While allowing your toddler to find confidence in his independence is great, instilling good eating habits will be beneficial in the long term (because let’s face it, being a food target is only fun for so long).

Try the following to teach your toddler good mealtime manners:

Encourage family meals

What better way to teach good eating habits, than by letting your toddler learn from you. By eating together as a family, your toddler will be exposed to the way that you and your partner converse with one another and handle your food. Eating together also encourages chatter between parents and children.

Be relaxed when it comes to manners

Before you lose your sense of humour over your toddler’s resistance to eat with a knife and fork, take a deep breath and remind yourself: Your toddler will continue to with her fingers (and make a mess) for a long time. The more you harp on it, the more your toddler will resist it. Let her enjoy the mess, it won’t last forever.

Tempt your tot with food

Use different colours, tastes and textures to make food tempting for your toddler. She is more likely to eat food that is appealing to her. Colourful plates, bibs and cutlery can help create temptation.

Patience, patience, patience

On average, it takes 10 tries for your toddler to accept a new taste. Be patient and persevere – just because your toddler doesn’t like what you give him today, doesn’t mean he will not like it tomorrow too.

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Researchers at the University of Iowa studied how 16-month-old children learn words for non solid objects, from oatmeal to glue. Previous research has shown that toddlers learn more readily about solid objects because they can easily identify them due to their unchanging size and shape. But the oozy, gooey, runny stuff? Not so much, researchers said.

Word learning increases in high chair

Yet, according to the latest findings, that changes if you put toddlers in a setting they know well — a highchair. Word learning increases, because children at that age are “used to seeing non solid things in this context, when they’re eating,” says Larissa Samuelson, head researcher and associate professor in psychology. “And, if you expose them to these things when they’re in a highchair, they do better. They’re familiar with the setting and that helps them remember and use what they already know about non solids.”

Toddlers who interact with food are more likely to name them

In a new study published this week in the journal Developmental Science, Samuelson and her team exposed 72 toddlers to 14 non solid objects, mostly food and drinks such as applesauce, pudding, juice, and soup. They presented the items and gave them made-up words, such as “dax” or “kiv.” A minute later, they asked the children to identify the same food in different sizes or shapes.

The task required the youngsters to go beyond relying simply on shape and size and to explore what the substances were made of to make the correct identification and word choice.

Making the correct association through interaction

Not surprisingly, many children gleefully dove into this task by poking, prodding, touching, feeling, tasting, and throwing the non solids in order to understand what they were and make the correct association with the hypothetical names, the researchers said.

The toddlers who interacted the most with the foods were more likely to correctly identify them by their texture and name them, the study determined. For example, imagine you were a 16-month-old gazing at a cup of milk and a cup of glue. How would you tell the difference by simply looking?

Setting matters, too

The setting matters, too, it seems. Children in a highchair were more apt to identify and name the food than those in other venues, such as seated at a table, the researchers found.
“It turns out that being in a highchair makes it more likely you’ll get messy, because kids know they can get messy there,” Samuelson said.

Access the new study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.12147/abstract

(AFP Relaxnews)

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• Memory
• Test grades
• School
• Attendance
• Psycho-social function
• Mood

Meal Planning Ideas

Choose one option per meal and one mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack.

 Healthy diet tips for your toddler

1. Swap cold drinks for milk, flavoured milk or drinking yoghurt to increase dairy intake.
2. Include fish in children’s meals by serving fish fingers, fish cakes or steamed fish flaked into rice.
3. Prepare baked beans on toast with grated cheese.
4. Serve raw vegetables (carrots, baby tomatoes, cucumber) with a flavoured dip like mashed avocado.
5. Add pureed carrots to tomatoe-based pasta sauces or finely chop vegetables and hide them on home-baked pizzas, soups, mince dishes and casseroles.
6. Vegetable kebabs, bananas in their skins and mealies are great for braais.
7. Blend fruit into a smoothie by mixing banana with some frozen mixed berries and a dollop of yoghurt – a nutritious drink for children of all ages.
8. Remember to monitor water intake – freeze a bottle of water or diluted juice the night before packing their lunch – it should stay cold for most of the day.

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.

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Try to add variety, and to avoid wastage, take into account birthdays and cake-and-candy days at school.

Invest in a variety of small plastic containers and make the effort to prepare little tubs of various finger food the night before. Some children like to have their various food groups separated, and won’t touch a food if it has been “tainted” by something else in the lunchbox.

Most toddlers balk at the sight of a whole fruit in their lunchbox, but will eat it if is cut up into little pieces.

In summer, freeze water or diluted 100 % pure fruit juice in a plastic bottle, the night before, so that by the time your little one drinks it the following day, it is still cold and refreshing.

Include a variety of healthy bits:

• Small fingers of raw vegetables such as broccoli, sugar snap peas, baby marrow, cucumber, and carrot
• Chopped up seasonal raw fruit, or a small bunch of grapes
• Cooked corn on the cob
• Boiled egg
• Chopped up cooked, left over roast meat, shnitzel, sausages, lean bacon or chicken
• A few pieces of cold roast or baked potato
• A small tub of cooked pasta with a drizzle of salad dressing
• Chopped biltong
• Wholewheat, rice or rye crackers
• Peanut butter (or any other filling except jam) sandwiches cut into small squares or triangles
• Grated or sliced mozzarella cheese
• Full cream, un-coloured cheese wedges
• Cashew nuts, sunflower seeds and raisins
• Sugar and preservative free fruit bar
• Small yogurt

And every now and then, treat your toddler with

• Small, bite sized chocolate bar
• Handful of crisps or popcorn
• Two jelly babies, or marshmallows

Foods to avoid at all cost

• Foodstuffs that your child is allergic to
• Stimulants (food or drinks that may contain caffeine or sugar)
• Food additives, preservatives and colourants such as MSG, Tartrazine, sodium benzoate and sulphates)

Providing regular fuel

Three main meals and three significant snacks are important in every child’s day (quantity may vary from child to child, so don’t panic if your child is a small eater).

This provides regular fuel for their metabolism and prevents low blood sugar and unhealthy snacking. Keep lunchboxes fun and without stress. Good healthy fresh and seasonal food, good tap water, exercise, sunshine and lots of laughter will be a good start in helping your child get the best out of life.

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Open-minded kids

Want to raise open-minded kids who don’t complain about their veggies? Introduce carrots and peas early in life and don’t give up after the first try, say British researchers.

And they should know. Because for their research, the team from the University of Leeds used, perhaps, one of the least popular and most uncommon foods in the plant kingdom on their mini test subjects: artichoke puree.

For the study, scientists fed the puree to 332 babies and children aged 6 to 38 months, who came from the UK, France and Denmark.

Children were fed five to 10 servings of at least 100 g of the puree, either in its basic form, sweetened with added sugar or mixed with vegetable oil.

Overall, younger children consumed more of the puree than older kids, notably kids under 24 months — the age more commonly known as the terrible twos, when tots suddenly discover their own will and are more reluctant to try new things.

Learners and plate-cleaners

Most of the kids — 40 percent — were classified as “learners,” kids who increased their intake over time.

“Plate-clearers” were defined as those who consumed more than 75 percent of what was offered each time (21 percent). “Non-eaters” were those who ate less than 10g by the fifth helping (16 percent) and the rest were categorized as “others.”

Researchers found that that the fussiest group, the “non-eaters,” tended to be older pre-school children.

Interestingly, researchers found that sweetening the puree didn’t make a difference in the amount that children ate.

The findings were published in PLoS One.

Start early and often

The moral of the study?

“If you want to encourage your children to eat vegetables, make sure you start early and often. Even if your child is fussy or does not like veggies, our study shows that 5-10 exposures will do the trick,” said lead researcher Marion Hetherington.

Other studies have also suggested offering kids more variety when it comes to vegetables, refraining from telling them their veggies are healthy and leading by example.

(AFP Relaxnews)

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And while vegetables can sometimes be a hard sell, most children (especially toddlers) actually enjoy eating fruit.

Here are five tips for encouraging them to eat more of it.

1. Serve children the fruits they like, even if it is at the expense of variety. There is no reason why kids who love bananas shouldn’t have one every day. Eventually, parents can add variety by combining a favorite fruit with new ones.

2. Fruit can be eaten at any time of day as a snack, and not just as a dessert. Consider serving fruit to kids with breakfast, as an after-school snack, or even in a salad with dinner.

3. Set a good example. It is well established that children tend to imitate their parents’ behavior, particularly at mealtimes. So parents should set the example by eating plenty of fruit themselves.

4. Prepare fruit in front of children or involve them in the process. Whether it’s scooping out melon balls for fruit salad, washing berries, or coring apples, giving children a task in preparing fruit will make them more likely to enjoy eating the result.

5. Provide easy access to fruit. Keep a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table and allow kids to help themselves. For children who enjoy eating fruit, sometimes the best way to boost their intake is simply to remind them to eat it when they’re hungry.

(AFP Relaxnews)

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What’s more, you get to choose the mix of ingredients and flavours that are right for your child, depending on their personal tastes and diet.

Plus, you also have the benefit of knowing exactly what your little one is eating. By choosing the ingredients, you are able to eliminate preservatives and added sugars.

When thinking about making your own baby food, you immediately think of hours spent in the kitchen, butt his recipe for Ella’s Kitchen’s squishy salmon fishcakes will see you break out your artistic side in just 45 minutes. Your toddler will love the squishy fishy goodness and style of this dish…

What you need

400 grams of potatoes cut into dices

1 carrot cut into small dices

200 grams of salmon fillets (skin removed)

3 tablespoons of sunflower oil

1 small leek, thinly sliced

25 grams of green beans, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of finely chopped flat leaf parsley

What to do

1. Cook the potato and carrot in boiling water for 15 minutes until tender. Drain and mash them together, and set aside mash to cool.
2. Poach the salmon in simmering water for 5 minutes until cooked through, then allow to cool.
3. Break up the fish into flakes, taking care to ensure that there are no bones.
4. Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a large frying pan and fry the leek and beans for 5 minutes until tender.
5. Stir them into the carrot and potato mash and then add the cooked salmon and the parsley to the mixture again.
6. Using your hands, mould the mixture into 2 large fishcakes and 2 small fishcakes
7. Heat the remaining oil in a frying pan and cook the fishcakes for 5 minutes, turning once until golden on both sides and warm through.
8. Serve immediately with some peas

Yum!

About the Author: Ella’s Kitchen Cook Book is available at Woolworths for approximately R200.

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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.

Understanding how eating habits are formed

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.

Taught to enjoy veggies and fruits

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 importance of diversity

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 be role models

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.

Trust your toddler’s appetite

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.

Breastfeeding plays a vital role

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)

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