What is Healthy Diet for a child?

Do children need the same foods as adults? The answer is mainly yes, but because they are still growing and developing, they need different amounts of certain nutrients. Their smaller size also means that children tend to need smaller servings of the same foods that adults eat.

By the time toddlers are one year old, they should be starting to eat variations on family meals. Remembering that a serving is about the size of your child's palm or handful, each day they should eat:

Not all of these need to be squeezed into breakfast, lunch and dinner. Children have little stomachs and big energy needs, so they need to have two to three between-meal snacks a day. If you try to make these snacks healthy (e.g. carrot sticks, fruit, yoghurt, a glass of milk, wholegrain sandwiches), this will help your child to get a lot of their daily food group servings - often without them even realising it.

Parents know how good these foods are, but convincing your children to eat them is sometimes not so easy! However, it is important to keep encouraging children to eat a healthy and varied diet. Food habits which are formed during childhood often carry on throughout life.

Tips to help encourage even the fussiest child to eat a varied diet:

• Try to eat family meals together as often as possible. Children will learn from your example if you eat well, and this way, children also learn about the social aspects of food.
• Try, try and try again. Children can take ten or more tries of a new food before they decide whether or not they like it. Introduce new foods one at a time with other familiar foods and keep repeating this process.
• Even if children don't like cooked vegetables at mealtime, they might like raw vegetables as a snack while you are making dinner.
• Snacks are important, but make sure that your child is not filling up on snacks just before a meal. Try to allow an at least an hour between snacks and meals. This includes milk drinks.
• As much as possible, get children involved in preparing meals, growing vegetables and shopping for food - this encourages an interest in food, and an acceptance of food variety.

Sweet tooth?

We are all born with a preference for sweet tasting foods and children tend to prefer sweet tastes over savoury tastes. This is a trait which they eventually grow out of because adults often prefer the opposite. This is probably the reason why children tend to choose fruit over vegetables or sweeter vegetables over more bitter vegetables. Small amounts of sugar or honey can be a good way of encouraging children to eat healthy foods such as wholegrain cereals. Foods that contain sugar, but few other nutrients, such as sweets, cakes and biscuits, are best as treats.

What about fat?

Children need fat and the vitamins it contains (vitamins A, D, E and K) for healthy growth and development. Foods that are high in fat but low in other essential nutrients (such as crisps and pastries) should be treats, rather than eaten every day.