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Why Should My Child Eat Healthy Fats?

Why Should My Child Eat Healthy Fats? (1:02)

Some fat is actually good for kids because it supports healthy brain and hormone development. Watch as family physician Gretchen Phillips, MD, explains how some fat can be beneficial, and how you can include it in your kids' diets in a healthy way.

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It sounds a little counter intuitive when we hear in the news all the time about the growing epidemic of obesity. But little kids really do need some fats in their diet. The brain development depends on fat, hormone development depends on fats. Just making sure that your kids get the right kinds of fats, and only as much as they need.

That's what's going to be healthy for them. At our house, we have a hot-dog night, one night a week, with whole grain buns, and always a serving of vegetables, and we change it up. Sometimes we'll have the organic hot dogs made of chicken, sometimes we'll have turkey. It just depends on what the family feels like.

It's kind of a fun thing for the kids, they can roast them over a fire in the summer time, and it's a really easy option for me to be able to get some fats into their diet, watching how much they get, and then knowing that we're having a family meal that has all the nutrients that I really believe my kids need.