Healthy food/snacks for young kids

[Sinople]

Hi there,

My vegetarian children are not keen to try everything, only eat certain foods, usually like foods to be separate (ie most mixtures are out).... Im not bothered what they eat as long as we are ticking all the boxes for the nutrients they need and getting enough calories in. Ive got a good idea about their nutritional needs, but wondered if anyone had any suggestions re simple snacks and foods which could be added to my list of foods/snacks. New on my list of regular snacks are -

Sesame snaps (100g sesame gives an adult 22% of their daily fibre, 36% of their daily protein, 96% of their calcium and 107% of their Iron).

Dried Apricots (per 100g - 29% daily fibre, 7% of your protein, 15% of your iron).

I plan to make (eventually) some healthy homemade museli bars, when I get round to it.

I also plan to see if my kids are keen on sundried tomatoes - 9mg/100g Iron.

(Iron requirements for 1-3yr olds 7mg, 4-8yr olds 10mg)

Im also planing to get some organic cocoa powder (contains zero sugar, 36mg iron per 100g!!!)

Also looking at investigating things with seaweed in them, other than salty crackers.

Any ideas re healthy snacks high in protein, iron, calcium, or anything else nutritious would be very gratefully received :)

I make Nigella's lunch treats for cereal bars.

Cherry tomatoes
Carrots and hummus
Hard boiled eggs
Cheese scones
Sushi

Sorry, just snorted tea all over my favourite scarf.

"I'm not bothered what they eat" followed by a breakdown of the nutritional value of your snacks.

Toast with stuff on (healthy, nutritionally balanced, vegetarian stuff, obviously - avocado, peanut butter, banana, whatever) is a good snack for eating at home. Not so great for taking out with you. But you could smear the stuff on crackers?

Watching with interest as dd is anaemic so always on the look out for iron-rich snacks. I give her fortified cereal as 1 of her daily snacks - something like Cheerios as they're not particularly high in salt or sugar.

All extremely high in fibre - a 10year old eating 50g of apricots would get their entirely of their fibre RDI (and 75g above the "safe value" range of other countries) leaving nothing for other meals etc.

Children, especially young ones need considerably less fibre than adults.

It's true that some of these things are high in fibre... Yep, not thinking of huge amounts of these things just as additions. My three yr old will happily eat one dried apricot, my 16 month old will happily eat three, neither of them are keen on more than that (both of them are baby led weaning graduates and don't tend to scoff too much of anything, so no worries there :) )
My 3 yr old would happily live off fruit alone but never has diarrhoea, my 16 mnth old the other hand eats a wider range of foods but has a more sensitive bowel to igh fibre food

Other dried fruits (prunes, apples, raisins, figs)
Ready for nuts? Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts, cashews - all good.
Porridge
yogurts (can be natural yogurt with things like nut butters or fresh fruit mixed in)
Cheese on water biscuits or wholemeal unsalted crackers
You could make cheese scone mix and make small cheesy bites, to make it less daunting (or messy) to eat.
vegetarian sushi - really good (be careful not to have too much iodine)
salad pots with chick peas or whole grain couscous

If sesame is high in iron, hummus won't be too far behind.

You can put the cocoa powder in your muesli bars too, or use melted plain chocolate to help bind them together.

Also, you could buy some iron tonic and mix a teaspoon of it into fruit sauces, chocolate sauces, muesli bars, spreads - anything really.

Try pesto and roasted red pepper sushi. Pesto=pine nuts are pretty good for zinc. You can get dried seaweed sheets from most Chinese supermarket, but make sure you pick a plain ones. some of them are flavoured with salt and a lot of artificial flavours.
You can get dried seaweed from health food shops, that you soak in water, that makes a good salad.
I personally like ryvita with pumpkin seeds on it. Lots of selenium and fibres.