How to feed your toddler

A healthy balanced diet provides your toddler with all the vitamins and nutrients that he needs to grow. Sometimes this can be hard to achieve. Don't panic – most children go through a picky eating stage. Your job is to provide a variety of whole, non-processed food. His job is to choose how much to eat. Here are some ideas to help you.

How can I encourage my toddler to be a good eater?

Keep calm and offer your child a wide variety of nutritious foods, but let him decide how much he will eat. Be confident that he knows better than you how much food is enough for him.

Meal timing

Keep to regular meal and snack times, taking into account your toddler's daytime naps. Offer three regular meals and two or three small, nutritious snacks. Examples are:

• fruit
• cherry tomatoes and cubes of cheese
• yogurt with berries or fruit slices
• a small sandwich
• vegetable sticks or breadsticks with hummus
• fruit and milk smoothie
• pancake, French toast or bagel with a cup of milk

Snack time

It's better not to give your child a main meal just before a nap, as he is likely to be too tired to eat. Give him a small snack or drink instead and a meal when he wakes up. Snacks which are evenly spaced between meals will help to avoid the frustrations of being over-hungry.

Make it interesting

Make meals interesting and fun. You can offer both a savoury and sweet course with main meals. This gives your toddler two opportunities to consume nutrients, and increases the variety of foods your child is eating.

Eat together

Eat with your toddler as often as possible and eat what you want him to eat. Children learn to like foods by trying them, but will often only try new foods that they see other people eating. Remember that you are his role model and encourage him by making positive comments about foods at mealtimes such as, "Mmm, these are delicious", "Mmm, these are my favourites".

Play with texture

Toddlers have individual tastes for the flavour and texture of foods. Some like their food bathed in sauces, while others prefer it dry. Some like every food to be kept separate from the others on the plate. Many toddlers do not like stringy meat or foods that are difficult to chew.

One of the family

Respect your toddler's preferences but don't cook him a completely separate meal. Always offer the same foods that everyone else is eating whenever you can, but make sure at least one of the foods is something you know that he likes. With time, tastes change, so it is important to keep offering your toddler all the foods the family eats.