The post Toddler Nutrition: Healthy diet tips and meal ideas appeared first on All4Baby.
]]>Choose one option per meal and one mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.
| Breakfast | v Wholewheat Pronutro with milk and half a small pawpaw
v Boiled or scrambled egg on toast with a small glass of orange juice v Baked beans on toast with a small banana v Peanut butter on toast with a glass of milk v Smoothie: blend low-fat vanilla yoghurt with fruit, milk and a handful of ice |
| Snacks | v Small tub of yoghurt, drinking yoghurt or a carton of flavoured milk
v Few pieces of dried fruit, nuts or peanuts and raisins v Fruit kebab made with melon, pineapple and strawberries v Home-made popcorn or a muffin v Crackers or bread with peanut butter or cheese wedges v PnP mini rice bites |
| Lunch | v Small roll with peanut butter and sliced banana / chicken mayonnaise / ham and cheese, with baby carrots and an apple
v Meatball and salad sticks with a bread roll and an apple v Quick pita nachos with avocado v “Pasta please” packed lunch v Cheese fingers wrapped in ham slices with a bran muffin and strawberries |
| Dinner | v Pilchard and potatoe fish cakes with crudités
v Beef stroganoff with rice and a carrot and pineapple salad v The “Twits wormy pasta” with grated cheese v Spaghetti Bolognese with steamed baby vegetables v Optional dessert: fruit salad jellies |
Use fats and sugars sparingly: children shouldn’t have a very low-fat diet, they need the same balance of fats as adults. Restrict animal fats and choose plant oils such as olive or sunflower oil, tub margarines, avocado, peanut butter and nuts. Sugar can be part of a balanced eating plan, but in moderation. Restrict sweets and chocolates to after-meal treats and provide milk, water or diluted fruit juices rather than soft drinks.
About the Author: Advice, tips and meal plans provided by Pick n Pay’s resident Dietician who can be contacted on the Health Hotline. Visit http://www.picknpay.co.za/healthy-recipes for recipes and more.
The post Toddler Nutrition: Healthy diet tips and meal ideas appeared first on All4Baby.
]]>The post Toddler nutrition: Keep forcing those veggies! appeared first on All4Baby.
]]>Faced with a nine-month old who makes faces at anything green, or a toddler who throws a tantrum at the sight of a carrot, many parents are tempted to give up on getting their kids to enjoy veggies.
But the findings of the HabEat project — a multidisciplinary Pan-European study of how food behaviors are formed in infants and children — give parents plenty of reasons to persevere. At the final symposium of the project, held in Dijon, France on March 31 and April 1, the research teams also presented practical recommendations for improving children’s intake of fruit and vegetables.
Initiated in January 2010 by 11 partner organizations from five European countries, the HabEat project followed the eating habits of several cohorts of children (aged six months to six years) over a four-year period. The goal: to understand how eating habits are formed and sometimes broken during the first years of life. Using various psychological, epidemiological, behavioral and nutritional analyses, the project sought to identify the key mechanisms in the development of children’s taste or distaste for certain foods.
At the end of the project, researchers’ recommendations all center around one essential point: children must be taught to enjoy fruits and vegetables at the earliest age possible.
The project’s findings also emphasize the importance of diversity in the diet, suggesting that children should be introduced to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables early on. For better chances of success, researchers advise introducing only one new fruit or vegetable per meal, without combining them.
Parents should act as role models during the process, encouraging their child to appreciate fruits and vegetables without forcing them.
In fact, coercive techniques and reward-based motivations (“Eat your sprouts and you’ll get cake”) can be counterproductive, as they alter a child’s natural ability to gauge hunger and satiety, leading to a risk of compulsive eating and obesity later in life.
It is better to trust the child’s appetite, however fickle it may be. Sometimes, the same vegetable may be offered and rejected 8 to 10 times over the course of a few weeks before a child finally takes a liking to it.
For older children, being involved in the cooking process can lead to more willingness to try new foods, especially if parents and caretakers bring them along to farmer’s markets to help pick out fruits and vegetables.
Finally, the HabEat project concludes that breastfeeding plays a vital role in the development of healthy eating habits. Researchers found a positive correlation between the number of months an infant was breastfed and the quantity of fruit and vegetables he or she consumed during later childhood.
(AFP Relaxnews)
The post Toddler nutrition: Keep forcing those veggies! appeared first on All4Baby.
]]>