Your toddler’s diet
Katie advises

Toddler years are some of the most difficult to manage – and that’s not just with the food. Many an infant who once ate everything offered will now refuse all manner of healthy stuff, as well as those who were once happy to be spoon fed now insist on eating only foods that they can hold in their hands. Add to the fact that toddlers go through a rapid growth spurt and need increased energy to maintain this, which is why all these factors can make battling with meals hard for parents to handle.

Toddlers love to assert their new found authority and this can make it difficult to implement a healthy eating ethos. However this is the age when parents and carers can most easily influence their children’s eating habits and exposing them to a wide range of taste and textures is the key.

Toddlers, like children and young adults, need a balanced diet for good growth and development but there are a few key vitamins and minerals that are more important at this stage such as Iron, Vitamins A, C, D and E.

If a toddler is offered a healthy balanced diet based on all the main food groups including five portions of fruit and vegetables a day you can be rest assured that these vitamins and minerals are taken in adequate amounts.

However, easy as this sounds it most probably won’t happen for most of us. Try some of the suggestions below to help your toddler meet their requirements more successfully.

Healthy hints for your toddler’s diet

1. Try to aim for offering your toddler up to five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. Don’t forget a portion for a toddler is a piece of fruit or veg that can fit into their hand, which is not as much as it sounds.
2. If your toddler is not keen on fruits and vegetables then try fruit smoothies, fruit purees, vegetable sticks and dips, hide vegetables in pasta sauces or casseroles, use vegetables to make pizza faces. Most of all make fun out of fruits and veg – get creative e.g. broccoli trees stuck upright into red mashed potato coloured with a tomato sauce.
3. Don’t forget that toddlers are totally dependent on others for food so ensure that the whole family are eating a healthy balanced diet too. Parents and carers eating habits, likes and dislikes will be the ones that a child of this age will imitate.
4. It is well known that toddlers often have erratic and chaotic feeding patterns, eating very little at one meal and then making up for it later. Keep up your daily routine and try not to give in with unexpected bribes to make them eat. They’ll just end up expecting them.
5. Get your toddler to help you prepare the meal as this will encourage good healthy eating behaviour. Vary your meals location to make them fun. E.g, have a picnic in the playroom, invite teddies for tea, eat breakfast outside in good weather.
6. In order to meet their requirements for iron it is important that as a family you offer foods high in iron such as red meat and oily fish. Try offering meals such as salmon fish cakes, fish pie, cottage pie, meat casseroles or pasta bolognaise. Don’t forget that most wholemeal breakfast cereals are fortified with iron too. If a child is vegetarian then they will need to ensure that their iron comes from plant sources in particular pulses like beans, peas and lentils.
7. With all their new found energy, toddlers need their dairy products to be full fat (although semi-skimmed milk can be used from two years of age). Fat provides them with more energy than any other food group. Try and remember to use good fats (mono-unsaturates) like olive or rapeseed oil when cooking.

What’s your child’s favourite meal? Do you have any good tricks to get your toddler to eat up the healthy stuff? Please share your tips and ideas. Email us at hello@littledish.co.uk.