Cultivating healthy eating habits in your children has to be done when they are toddlers. At this stage, they are very impressionable, and it becomes easy to instill good habits in them. Nutritious toddler meals can be made a part of a toddler’s diet on a regular basis to ensure that the child develops in a healthy manner. It is very easy to design nutritious meals for toddlers; however, you should make sure that your child has an enjoyable and pleasant mealtime experience. Also keep in mind that your child should not drink too many beverages at meal time as this results in loss of appetite.
Further, avoid feeding your child large portions of food; they usually satisfied with small portions that are high in energy and calories, both of which are required for healthy growth.
One manner of ensuring that your child is getting the right nutrition and is eating healthy is to feed him/her a rainbow every week. What this means is that you should feed your child fruits and vegetables that match with the colors of the rainbow.
While this may sound a little difficult, don’t worry. If you are looking for fruits and vegetables for the “color red” you can feed the child apples, strawberries, tomatoes, and watermelon. For “color orange,” you can feed your child peaches, carrots, and oranges. Finding something for the “color yellow” is not too difficult a task with bananas and pears. Beans, Mango, papaya, and avocado are good options for the day for “color green.” Finally, blueberries and grapes can be used on “blue” and “purple” days.
If you are looking for nutritious toddler meals, make sure that the daily meals include foods that are from each food group. This means that you would have to include 3 to 5 servings of grain, a couple of servings of protein, some servings of dairy, and some fruits and some vegetables to take care of the vital vitamins and minerals.
You can feed your child cereals, crackers, pasta, rice, or wheat to ensure that he/she is getting adequate grain. Goo healthy proteins include hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and chicken. Dairy products such as yogurt and milk should also be included in your toddler’s diet. The rainbow trick is a good method of ensuring that your toddler is getting all the right fruits n vegetables.
Finally, you must ensure that your child has fun at mealtimes and does not find it mundane. Also ensure that you don’t force him to eat, else he might take a dislike to eating food.
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