healthy protein.
Other key points include:
- The type of carbohydrate in the diet is more important than the amount of carbohydrate in the diet, because some sources of carbohydrate—like vegetables (other than potatoes), fruits, whole grains, and beans—are much healthier than sugar, potatoes, and foods made from white flour.
- The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate does not include sugary drinks, sweets, and other junk foods. These are not everyday foods and should be eaten only rarely, if ever.
- The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate encourages the use of healthy oils in place of other types of fat.
The Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate offers science-based expert guidance for parents and caregivers on how to educate and encourage children to eat a healthy diet. It also includes a prominent and helpful reminder to stay active, another essential component of a healthy lifestyle. Also, while the Kid’s Healthy Eating Plate was designed with kids in mind, the colorful guide is a helpful health tool for people of all ages!