- Use the following guidelines to see if your child is eating as frequently as he/she should be:
- Prenatal (pregnant or trying to conceive): VITAMINS. Your doctor can prescribe one for you,
or there are many over-the-counter vitamins available. Get lots of fruits, veggies, and whole-grain foods.
- Infants: 6-8 times per day
- Toddlers: 5-6 times per day
- Pre-schoolers: 4-6 times per day
- Make food an enjoyable experience:
- Make fruits and veggies into fun shapes.
- Offer ants-on-a-log with peanut butter in celery with raisins on top.
- Put berries in the squares of a waffle.
- Use low-calorie dressing as a dip for broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and other hard-to-entice veggies.
- Call broccoli “trees”, cauliflower “white trees”, squash “squishy squash”, and other fun nicknames.
- Offer lots of variety, but if your child won’t eat a particular food, don’t force them to.
- Watch the child’s fat intake. Fat needs to be the healthier fats, such as olive oil, avocado or fish. Limit their fried food intake.
- Limit the sweet drinks...especially during dinnertime. Often children will fill up on drinks and not eat enough foods.
- Reduce the amounts of sweets you give your children. Try to give them these once or none each day: Jell-O, cookies, candy, cake and other pastries,
ice-creams or other frozen novelties, chips or non-whole-grain crackers, or fruit snacks, rollups, etc.
- Have your child help prepare the food. They’re more likely to eat it if they’ve helped wash the fruits or vegetables, or mixed up the meatloaf!
- If your child refuses to eat often, consult your physician. Young children can develop eating aversions or eating disorders.
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