Toddler meal plans

Approved by the BabyCenter India Medical Advisory Board | May, 2021 |
toddler being fed a meal with a spoon
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Our toddler meal plans are a suggestion of dishes and foods that you can feed your toddler over a week. They are created keeping in mind the nutrients your toddler needs at his age and stage of development.

These meal plans need not be followed strictly but serve as a guide and inspiration. We have given food items from all different seasons, but it is unlikely that you will be able to have all of these items in your kitchen at the same time. It is also fine not to have as much variety as depicted in our plans.

You can for example keep the same breakfast menu for your child every day. But try to then keep a variety of fruit and vegetables for the other meals and snacks so that he is exposed to many tastes and nutrients. A good way of ensuring variety is to offer fruit and vegetables of different colours.

The variety will also help you find something that suits your family tastes. It can also teach him to like more flavours.

Toddlers can be very fussy eaters. Introducing a variety of dishes in your child's diet early on will help him to recognise different tastes and become more accepting to new foods.

Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian meal plans by age

Select from below the meal plan that suits your child best according to his age and whether he is a vegetarian or non-vegetarian:

What don't these toddler meal plans tell me?

Our meal plans do not indicate how much you should be feeding your child. There is no such thing as an ideal portion size for a toddler. To know how much your toddler should eat, be guided by his appetite. You decide what food to put on his plate, but let him decide how much of it to eat.

How much children eat varies from day to day. They usually eat according to their energy requirements. So they may have a larger appetite on a day that they are more active or have a growth spurt and eat less on other days.

These meal plans also do not take into account any special nutritional needs. If your child has allergies or an intolerance to a particular food, please consult his doctor about his diet requirements.

What should I keep in mind while using these meal plan?

What we have depicted in the meal plans is a sample of an ideal menu for a toddler. But it is by no means the only menu that is suitable. As you follow these meal plans for your child or use them as inspiration to create your own menu, here are a few points to keep in mind that will ensure that your toddler not only eats healthily, but develops good eating habits for the rest of his life:
  • Sweets and sugar are mostly unnecessary for the body as they provide few vitamins, minerals or other nutrients. However, it's fine to offer a dessert after a meal if you choose a healthy option such as fruit, kheer or jaggery (gur).
  • Do not give your child too many snacks or sweet drinks. These will fill up his tummy, leaving little room for healthier foods. It is best to offer water between meals.
  • Calcium is important for your growing child to have strong teeth and bones. But he should not have more than between 350ml and 400ml of milk in a day otherwise he will not be hungry enough for other foods containing other vital vitamins and minerals.
  • Let your child decide when his tummy is full. Don't force him to finish his plate. Forcing him to eat more than he needs can make him susceptible to become obese later in life.
  • Ensure that your child eats foods from all the different food groups but do not necessarily judge his diet by looking at one meal or one day. See rather the variety of nutrients he has over the span of a week. One meal might be richer in carbohydrates and another in protein or vitamins. But over the span of a week, there should be a balance of nutrients in the right proportions. To know more about how much of each food group your child needs, see our slideshow on feeding your child well.

You can add a nutritional supplement to your child's milk to ensure he gets all the vitamins he needs. There are many multivitamin soluble powders in the market that are made to be added to milk. These can help your child get nutrients that might be missing from his diet. But they cannot be a substitute for a poor diet. If you choose to use such a supplement, speak to your doctor about which one is best for your child.

How do the meal plans change according to my child's age?

By the time your child is one year old, he will be able to eat almost all foods. So the types of food in the meal plans do not change as your child grows older. But the meals do become more complex.

In the one-year-old meal plan, most meals consist of two components. So a meal would consist of a chicken curry and chapati, or khichdi and curd.  But by the time your baby is three years old, the meals are mostly made of three or even four components to become just like an adult meal. So a three-year-old's lunch might consist of one dal, one vegetable, a chapati or rice and curd or raita.

The consistency of food that your child can eat will also change. At one year old, your toddler might only have a few teeth but he will be very good at gumming his food. So he will probably already be having lumpy food but you will still need to help him break up his food into small soft pieces to avoid the risk of choking.

By the time your child is three, he will have enough teeth to eat food in the same way as you do. And it is a good idea to feed him the same food as the rest of the family and to all eat together. Meals can become a good time to spend as a family and eating all together will ensure there are no other distractions in the house calling your child away from his plate.

Although your toddler can eat almost all the same foods as you, remember that he cannot handle the same level of spice or salt as adults. So when you cook food for the family, add the last bit of salt and chilli after removing a portion for your toddler.

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