Making a toddler love healthy food is a daunting task. Have a quick look at some tips for encouraging healthy eating in your toddler.Getting your toddler to eat healthy food can be challenging, but if you successfully involve them in this habit from childhood, it can be an easy job in future to have nutritious meals without any hassle.
Eating healthy keeps your kid healthy, maintains a healthy weight, and gives your kid the right energy he or she needs to learn and grow.
Introduce New Food Gradually
Involve your kid in the family’s food decisions to keep him or her excited about eating well. Take your kid to a grocery store and ask to choose among the healthy options that come along the way. Mangoes or bananas? Carrots or cabbages? Make a habit of selecting new fruit or vegetable to try every week, and make him explore new varieties gradually. Keep in mind that your toddler will not accept all new food easily, you must give time unless you introduce him or her to another new food.
Take Your Kid to the Source
Take your toddler for an outing to the community garden or a fruit farm and show them where the food comes from to their plate. They may develop a connection between themselves and food. This may inspire and excite your kid.
Make Meals Fun
Arrange their food in exciting and colourful dinnerware so they find it interesting. Ask them what toppings they need for their meals. Arrange bell peppers, beans, and carrots like a face on his plate. Cut their toasts in heart shape or make pancakes in the shape of their initials. Offer
yogurt to dip crackers and fruits in it. Keep changing dips and keep changing the meals so that they do not feel it monotonous and boring.
Introduce Healthy Foods in Your Kid’s Diet
Avoid sugary juices and make sure your kid takes up 100% fresh fruit or fruit-vegetable juices. Few kids take up 100% vegetable juices also. Offer water whenever he or she is thirsty instead of colas and unhealthy juices. Introduce smoothies in their diet and ask them to choose which fresh fruit they want. Blend tofu, hard-cooked egg whites, and a bit of ground flaxseeds for protein and fiber in their juices as these do not change the taste. Take up whole grain bread, add carrot to meatballs, spinach to pasta, and better let your kid know what you are putting in their food so that they become anxious and excited about it.
Keep a Count and Take It Easy
Toddlers need 1,000 calories a day. This can be easily achieved by serving your child a whole meal followed by a fruit. But do not get worried if he or she does not finish the meal easily. Break the servings in parts and offer your kid slowly with an adventurous approach so that his or her calorie intake is balanced without exhausting yourself or your kid. Be calm and make the mealtime enjoying instead of fussy even if your
toddler is fussy.
Do Not Forget to Be a Good Role Model
Do you offer your kid healthy food and you yourself eat
junk and unhealthy? That shall not happen. Keep a routine of mealtimes and eat together so that your toddler understands the value of time and try to imitate you while eating. He or she will want what you are eating from your plate, so you must make sure you are also
eating healthy if you expect your kid to eat properly. You shall also finish your plate so that he or she also tries not to leave food behind. This is not a very tough thing as it seems to be. But you need to be calm and handle their fussy phase and off the time, you both will have a great mealtime together.
What should toddlers eat and how to feed them? Is it possible to make toddlers love eating healthy food? How to ensure that a toddler finishes his or her meals properly? Discuss here.