Fact Sheets
Healthy eating for playful toddlers & preschoolers
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July 13, 2001
Healthy Eating For Playful Toddlers & Preschoolers
Toddlers and preschoolers bring curiosity, enthusiasm and determination to each day. Their playful approach to life is how they learn. For parents, these critical years of growth and development may bring moments of concern about what their child eats. Your ideas about what your child should eat often clash with what the child will eat. Here are some guidelines.
Understanding Your Toddler & Preschooler
Dramatic changes take place between the years one and five. As children grow in size, they also develop their personality. They become more capable, more curious and more independent. At some time they all test the limits you set. So when a toddler says "no" to what used to be her favorite food, she is testing her new sense of control as an individual. When a preschooler asks "why" the carrots are orange instead of just eating them, he is showing his keen drive to learn. This is part of normal child development.
How Young Children Approach Eating
Although every child is different, you may have noticed some of the following traits in your child.
Food is something to explore, to enjoy, to share with others.
When hungry, children focus their attention on eating. When satisfied, their attention moves elsewhere.
Appetites soar during growth spurts and periods of intense activity. They also dip when growth slows or when children are tired or excited.
Children enjoy eating with others and often copy their food preferences.
How do I know if my child is healthy?
Healthy children are active children. They seem to have boundless energy and love playing with their friends and family.
Healthy children grow according to their own patterns of growth with occasional spurts and plateaus along the way. Measuring height and weight regularly over time will reveal your child's growth pattern. This means more than single height and weight measurements at a particular age. A shift away from your child's typical growth pattern may be a sign of inadequate nutrition. Also remember that healthy young bodies are healthy in all shapes and sizes. Children need to learn to like their bodies and feel good about themselves-just as adults do.
Children who eat well, enjoy being physically active and feel good about themselves have a healthy approach to life.
What is a healthy eating pattern for children?
Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating (Health Canada, 1992) promotes a pattern of eating which meets the nutritional needs of Canadians four years and over. For younger children, the number of servings and serving sizes are too large. Smaller portions of food are more suitable. Because young children eat small amounts of food at any one time, they need to eat frequently throughout the day to meet their nutrient and energy needs. This need is most commonly met by three meals with a nutritious snack between meals.
Certain foods can be choking risks for young children. Popcorn, peanuts, chunky peanut butter, seeds, raisins, hard candies and large pieces of hard, raw fruits and vegetables can be too hard for your child to swallow. To help your child enjoy a variety of foods without the risk, cut grapes and other fruits, vegetables, hot dogs and meat into small length-wise pieces before feeding. Partially cook hard vegetables to make them softer and easier for your child to swallow and enjoy.
Choosing a variety of foods from the four food groups-grain products, vegetables and fruit, milk products, and meat and alternatives-is the cornerstone of healthy eating. The Food Guide emphasizes choosing complex-carbohydrate foods such as whole grain and enriched breads and cereals, vegetables and fruits. These tend to be popular foods with young children.
Young children should not be limited in their choice of nutritious foods because of fat content. Children, especially those with smaller appetites, need foods that provide energy and nutrients to meet their needs for growth and activity. This is especially true for toddlers. Choosing whole milk rather than lower fat milk for your toddler is recommended as a good source of energy and nutrition until he/she is at least two years of age. When toddlers grow into preschoolers, they can learn to enjoy the same lower fat foods, lower fat milk products, leaner meats, poultry and fish as chosen by the rest of the family. This helps them form the basis of lifelong healthy eating patterns.
Foods other than those in the four food groups can also add enjoyment to eating. Other foods such as cookies, cakes, and candy are fun to eat sometimes, but they should not replace foods that contain the nutrients and energy children need.
How can I best guide my child toward healthy eating?
You and your child, together, need to make decisions about healthy eating. Your child knows best how much to eat - they'll eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. Your job as a parent is to give them a choice of a variety of good foods. By sharing in the enjoyment of eating a variety of foods, in a relaxed and trusting way, both of you are well on your way to healthy eating.
The following registered dietitians contributed to the preparation of this factsheet:
Author: Doris Gillis
Editor: Lesley Scharf
Reviewers: Marian Campbell, Eunice Misskey, Halina Cyr, Jan McCabe
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