Encouraging your toddler to eat a healthy diet can be challenging. During toddler years, children develop natural preferences for food that can create fussy eating habits. However, parents need not worry as this is natural. Fortunately, there are several ways they can encourage their young ones to eat healthier at home.
In this blog, we provide ways you can encourage your toddler or children to start developing healthier eating habits.
What Is Healthy Eating?
Healthy eating is ‘following a healthy eating pattern that includes a variety of nutritious foods and drinks’. Toddlers should eat a well-balanced diet of the following:
- Fruit and vegetables
- Starchy foods like bread, rice, potatoes and pasta
- Milk and dairy products
- Protein
If you are in doubt about what your toddler should be eating, see the NHS website for more healthy eating tips. Moreover, if your toddler has developed fussy eating and you are concerned for their health seek professional medical advice.
How Do I Get My Toddler to Eat Healthily?
At Keren’s nurseries, all of our children are given a well-balanced diet, whether that be through their snacks or lunches during nursery times. Nevertheless, encouraging your toddler to follow these habits at home can prove challenging especially if they are a fussy eater. However, there are some ways that parents and carers can start to encourage healthy eating habits in children during their early years. Below, find our quick tips regarding healthy eating in toddlers.
Be Patient
Change for any child can be overwhelming. So, it is important that you remain both patient and positive as you try to implement new eating habits in your toddler’s daily routine. Introducing a new food group slowly is a good way to start. Likewise, if your toddler seems to dislike a certain food that’s not to say you can’t continue to give it to them. For some toddlers, it is about adjusting to change and being given the space and reassurance to do so.
Be a Role Model
Children often look to their elders for inspiration. Therefore, it is important that if you are trying to encourage healthy eating in your toddler that you too follow a well-balanced diet. A child is more likely to eat food if you do too – so, eating what they do at snack, dinner or lunchtime may be a viable option.
Make Food an Open Conversation
One of the best ways to encourage healthy eating in children is to make food an open conversation. Introducing food into everyday dialogue, it may allow your toddler to familiarise themselves with certain foods. Asking your child about how a food tastes, and what it may feel or smell like may also help do this.
Present Food Differently
Often, toddlers are put off by certain textures or colours. It is typically not the taste of food that they are concerned with. As a result, parents and carers at home can implement foods in new ways. For example, if your child is not particularly keen on certain vegetables you could always blend them into a sauce. Similarly, you can creatively cut food into fun shapes and pair it with unconventional choices, potentially encouraging healthier eating habits in a more organic manner.
Get Toddlers Involved
Another way to open up the dialogue of food is by inviting your toddler into the decision-making process. By this, we mean asking them what types of foods they may enjoy. When you visit the supermarket for your next food shop, why not ask your toddler what foods they’d like to add to the trolley? Children always like to feel involved, and this is a simple way of doing so.
