How do you get the children to understand the importance of good nutrition and healthy eating habits? It’s a question every parent faces. With so many junk food options available, it can be a challenge to get kids to eat – and enjoy – the foods that are good for them.
Fortunately, these apps, websites, and resources for parents and kids can help your kids understand why their growing bodies need good fuel and what they should eat to stay fit and healthy.
1. My food: Nutrition for children
My Food: Nutrition for Kids is an app designed for children ages four and up to learn about the origins of their food. Beautifully designed with interactive graphics, it’s packed with great information about food, nutrition and how digestion works in the human body. Children can learn to eat a well-balanced meal by exploring plates of food and building their own sandwiches. They can even experiment with growing their own food by completing an herb growing challenge that they can document by taking photos and recording audio in the app.
Children tell everything, so Min Mat can be used by children with limited reading skills. And it’s easy to choose a vegetarian option from the app’s settings. My Food has plenty of content to keep kids engaged, although you can expect more challenges and tasks from a paid app.
Download: My Food: Nutrition for Kids for iOS ($2.99)
2. Grow Garden
The Grow Garden is a great way to get kids excited about organic gardening and how to grow healthy vegetables sustainably. Children plant seeds in the Grow Garden, water their plants, watch the crops grow and see how the weather affects them.
When the time is right, they harvest their crops, feed the animals and collect scraps for composting. This allows them to boost the Grow Garden with nutrient-rich soil. Along the way, your kids collect rewards and badges as they learn about the environment in a simple, entertaining app suitable for young learners.
Download: Grow Garden for iOS ($3.99) | Amazon ($0.99)
3. Wello: Healthy habits for children
Wello is a free app that unifies better nutrition for your kids, making it fun for the whole family to develop healthy eating habits.
Wello allows your whole family to track and record their eating habits and physical activity and follow a tailored nutrition plan. Alternatively, there are many great food diary apps. Learn about healthy eating from Wellopedia section and complete interactive challenges along the Wello roadmap to earn rewards.
Wello aims to be a nutritional partner for the whole family. It is beneficial for parents of children who are overweight to inspire and support them to change their habits and lead a healthier lifestyle.
Download: Wello for iOS | Android (free)
4. Cookbook Junior
There are many great cookbook resources for kids, and cookbook covers can make it easy for your child to browse and find ideas for dishes they want to try. Cookbook Junior contains a variety of healthy recipes from around the world, with simple step-by-step instructions your child can follow to make them (with parental supervision for some recipes).
You can download and print recipes for offline use and add ingredients to a shopping list that you can share with others. The app claims to contain over two million recipes, but you have to subscribe to access them all. You can also try these meal planning apps for healthy eating.
Download: Cookbook Junior for Android (free, subscription available)
5. Recipes for children
Recipes for Kids is another cookbook for kids. The interface is colorful and engaging, and the catalog of recipes includes tasty and nutritious dishes. As Cookbook Junior, you can download and print recipes, save favorites and create shopping lists.
This app is free, although the constant ads are annoying and you have to upgrade to a paid subscription to avoid them. Try these free healthy food apps as an alternative.
Download: Recipes for Kids for Android (Free, Subscription Available)
6. Color Quest AR
Color Quest is an augmented reality app from Stayhealthy that lets your kids color healthy vegetables and watch them come to life. They can take photos of themselves with their creations and share them with their friends. Each picture comes with fun facts about the character.
All the while, your children are learning about health and nutrition. As they unlock characters, they can earn badges and compete in bonus games to become a magical health champion. This app provides a fun, free challenge for your kids, with AR features to make it stand out from the crowd. Subscribe for premium access and check with your healthcare provider to see if you can access Color Quest Premium for free.
Download: Color Quest AR for iOS | Android (free, in-app purchases available)
7. The Human Body by Tinybop
To help your child learn why good nutrition is important, they need to understand how the human body works. And there’s no better way to learn about the human digestive system than through The Human Body app from Tinybop.
The Human Body is an interactive app that lets you play and interact with an interactive model of the human body that lets you see everything that goes on inside us. Kids can click to explore and learn how we digest our food, complete with lots of burps and farts! The human body is beautifully presented and is an excellent example of a modern educational app.
Download: The Human Body for iOS ($3.99, in-app purchases available)
The Disney Healthy Living website is a wonderful resource for fun activities, videos and recipes for families. With recipes based on their favorite Disney movies, such as The Lion King Simba Spaghetti and Star Wars Get Galactive X-Wing Hot Wings, your kids will love cooking healthy food. They can also see a range Be your best snackdown videos to learn how to make healthy snacks.
Then download the included nutrition checklists to explore for yourself or teach your kids about the nutrients in their creations.
SuperKids Nutrition is a website packed with nutritional information and recipes for you and your child. Created by pediatric nutritionist Melissa Halas, SuperKids divides nutrition advice and meal plans into age groups, making it easy for you to find appropriate information and recipes for your child. Find fun activities and SuperKids coloring sheets to help your kids learn about nutrition.
You’ll find lots more printables at Nourish Interactive, where you can download tracking sheets for everything from food groups to food safety. Each activity sheet shows the age range and US grades it’s designed for, and it’s all completely free and unlimited. You can also find great food maps for children at Osmo.
Help your children develop healthy eating habits
With these apps and online resources, you have many tools to help you encourage your children to learn about where their food comes from, what they should eat to stay healthy, how their bodies digest their meals, and even what they can cooking for your dinner tonight! These are just a few of the many wonderful ways to help your children develop a positive outlook on food for life.
