Fruits and Vegetables at Every Meal and Every Snack -- Every Darned Day

One of the most effective strategies you can use to radically shape how your toddler eat is this:

Serve a fruit or a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.

 Of course, you’ll never attain that goal, but it doesn’t matter.  Just by setting the intention you will drastically increase your toddler’s consumption of fruit and vegs.

You could also strive to serve a fruit AND a vegetable at every meal and every snack every day.

That would be even better.

If you have a child who barely touches a fruit (forget about the vegetables), you’re probably laughing at me right now.

That’s OK. I can take it.  And I’ll get to you guys in a moment. 

For the rest of you, those parents among us whose kids haven’t totally fallen off the deep end yet, think about this: Most parents feed their infants a fruit-and-vegetable-dominated diet.

In other words, I am not really suggesting anything too radical.  I’m merely proposing that as your infants turn into toddlers that you keep up the good work.

Yes, I know that it is a lot easier to feed infants fruits and vegetables than it can be to convince a trepidatious toddler to open up at the sight of spinach, but stick with me here.

One reason infants are so accommodating in the Fruits-and-Vegetable department is that they don’t know any better.

It’s not just that most infants haven’t yet been introduced to all the wonders of the world—sweets, treats and chicken nuggets—that makes them so accommodating.  It’s that eating fruits and vegetables is their custom, their routine, their norm. Fruits and vegetables are their primary go-to-foods.

Most parents I know, inadvertently move their toddlers away from this way of eating by relying on rusks, cookies, puffs, crackers, and other toddler stuff more than they actually need to.

10 reasons to serve fruits and vegetables at every meal and snack every darned day.

1) Kids can’t eat what isn’t being served.  Every time you don’t serve a fruit and vegetable is another time when your child won’t eat a fruit or vegetable.

2) Eating is a matter of math: The more frequently you expose your kids to fruits and vegetables the more normal these foods will seem.

3) Putting fruits and vegetables into your feeding structure stops most of the conflict: When it comes to eating everyone will know exactly what to expect.

4) Fruits and vegetables will displace some of the other snack stuff you normally serve thereby upgrading your toddler’s diet.

5) By changing the ratio of fruits and vegetables to other tasty items you’ll point your kid’s taste buds in the right direction.

6) Fruits and vegetables will become a go-to food, not an once-a-day opportunity to fight.

7) You’ll introduce more fruit and vegetable variety because peas, broccoli and string beans will only take you so far.

8) You’ll be content to serve smaller portions: A few bites really add up.

9) Your previously sane self will return becuase you will no longer have to be the food police.

10) It’s the right habit.

Read 10 Ways Improving Your Kids’ Snacking Will Improve YOUR Life.

To you naysayers out there—“That will never work with my kid.”—I say this:

Do it anyway.  (Waiting for your children to grow into eating more fruits and vegetables is like waiting for Godot. It might never happen.)

Here's a four-point plan to get you started.

1) Set your sights on small steps. 

• Serve extremely small portions. Read When Less is More.
• Ask your child to take extremely small tastes. Read Nix the Negativity.
• Never ask your child to eat even one more bite. Read The Happy Bite and A New Approach to Teaching Tots to Try New Foods.

2) Talk to your children about your strategy.

• Say “Fruit and/or vegetable at every meal” more times than you would like to, and remember to tell your child why. ("We eat healthier foods more often than other foods.")
• Give your child choices within the structure. Read Curbing Your Kid’s Craving for Control.

3) Applaud small successes.  Each and every one of them.  Each and every time.

4) Read The BIG Fix: What To Do When Feeding Strategies Fail.

 ~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~ 

What Is In Your Lunch Box?

I'm experiencing a love/hate reaction to Parenting.com's new Healthy Lunch Maker.  Have you seen this calculator?  

You drag a sandwich, snack and a drink into a lunch box, press calculate and the program spits out the nutrition profile of whatever is in the box.

"All the nutrition facts you need to pack tasty, healthy lunches for your child. Count calories, fat, sodium and more."

Test out Parenting.com’s Healthy Lunch Maker

I love the calculator because it's so much fun. 

No matter how much I think nutrition information leads parents astray—Read Why Nobody Needs Nutrition Labels— I can't resist nutrition gadgets.  I describe my problem, and how much fun I had shopping this summer with the Fooducate App, in Why I Feed My Daugther Inferior Food.

Plug a PB&J sandwich on wheat, an apple and a small carton of low-fat milk into the Healthy Lunch Maker, push calculate:

• Total calories = 466
• Fat=12g
• Sodium=450 mg
• Protein=19g

Fantastic! I spent an hour one day trying out different lunchtime combos.  That is the love part. Now to the hate part...

I hate the calculator because it's impossible to know what the information means. 

Is 466 calories a lot or a little? What about 12 grams of fat? 

And even if you look at the % daily value based on your child's age, which the program conveniently lets you punch in, the information that 12 grams of fat is 22% of your 3 year old's daily fat needs will only take you so far.  

Unless you're going to calculate every meal and every snack (something I don't think anybody would ever do) knowing that lunch is going to deliver 45% of your toddler's sodium intake is meaningless.  Sure, 45% seems high, but what if the rest of the day turns out to be basically sodium-free? That puts 45% into a healthier perspective.

Now, let's imagine that you could put together a magic meal, one that made the grade on all the key ingredients.

What would you do?

• Would you serve this perfect meal to your child over and over? That would narrow, rather than expand, your toddler's palate.
• Would you shy away from foods that don't make the grade? Or feel guilty when your tot eats anything short of the gold standard? That would make the "bad" but desirable foods even more desirable?

So again, I ask, what would you do?

As far as I can tell, the only useful thing you can do with any nutrition calculator is bust some myths.

• A PB&J sandwich, apple and carton of low-fat milk delivers 19 grams of protein or 172% of your 3 year old's daily protein needs. 
• The PB&J alone delivers 11 grams of protein or 100% of your 3 year old's protein needs.

Who knew?

What I take away from this is that most people worry more than they need to about protein intake. Indeed, if your 3 year old pounds down one small carton of milk, he'll take in 8 grams of protein, 72% of his daily needs.

There are other problems with using this, or any other, calculator. 

• It sticks to traditional lunch items (for obvious reasons) but doesn't let you put soup or salad into the box!
• You don't know how much of any one ingredient is calculated in the sandwhich. You might be heavier on the peanut butter or lighter on the jelly and then your numbers would all be off.
• You'll need another calculator to estimate what your toddler actually takes in: Do three bites constitute half a sandwich, a quarter, less?
• The % daily values are estimates based on a range of needs (with a point picked for mathematical reasons). On any given day your child might need more or less food based on activity level and growth patterns.

Instead of thinking primarily about nutrition, start focusing on your child's eating habits instead.

Read 10 Habits MORE Important Than Vegetable Eating.  Then, teach your tot to:

• Eat different foods on different days. Read House Building 101.
• Accept a wide range of tastes and texture. Read Training Tiny Taste Buds.
• Consume fresh, natural foods more often that processed and packaged one. Have Your Cake and Eat it Too!
• Use food for hunger and not for emotional reasons. Read Using Sweets to Soothe the Soul.

The nutrition part of the picture will fall into place—perfectly. I promise.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~

Kid Eats Q&A: When (and how much) should my toddlers eat?

Thanks to Claudia for asking this question in response to my recent Psychology Today article because it’s an important issue that lots of parents struggle to resolve.

Claudia's question:

I have twin 22 month olds who could honestly care less about eating most of the time. There are days where they eat breakfast - a smoothie made with 5 oz milk, half a yogurt, some protein powder (sometimes) and either a cereal bar, a waffle (homemade with added veggies, hahah), or dry cereal... and then will NOT eat lunch at all... but when they wake up from their nap around 3 they are STARVING.  So, then they will eat a sandwich, veggies, etc.  But then of course they are not interested in anything for dinner.  I need help deciding if my kids own their own eating patterns and habits, or if I am supposed to draw a hard line for them and determine what and when they should be eating?!?!

Basically, this boils down to a simple (yeah, simple…right!) philosophical question: Who decides what, when, and how much your kids eat?

The way you've posed the question—Who is responsible for your kids' eating patterns and habits?—sets up a false dichotomy. The answer isn't "you" or "them."  Rather, the answer is a hybrid: both you and your kids work to develop their eating habits together.

1. Know where your kids are starting (based on their age, development and personalities).  
2. Figure out where you're going.  
3. Develop a strategy to get your kids from here to there.

The strategy you settle on won't be a straight shot because if your kids could eat the way adults do, the way you want them to, you wouldn't wonder what to do. You would set up a structure and your kids would comply.

Alternatively, if you leave your kids to their own devices, they'll be...well, kids.  And kids aren't mature enough to make all of their own eating decisions.  They don't know about, nor do they care about, social conventions for eating.  They want what they want when they want it.

When it comes to teaching kids to eat right, you need to find the middle ground.  Read The Goldilocks Approach.

In principle it doesn't matter when your kids eat.

It doesn’t really matter whether your kids eat two main meals a day or three, and it doesn’t really matter whether those meals come in the morning and the night, at brunch and at dinner, or as in your case, at breakfast and in the middle of the afternoon.

But principle isn’t practice. 

It sounds like this is a pattern that isn’t particularly pleasing to you, and I’m sure the twins don’t exactly appreciate it either.  Who wants to ruin a perfectly wonderful nap by waking up feeling famished?

I know I’m going to get into trouble with a bunch of Ellyn Satter Division of Responsibility proponents—If you’re not familiar with the Division of Responsibility it’s the idea that parents decide what, when and where kids eat, and kids decide how much they eat —but you’ve got a situation here where your kids are eating too much at breakfast and it’s throwing off the whole day. I suggest you cut back a little.

Remember, infants feed on demand. Toddlers require more structure.

(We know the twins are eating too much because they stay full for so long, though kudos to you for packing their breakfast full of so many quality nutrients.)

Don't worry that your kids will starve if you cut back on the morning meal. Lunch is on the way!

When developing a structure for your kids’ eating you have three distinct goals to balance.

1. Getting a good meal into your kids.
2. Teaching your kids to eat at conventional times.
3. Disrupting your family life as little as possible.

Right now, you’re only achieving the first goal. What’s more, you’re achieving it at the expense of the other two goals. I recommend you adjust breakfast to make it a little lighter. It will help you move towards all three goals simultaneously.

There are lots of ways to lighten the breakfast load:

1. Serve smaller portions.
2. Eliminate the mix-ins (protein powder in the shakes, veggies in the waffles).
3. Serve different kinds of food (apple slices and a peanut butter for dipping).

Also, consider saving the smoothie for later in the day.  Lunch? Pre-nap snack?

There are lots of bumps on the road to civilized eating.

So don’t expect too much.  If you get your children onto a more normal schedule, you may still find that they’re hungry at odd hours (most toddlers could stand to eat dinner around 4:30) because that's the nature of the beast. But stick to the course you chart out and your kids will develop the habits that they need for a lifetime of healthy eating.

For more tips on finding the middle ground for feeding read How do you handle it when your children protest the new food on their plates.

~Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits.~