My daughter has started eating very less food nowadys. All my coaxing, tricking has no effect. She eats very little rice or something for lunch, soem oatmeal for brekafats and mayeb some rice dal for dinner. Hardly any fruits etc.I am very worried. She is very thin in the first place.How are your kids doing?Are they eating well. My daughter is less than 20 percentile in weight and more than 75 in height.Please give some suggestions of what u feed ur little ones.
take care
Pallavi

kalyani replied. hi pallavi,

Iam also sailing in the same boat.Even my daughter is below 25 percentile in weight.I also wanted to know what i can feed to my little girl to make her healthy.So i posted a question in a food forum and one of the moms there gave me the following sugestion.Iam sharing it with u.Hope it will help u in some way.take care.happy weekend.
love from kals
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After 1 yr., can give our regular milk with cheerios cereal. If they dont like it, can stick with the baby cereal. Also, continued with some bottled fruits(no bottle veg., from there onwards).

For a change, in the evening time, can give bread with millk or parle g or marie bisucits mixed in milk, then can feed them.

Slowly, introduce all common fruits like apple, banana, dates, raisins. Take two or three nuts from cashew, pista and badham each. Boil and peel the skin out. With the above fruits, mix the nuts and grind them nicely. that is a wonderful pudding or brunch for them.

Once they have got a few teeth that is if they are ready to eat, can try veg., chunks. Since my daughter is little elder than yrs' she is taking apple now applied with creamy peanut butter which is tastier and filling one.

You can try mixed veg., like grated beet with shallot, tomato. Like this, choose different combinations which will give more taste-potato or okra with onion, tomato or carrot(baby carrot will be preferable since vit. is more than our regular carrot) or keerai with onion and tomato. Alternative days, add garlic. If you want to add ginger, can add a tiny piece, after cooking, throw the ginger away since it is very hot for the babies. And with veg., you have to give dals like moong or thoor. Moong dal is preferable since thoor dal has more gas. Even with moong dal, you can dry fry and cook so that the gas will not form.

You can prepare simple rasam which has boiled or raw tomato with water, haldi, salt and for kaaram, add jeera and pepper podi until they are little older. Slowly, introduce other grains like payar, channa(black channa is little difficult and blunt taste, so kids dont like it). Once in a while, I used to give hummus which is a boiled and groundwhite channa paste with salt. Make sure that their stomach is ot getting upset.

Can even sprout the grains and add 1 tbsp of the same with the veg., Once in a week, can add only veg., without dal so that the stomach will get some rest. Once they have started liking it, can give curd rice too with 30 mts gap or so. Becoz, after 1 yr, we have to follow the food pattern more or less like us.

Also, if you prepare plain veg., with little qty of dal like cabbage with dal, make one more extra veg., like radish. It is just like how we are eating. Radish is a side dish and the main food is cabbage rice.

Try kitchidis (not the adults' one) by soaking rice and dal together and cook veg., like carrot, potato, onion, tomato and spices like haldi, podis. It is always better to add dal more and rice in a lesser qty.

Even with butternut and pumpkin, can cook them with channa dal and feed them with the std., basic spices like pepper, jeera, poondu, can feed the kid. This was told by a punjabi friend of mine. Some people also add little amt of masoor dal. That is only if the kids dont like our moong or thoor dal.

Dinner is really boring for them since there is not much of variety. Anyways, for dinner, used to give kootu sadham . You can prepare this kootu with veg., like cabbage, chow chow, zuchhini, cucumber(tender veg.,) with 1/2 tbsp of moong dal. Veg., shd be in the higher qty since it is night time. Cook veg., dal alongwith salt, pepper jeera podi. Drain water and mash veg., nicely, mix them with rice. My daughter loved it very much.

I also heard that dhalia is also very good for the kids. So, can make dhalia upma(godhumai rava). But, my daughter is an expert in testing the food. If you take a spoon of some food, she would smell, taste with the tongue tip, then only, she would take rest of the food. Depending on yr kids' taste, can feed her.

My mother always says that though they are kids, they too have the taste bud in their tongues; so, pls feed the food with tasty and addtl. variety.

I have angaya podi with me which has all kinds of medicinal ingredients like sundaikkai, manathakkali etc. So, it is very good for digestion and other minor stomach problems. While cooking the veg., I always add a bit.

I usually give my daughter what I cook for myself and hubby. I make chicken or mutton kurma, fry, curry etc and take well cooked soft pieces and mash it with fork and mix it with either rasam rice or parup sadam (dal rice) and give it to her. I don't make the dish very hot and also add some ghee to her food.

As far fish, I give her small pieces of fried fish nicely mashed (my daughter only has 1 teeth) and she eats it. I usually use Talipia to make fried fish.

Eggs she loves omlette or fried egg. She is ok with boiled egg. You can also add cheese to her omlette they usually love it. I also make french toasts using rasin bread (you get a great brand of raisin bread at sam's club, I don't remember the name) and she loves to eat it by her self.

You can also add egg to dosa dough and make small dosa's for her. My daughter eats dosa or idly with chicken or mutton curry or regular chutney's like onion and tomato or cocunut (again not very spicy).

I also give her store brought Organic chicken broth (I think shari';s brand found in shaw's) in her sippy cup and she loves it.

Other than this she eats sambar rice, puloa etc. I also give her Yo baby's yogurt (stony field brand)and she likes it.
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