Five food fights for toddlers and how to deal with them
If you're consumed by what, when, and how much your toddler eats, know you're not alone! Many parents are unsure of how to cope with struggles when it comes to toddlers and mealtimes.
Worried about what, when, and how much your toddler eats? It’s normal for toddlers to eat only very small amounts and to be fussy about what they eat. For common toddler food hang-ups, nutritional therapist Hannah Kaye offers some advice.
My baby will not eat any vegetables
The first thing to realise is that before your toddler accepts a new food, it may take many tries. Try not to get upset, plead with him, or engage in lengthy discussions about the virtues of the vegetable if he refuses broccoli, but keep offering it. Before your toddler is willing to try it, it may take 10 attempts. To start with, just a lick of food is a victory. Also, it would help if you led by example. As a family, sit down and eat so that your child can see you eating vegetables. If you want your child to eat a salad every day for lunch, then show him what you’re doing. Your child may not be keen on a stir-fry, but trying to incorporate some bland or sweet vegetables such as cucumber, carrots, and red peppers daily is still important. He may be enticed to eat them by offering them alongside a hummus dip or sprinkled with grated cheese. Green vegetables, such as spinach and broccoli, can then be tried. It may be the look and texture of vegetables in a cooked state that is problematic for your child. Most kids prefer raw vegetables to cooked ones.
My baby puts tomato sauce on all things
Kids love squirting and dipping. For them, it makes meals more interesting. That – and the familiar sweet taste of tomatoes – makes tomato sauce a favourite among many children. But for them, is it necessarily bad? If tomato sauce helps ensure that your toddler eats all the vegetables on his plate, it plays an important role in ensuring a healthy diet. However, if licking up the tomato sauce and still leaving the good stuff is all your toddler does, then it’s time to reassess it. It’s important to check the tomato sauce’s sugar content. One tablespoon of tomato sauce can contain at least one teaspoon of sugar for some brands. If your toddler eats six tablespoons of tomato sauce a day, that’s too much sugar. The first step in addressing this may be switching to a low-sugar or a sugar-free brand. Ultimately, making your own tomato sauce and mixing it into the store-bought version is the best option. You can slowly increase the amount of home-made sauce you give your child and wean him off the purchased version in no time.
My child doesn’t like milk and insists that she eats dry cereal
In your toddler’s diet, there should be many other calcium sources that can replace that of cow’s milk. Some of these include cheese, yoghurt, butter, nuts, green vegetables, and seeds from non-animal sources. Make a plan to include a range of these healthy options daily. However, for breakfast, it may be time to consider introducing more nutritious foods. This is essential if your toddler eats only high-sugar cereals with no nutritional value. Healthier options are eggs or nut butter on wholegrain toast or granola with yogurt. Switching to these will provide more range for your toddler and make it easier to steer her away from sugar and salt-rich foods.
My child drinks only juice
Research shows that drinking too much juice is linked to obesity, dental cavities, and gastrointestinal problems. More than half a cup of fruit juice a day should not be drunk by infants. Start by measuring this amount and split that cup between all the foods of your toddler. Start by adding water to the fruit juice. Continue to reduce the amount of juice in each cup over the next few weeks until your child mainly has water flavoured with a small amount of fruit juice. The ultimate objective is not to keep fruit juice in the house but to save it for special occasions.
My child only eats white bread and wants his sandwiches cut off from the crusts
The first thing we need to do is to identify who, in the first place, introduced your toddler to white bread. Guilty? We tend to forget that we have complete control, as parents, over what our kids eat at home. All we can do is offer foods that are nutritious and leave the rest to them. Throw out that white bread. Buy whole-grain bread, use it, and cut off the crusts to make the sandwiches. If your toddler is hungry enough, the bread will be eaten.
