to let my toddler eat as much fruit as he wants?

[ikeaismylocal]

When I was a child we always had a fruit bowel and we were allowed to help ourselves to fruit, there wasn't much money to spare so it was seasonal, cheap fruit.

Ds is 16 months old, he's started to help himself from the fruit bowel ( asking us for help if the fruit needs peeling) he eats a vast amount of fruit. Yesterday he ate strawberries with his breakfast, an apple and 3 apricots for his snack, a nectarine after lunch, a banana a a couple of handfuls of grapes whilst shopping some strawberries after dinner.

He has recently cut down on breastfeeds drastically and he seems much hungrier, he eats well at meal times.

Aibu to give him unlimited access to fruit? I'm sure I never ate so much fruit even though I was allowed as much as I wanted.

ikea - the veg sticks are a good idea. I mix them up with the fruit too - particularly cucumber and find DS takes them quite happily, rather than sometimes looking about fir strawberries!

Pass on the fruit thing but have you tried him on baked sweet potatoes for carbs? They go beautifully soft and sweet which might appeal to him.

My dentist isn't a fan of fruit grazing throughout the day. We now treat fruit like any other snack. It's given in portions. My older 2 are at school, so they have fruit for break & then another portion, maybe 2 later in the day, but not for example a punnet of strawberries etc that they can pick at all day.

Ikea DD is exactly the same - loves fruit and veg but less keen on carbs. DH now insist that we only bring out the veg halfway through the meal so that she eats some meat and carbs first - as soon as there are vegetables on the table that is all she eats!

In answer to your question though, as others have said it might make sense to cut down on fruit snacks a little bit from a teeth perspective. We tend to do some fruit for dessert, plus maybe a banana as a snack once a day.

Are you in Sweden btw? DD had a bedtime bottle of porridge too (DH is Swedish)!

A friend of mine always allowed access to fruit for her DS as he was always wanting to snack and she thought it was the healthiest thing to do.

He is 11 now and overweight. He honestly never eats sweets or chocolate or overeats anything other than fruit. My friend can't understand it as she believes fruit is free of calories or anything bad.

My DD 18mo is also a big fan of fruit - she'll eat pretty much any fruit. She's good at eating veg in things, or with her hot meal during the day but intensely rejects vegetable snacks like carrot, cucumber or pepper sticks. She's never liked these things and I can't get her interested! I struggle with snacks as she's a hungry baby, so I allow fruit for one snack, and then the other is sweet potato or carrot vegetable crisps and/or ricecakes. Other fruit is with lunch and dinner but none at breakfast as DP is a dentist and we do worry about her teeth. There is, however, much worse things to have a weakness for so really good toothbrushing and no sugary drinks will help a lot.

Marc. do you give baby cor n and mane tout raw?

My DS has probably eaten twice that amount of fruit from a similar age. No issues with his teeth and he brushed twice a day and he is very slim at the age of nearly 9.

He also eats a wide variety of other food including protein and veg.

I agree with other posters that it's good to have variety in a diet, but that amount of fruit doesn't seem excessive.

Btw 2 banana's do not have the same amount of sugar as a can of coke. - they are a carbohydrate that then turns to sugar, but not the same kind of sugar that is in coke. There is no research that supports the old myth that sugar makes kids hyperactive. It can damage teeth and make you fat, but not hyperactive - that is generally down to the chemicals that are used to replace sugar.

Veg, breadsticks, rice cakes etc. are also all (with a few exceptions) just carbs, they may not be as sweet carbs, but they are still just carbs. So if he eats fruit he doesn't need more.

Get some fatty and protein snacks available that he can also access freely, cooked meat/yoghurt/cheese etc. Letting him regulate his eating is a good thing, only giving him one type of food, not so good, he'll end up over-consuming calories just to get the nutrients his body can recognise it needs.

I do love a good fruit bowel.

Snacks I have given my toddler that aren't fruit in case it helps with some ideas:

Cherry toms
Cucumber
Chunk of cheese
Peas (just put in a mug with boiling water and microwave for 1 min. Either give straight away or have cold in a tub later)
Sweetcorn
Chickpeas/other beans (I batch cook for the freezer and she will eat a little bowl full of the freshly cooked beans)
Pine nuts
Flaked almonds
Pecans
Sesame seeds
Smoked trout
Cheese oatcakes
Nakd bars (raw fruit & nut)
Chocolate oatcake (Nairns do nice ones and they are only 2.2g sugar per biscuit which isn't too bad)
Bit of homemade cake
Square of 85% chocolate

In the winter we used to steam some veg and toss it in butter and eat it hot as a snack - too cold to fancy fruit! She loved broccoli & peas and occasionally would try carrot which was a result for us!

Snacks I have given my toddler that aren't fruit
Cherry toms
Cucumber

Both fruit. Sorry that was smug

Arf
You know what I mean. They are salad and not so sweet

Also, plain Greek yogurt has always been a hit.

So glad you arf'd! Mumsnet has been a bit lately and I worried it would be taken the wrong way immediately after hitting post

Yes I know what you meeeeaaaaaan.

Cucumbers are fruit???

I think technically anything with seeds are fruit, so peppers too?! I think they are less sweet fruit in any case, not that my DD will eat any of them....

Yeah they are fruit, and yeah so are capsicum. Fruit are the parts of a plant wot are its babies and will make new ones. Vegetables are just edible parts of plant and aren't involved in the repo cycle.

Our dentist told us to keep fruit to mealtimes as Ds1's regular snacking on fruit was damaging his teeth, the sugar and acids are bad for the tooth enamel. He loves a whole variety of fruit and lots of it, it seems strange to restrict it but it really isn't good to snack on regularly.

Bananas are herbs.

Id probably give lots and lots of veg instead. Then a small amount of sugary fruit.

We also do oat cakes, homemade popcorn, veg, nuts, seeds,

Humus, a piece of dark chocolate, cheese, Greek yogurt