Nutrition for toddlers

Vegetables can be quite bitter; particularly some green, leafy vegetables such as broccoli, kale or cabbage. Young children are very sensitive to bitter flavours and prefer sweeter foods. This means that they might be ok eating some sweet and tasty fruit but push their vegetables to one side, or even onto the floor!

Just eating fruit can mean that kids could miss out on some of the nutrients found in higher amounts in vegetables, as well as the opportunity to enjoy the varied dishes where vegetables are found – so it’s important that they have a variety of both in their diet.

Food ‘neophobia’ – the fear of new things - is also a problem between the ages of 2 and 6 years. Neophobia is common at this stage in life and simply means that a child will usually turn their nose up at a new food. This can be a key reason young children tend to say no the first time you try to introduce something they are not used to, but it does not mean they won’t learn to like it.

There are many ways that parents often use to try and get their kids to eat vegetables, but some are more effective than others. Coercion or force-feeding strategies, for example, can make both child and parent stressed and lead the child to like the vegetable even less! Similarly, using treat foods as a reward also seems to make children like the vegetable even less. Not only that, but they tend to like the less healthy reward food even more afterwards.

Hiding vegetables in foods can be a way to get children to eat vegetables with less fuss, as they do not notice them when eating. The problem is that because the child does not see the vegetables, they do not learn to like them on their own and may still reject them later.

Studies have shown that the best way to get young children to eat foods is through repetition. Becoming more familiar with a food can help children to accept it. The problem is that research has also found that it can take between 8 and 15 times being given a food before it is accepted. As many parents will be aware, between 8 and 15 rejections of a vegetable also means between 8 and 15 stressful mealtimes or snacks, as well as wasted food and hungry kids.

Is there a way that could reduce the number of times a food has to be introduced and help young children to understand and accept vegetables as part of their daily diet?

The See & Eat project was funded by EIT Food and led by the University of Reading, with partners including the British Nutrition Foundation. The goal of the project was to encourage children to eat more vegetables by familiarising them with images that show the veggies growing, being picked, sold in store, and then being cooked and eaten. The theory is that this approach can help children become more familiar with vegetables and therefore accept them more readily. 

The research team had already published a study using physical books, which showed promising results. They found that the children who were shown the books became more familiar with the vegetables and were also more likely to enjoy them! Books with fruit were also tested – but in these cases the researchers saw no difference between the groups with and without books. This might be because fruits tend to be sweeter, and kids are more likely to enjoy them than their less sweet vegetable counterparts.

The See & Eat project has now produced a range of eBooks that parents can use to introduce vegetables to their children. These books can be freely downloaded on phones or tablets. Each eBook has a set of images and accompanying text that show the journey of a vegetable ‘from farm to fork’. This allows children to not only see the vegetable in its raw form, but to have a basic understanding of how it is grown and what it looks like in meals and snacks.

The eBooks are also customisable – allowing parents to edit the text or add their own images. This can help parents to personalise the books in a way that suits them and their children’s learning and adds more flexibility than a physical book would have.

For more information on See & Eat, or to download the resources yourself, click here to be taken to the See & Eat website.

Young children need energy (from food) to grow and develop. As children get older, their body size increases, and they will typically eat more food as a consequence.

Generally it’s a good idea to offer larger portions to older children than younger children but you can be guided by the size of your child and their appetite that day.

The British Nutrition Foundation 5532 guide for 1-4 year olds provides portion size suggestions for a range of foods from each of the four main food groups. For many foods we give a range - taking pasta as an example, the suggested portion size is 2-5tbsp and it may be useful to think about the lower range (2tbsp) as being most suitable for a 1-year-old and the higher range for a 4-year-old (5tbsp). 

Young children’s appetites can vary hugely from meal to meal and from day to day. Appetite can depend on things like how active they are, mood, how much they like the food and time since their last meal.

Young children are usually fairly good at regulating their own appetite (they know when they are hungry and when they are full). Therefore, if a child eats more than usual at breakfast, they may well make up for this by eating less than usual later in the day. If you are concerned that your child is always eating larger than the recommended portions, you could try:

• Serving smaller portions to start with and allowing them to ask for more if they are still hungry
• Using child-sized plates or bowls (using adult-sized may encourage you to serve them too much)
• Encouraging them to eat more slowly if they are a quick eater, as this can give their body more time to realise it is full.

It is important that young children eat a variety of foods from the main food groups.

The 5532 guide suggests how many portions from each of the food groups should be eaten per day. Pressuring children to eat, completely banning less healthy foods and using treat foods as a reward could actually decrease children’s liking of the foods you want them to eat.

However there are lots of positive things you can do to help your child eat well:

• Eat a healthy meals yourself, and eat with your child when you can (children are more likely to eat foods that they see others eating and enjoying)
• Make mealtimes fun and inclusive (allow children to touch and smell foods and involve them in food preparation where possible)
• Provide plenty of opportunities for children to try new foods (it may take 10+ attempts until they accept a new food!).

If a child regularly leaves food on their plate from a particular food group (for example fruit or vegetables), maybe try offering this again as a snack later on (for example offer fruit for dessert or veggie sticks as a snack). This may also help to reduce waste!

In the UK, there are guidelines that nurseries, preschools and childminders should follow to make sure that portion sizes, as well as food quality and the way they feed children, are appropriate.

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland these guidelines are voluntary and in Scotland they are compulsory.

If your child goes to a nursery, childminder or preschool, it’s always a good idea to have a look at their menus and policies on food. It’s also a good idea to ask what your child has eaten during the day - knowing which foods they’ve already had will help you to decide what to feed them later, to ensure their diet is varied. You could encourage your child to talk about what they ate and what they enjoyed that day if they can.