Nutrition for your Toddler and Tips for Picky Eaters.

Feeding children is centered around concerns about heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure. There is reason to be concerned. It is a fact that over 20% of Western children are overweight and have a good chance that 48 to 70% of them will remain that way into adulthood. It is so vitally important for parents to set a good example of healthy eating. Children do develop eating habits similar to those of their parents. Scary Thought?

While it is a parent's job to provide balanced selections from the five food groups, children can be allowed a certain amount of freedom to choose what and how much they eat. But, as a caring parent, you have to keep a watchful eye. Poor eating habits and craving for sugar snacks and fatty foods may develop if parents fail to direct the decision-making process.
The issue isn't "good foods" versus "bad foods". If children balk at food, don't worry. Studies show children will, over time, eat the amount of food that is right for them if they are offered healthful choices. You can't expect a child to want to eat broccoli if chips are offered, or drink milk or orange juice when parents are drinking sodas.
Of course, an occasional high fat food, gooey dessert, sugary snack, or soda is permissible, provided they are not regular substitutes for nutritious foods.
Parents can make eating a pleasure for the entire family by helping create positive attitudes about wholesome food that will lead to a lifetime of good health.
Offer your children nutritious choices for meals and snacks. In this way you can help them control their own diet. For example, you might offer a choice of an apple, an orange, or a banana. With older children (aged 7 and up) you can start by planning a menu together, letting the children check to make sure it includes all five food groups.

Good nutrition does not mean that your children cannot eat their favorite foods or that they must eat foods they do not like.

Good nutrition means variety and moderation in a person's diet. Choosing what foods to eat is important in following a healthy life-style. Your children may choose to eat certain foods because they taste good or because they are available. Make nutritious foods available and monitor the "sometimes" foods -- fatty snacks and sugary desserts.

Tips for "Sneaky" Nutrition and those small, picky eaters

Why does your toddler want beef when you’ve cooked chicken? She ate the pumpkin yesterday – but wont touch it today. Frustrating? - Definitely, Getting Desperate? - Yes!

Whatever your first reaction, she’ll probably understand your body language – and reply with some of her own. Which, of course, is exactly the recipe for turning a meal time into the “Battle of the Wills”

Your toddler’s preference for some new taste, or a rejection of a familiar meal, is simply a way of expressing her growing individuality. We have all been there, and, while it may be a little difficult to keep your sense of humour, the last thing your toddler needs at feeding time is a tense mother.

Here are some simple ideas to avoid the “battle” and even get the added benefit of sneaking nutrition-packed foods into the foods you already prepare.

If your child won't try vegetables, mix finely grated raw carrots with peanut butter and use as a spread for crackers, bread, apple slices, or bananas.
Find the time to make simple “edible art”. Use the plate as the background and have each child add apple sauce for clouds, shredded lettuce for grass, celery sticks for a stem, carrot rounds for flowers, orange slices for leaves, raisins for rocks, and any other edible ingredients for natural scenes.
Place a bowl of raw salad on the table for them to nibble while they are waiting for the main meal to be served: carrot strips, raw peas, slices of apple, lettuce and young spinach leaves, rings of sweet green pepper, and so on. The raw foods stimulate rather than take the edge off the appetite.
Hide the green beans and brussel sprouts inside stews and pasta sauces. Chopped small. My son maintained for years that he had never eaten green beans, and at the age of 19, I decided to tell him that he had been eating them (hidden in the spaghetti sauce) for over 10 years!
Serve vegetables as a first course on a colourful, child-oriented plate and then serve the meat or fish as the second course to be eaten after the vegetables are finished.
Shred carrots in casseroles, scrambled eggs, muffins, or cakes (works well with some, not others)
Put finely chopped broccoli florets in casseroles, spaghetti sauce, mince meat (ground meat) and in baked potato toppings.
Puree an egg or egg substitute with cooked or defrosted frozen vegetables and grated cheese. Cook the mixture the same as you would scramble eggs.
Dry milk (slip into baked products including homemade bread, pancakes, waffles, etc.)
Fresh spinach mixed with lettuce in salads or hidden in a stew.
Ground flax seeds and add to baked products, cooked cereals, yogurt, frozen yogurt topping
Milk shakes made with fresh strawberries, bananas, or blueberries along with soy powder using skim milk
Prepare cooked cereals with skim milk instead of water
Add fresh, diced, cooked tomatoes to tomato sauces.
Oats porridge with raisins or finely chopped dried fruit such as apples, pears or peaches.
Yoghurt with real fruit pieces that are in season.
Use yoghurt instead of mayonnaise (much less fat and more protein and calcium)
Sometimes we have to accommodate and disguise to keep the picky eaters happy. If you are fixing pasta salad for lunch, cook a little extra pasta, and then fix a cheesy white sauce to go with the extra pasta. Since when does a kid turn down macaroni and cheese?
Puree the vegetables in the soup to keep junior happy. Simply take the meat (if any) from junior's bowl, dump the rest of the bowl in the blender, and push the button. Junior may not be ecstatic with lunch but he's more likely to eat it. Another example is to always puree the onions before adding it to whatever you are is cooking. If the kids can't see it, it's not so bad.
Recruit the kids into the conspiracy. Get them to help prepare the salad or vegetables. If they help fix it, they are more likely to eat it. See how many “colours” they can combine on one plate – this is real sneaky because if they have green, yellow, brown or white and red, its almost certainly a balanced meal! A balanced meal consists of starch, protein, fruit or vegetable, fat in some form, and dairy. Each of these should be present in every meal, if possible.
If you give your toddler fruit juice instead of a fruit, try to incorporate fibre elsewhere in the diet, for example, by eating a bran muffin.
Here is a fun idea - Rename the vegetables. Don't serve them broccoli; serve them “Trees”. Kids are more likely to eat “Gold Coins” instead of carrots.
My all time favourite: yoghurt smoothies with every fruit and vegetable combination you can think of – no little one can resist these and they love helping to make one!

The possibilities are unlimited, and yes, you do have to get sneaky! Whenever you begin to prepare a favorite dish or meal, think to yourself, "Is there a vegetable or other nutritious food item that I can add to make this meal more nutritious?"