It’s hard to get children to eat right. Numerous studies recently have pointed to food patterns established in early childhood as the beginning of eating habits, good and bad, that extend for years into the future. So the logical question to ask is, “What are the very youngest eaters eating?”

Researchers in Australia set out to do just that. They asked parents to recall everything their young toddlers (ages 12 to 16 months) consumed in the past 24 hours. Go ahead. Do that yourself right now. What did your child eat from the moment he or she woke up yesterday to the moment he or she woke up this morning?

Over 550 parents took part in the study. They reported that children ate the most of dairy foods and cereals. A quarter of the children were breastfed during the time period and another 32% of children drank formula. Although the study didn’t identify cereals specifically, typical American toddlers often eat dry breakfast cereal as finger foods, cooked cereals as spoon foods, and various teething biscuits and crackers.

Most children ate at least some fruits and vegetables (87% and 77%) but half the children ate just tiny amounts of meat or meat alternatives. The more formula toddlers consumed, the less diverse were their diets overall. A whopping 91% of children ate “discretionary items” – that is, snacks, sweets, and other low-nutrient foods.

What about your own child? How much did your child eat that was dairy, cereal, fruits, vegetables, and high quality protein like meat? How much did your child eat that was “discretionary”? How diverse is your own child’s diet?

Although certainly year-old children are just beginning on their dietary adventure and still rely on breast milk or formula for a substantial part of their nutrition, what is offered to children and what they eat tends to be pretty limited.  To avoid future eating disorders and to promote the best growth now, here are some ideas to consider.

1. Offer a variety of nutrient-dense foods, like bits of fruit and vegetable, cubes of cheese, tender or pureed meats and fish. What you serve the rest of the family is ideal as the basis of your toddler’s diet so long as you give him some of all of what is served, not just the starchy foods.
2. Limit less-nutritious foods like crackers and biscuits. Don’t be fooled by nutritious-sounding foods like fruit juice, fruit-flavored yogurt, and kiddie meals of all sorts. Become a reader of labels and choose foods that are low in sugars and fat and list only a few ingredients.
3. Avoid completely nutrition-free foods like candy, cookies, chips, soda, non-carbonated drinks and drink mixes, Jello, and desserts. If you can’t avoid feeding these to your child (but why?), limit your child to less than one serving per day of this entire class of edibles.
4. Make water your child’s snack beverage. If it’s not time to drink milk, then plain water should be his thirst-quencher. Not watered down juice or water with any sort of additives. Just water.

Remember that children will not starve themselves. There is no need to feed poor food to a toddler simply because “that’s all she likes.” And there is every reason to start now to accustom your child to a diverse diet of healthy foods.

Good nutrition starts early. Don’t miss your chance to get your child off to a healthy start.
 

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

Who puts food on your preschooler’s plate?

According to  the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, it should be the children themselves. Serving meals “family-style,” in which each diner dishes what he wants onto his own plate, is considered best-practice in child care centers. If classrooms of 10 to 16 children can do it, certainly so can you.

There are lots of advantages. Children learn motor skills involved in scooping and pouring and in using serving spoons, tongs, and pitchers. They learn to estimate their own hunger and control how much to serve themselves. Children are more likely to eat what they’ve actually chosen but they are less likely to overeat. Children in child care centers who eat family-style are less likely to be obese.

We don’t believe children can do it. We think they will make a mess. And, of course, they might. Kids do need to be guided in how to use serving utensils and they need help to make certain they don’t knock over a cup of milk while scooping up some macaroni. Like any other skill, we have to show our children what to do and give them plenty of opportunities for practice.

We don’t believe children will do it. We worry that they will serve themselves too little or nothing at all. Keep in mind that children will not starve themselves. Given a chance to choose from the good food you put on the table, they will pick what they are likely to eat. They are actually likely to eat more and waste less than if grownups fill their plates for them.

We think it takes too much time. Well, what’s the hurry? Mealtime should take whatever time it needs. With practice, children will become more adept, even as adept as you.

Parents spend a lot of energy worrying what their children eat and how much. It’s time to let children take charge. Free yourself from insisting your child clean her plate – a plate you dished up – and invite her to sit with you and eat what looks delicious.

If nutritionists don’t worry, why should you?

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

Everyone knows that grownups “eat with their eyes.” A prettily arranged plate, with a nice arrangement of foods and colors, makes everything look delicious. Restaurants go to great pains to make food look attractive.

Now we know that visually interesting food is important to children too. Making food look nice on the plate may be the secret to getting children to eat what’s good for them.

In a recent study at Iowa State University, elementary-grade children at a summer camp were presented in the cafeteria line with a digital sign featuring a rotating image of a salad. Imagine something along the lines of a typical fast-food restaurant burger promotion, but with attractive pictures of lettuce and other vegetables. Cafeteria choices included salad, of course, but also the usual sorts of kid entrees, like tacos, sloppy joes, and other favorites.

Cafeteria workers weighed the salad ingredients before and after the lunch period. They found that after the installation of the digital promotion of salad, that more salad was taken and less was left to be discarded from the salad bar at the end of the lunch. In fact, researchers found that boys were 50 to 70 percent more likely to serve themselves lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots after the sign was installed than before.

According to the lead scientist, “You respond to the image on the display like you would respond to a plate in front of you. If you’re hungry you respond by saying, ‘I’ll have what’s in that picture.’”

Certainly, parents of children who are reluctant to eat their vegetables don’t need to install a video player in the dining room to loop images of lettuce in advance of every meal. But maybe we all could take a bit more care in presenting food attractively. Here are some salad presentation ideas.

1. Set up a mini salad bar with a couple different lettuces, some tomatoes or shredded carrots, sliced snap peas and other goodies. Offer an orange-juice-based dressing or even no dressing at all.

2. Use salad plates or little bowls or even dishes ordinarily reserved for ice cream.

3. Serve salad in taco shells, soft tortillas, or in bread bowls.

4. Make a bit of dining room theater out of tossing a salad in a big wooden bowl and scooping it out into individual salad bowls.

5. Garnish a “composed” salad – one you arrange on plates in the kitchen, like they do in restaurants – with intriguing extras. Add a curl of bacon one time, edible flowers another time (chemical-free nasturtiums, garden violets and even rose petals are possibilities), fruit, carrot curls or fish-cracker croutons whenever you feel like it.

6. Try making a layered salad by building it in a glass dish so the layers are visible.

7. Get kids involved in creating pretty salads and see what happens.

Just being aware of the way food looks can go a long way towards getting it eaten. One can’t make a big deal over vegetables every day, perhaps, but even once in a while can get children to take a taste once in a while.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.