Download

Fats

Baby's food

Fats

You’ve probably heard many negative things about fats. But while an excess amount of certain kinds of fats is unhealthy, we need healthy fats in our body. Healthy fats supply nutrients that are essential for growth and necessary for our metabolism.

Fats are important
Our body needs fats to build nerve tissues and hormones. The body also uses fats as fuels. When the fats we eat are not used as energy or used to produce other essential substances, they are stored by the body in the fat cells to be used later when the body lacks energy. Eating the right amount of healthy fats, therefore, is important for children. 

What are the benefits of healthy fats?
The brain is made up of about 70% of fat, so fats are especially important to the brain. Other benefits of fats include the following:

Types of fats in foods

How much fat should your child get?
Although the amount of fat needed by the body depends on the calorie needs of each child, fats should remain a vital part of a kid’s diet because they play an important role in brain development. The kind of diet your child eats should be balanced, with healthy fats providing one-third of the calories.

Just try to avoid trans fats and excessive consumption of red meat (beef and pork) whenever possible.

DownloadMali Daily Pregnancy Tracker

Daily Pregnancy & Parenting Tracker

Mali has 4.9 Stars from 10,000+ ratings

4.9 Stars from 10,000+ ratings