Snacks for 16m old

[MeadowHay]

Unfortunately she's a fussy eater (literally always has been since the very beginning of us doing BLW. It is just getting even worse now she's entered toddlerhood). We seem to be giving her the same few things on loop for her afternoon snack and some of them are more healthy than others!

What do you give yours for a snack? We are vegetarian.

Cubes of cheese
Strips of pitta bread
Mini rice cakes
Mini breadsticks
Satsuma, apple or pear
Avocado slices
Hard boiled egg
Cucumber
Halved cherry tomatoes
Blueberries
Peeled and sliced kiwi
A finger of malt loaf
Butter beans
Oat cake
Sliced red pepper
Half a slice of toast with peanut butter or cream cheese
Halved grapes
A little pot of Cheerios
Sweetcorn fritters www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/toddler-recipe-sweetcorn-spinach-fritters

How do you know what a good portion size is too? I give an afternoon snack every day somewhere between 3 and 4pm. Yesterday she had a little fruit flavoured yoghurt, can't remember brand or exact carton size but just a tiny one the size of like the original petit filous + a satsuma + 2 Cow and Gate baby biscuits. She started taking her bib off after that last biscuit so I took it as a cue that she didn't want anymore. But I worry she eats loads of a sweet snack for example but not of a savoury one and I don't want to be filling her with loads of sugary snacks in the afternoon and then she eats little dinner, but also don't want her to be hungry all afternoon waiting for her dinner.

Also out of your list she won't touch:
Avocado
Yolk of a boiled egg (she used to but now refuses)
Pear (used to like it and now refuses)
Bell peppers of any colour
Blueberries

I continue to offer of course but equally always need something in reserve if she won't eat it.

Oh yeah she won't eat kiwi either. And tomatoes used to be her favourite food and the last few meals she won't touch them either and hardly touches cucumber anymore. I'm really upset about it but we have always offered all of this right from the beginning of BLW.

That does sound like quite a big snack for a young toddler - I would just give one of those, either the yoghurt, the satsuma or the biscuits. If she's regularly having large snacks between meals, it could be putting her off eating at mealtimes.

It's very common for babies/toddlers to refuse food at this stage. Can you drop the afternoon snack and make her mealtime earlier?

TBH at that age mine would get a custard cream biscuit or a pack of pombears or wotsits but perhaps that's not healthy enough.

I tend to give something like:

• fruit (apple, satsuma, some berries)
• rice cakes
• a little soreen lunch box bar

-veggie straws (his absolute favourite)

• various kiddilicious or organix biscuits etc

Ds snacks are fairly carb heavy actually but we tend to be on the go.

I also make cauliflour and broccoli "burgers" (if you google theres a YouTube video) or cous cous bits that are good for little ones and you're packing in some extra veg.

Babies are generally much better than toddlers at learning to like new foods. So the earlier you can get your dd used to a wide range of flavours, the easier it will be. Don’t be put off if she rejects a new food over and over. Babies may reject a new food several times or more before they decide to like it. Keep offering it now and again, at different mealtimes.
There will be days when she eats more, some days when she eats less, and some days when she rejects everything. This is perfectly normal.
I’d say a snack portion for a 16mo is:
1 babybel
2 oatcakes
Half a slice of toast
10-12 grapes
6-8 mini rice cakes
Ditto mini bread sticks
Half a pitta bread
Half a banana
A small slice of malt loaf
One frittata muffin realfood.tesco.com/recipes/oven-baked-pea-ham-and-pasta-frittatas.html
Handful of Cheerios

I know, I feel so disheartened about her eating. But we did do BLW and offer her a variety of things all the time. For meals she gets the same as us but she just point blank won't eat a lot of it. She has literally always been this way right since rh start of weaning but it is getting worse and worse the older she gets. For example she has never ever eaten any green vegetables, or bell peppers. Like she put them in her mouth a couple of times in the first few months of weaning and decided she didn't like them and has never tried them again since, despite regularly being offered them e.g. lettuce, broccoli, bell peppers...so it's not as if she ate everything to start with and is suddenly fussy as a toddler either. It's just getting worse.

I did think her portion sizes can be too big but I thought they are meant to self regulate and if she can't tell me she is hungry, how can I make sure she's not hungry?

Difficult to make meal time earlier because we are often out and about late afternoon or she often sleeps late afternoon. In any event not possible at all the 4 days a week that I work as it's not possible to get her collected any earlier and nursery do their light tea at around 3.30. The remaining week day I could feed her earlier but I wouldn't want to eat earlier and her dad wouldn't be home on time and it's important for us to eat as a family wherever possible.

Maybe I should reduce size of afternoon snack though to encourage eating a bigger tea. I could ask nursery for guidance on portion size. There are times when she will eat a huge snack like that and then still a huge tea! But not always like.

She could probably do with weighing tbh might try and do it soon.

Def not judging anyone's snacks as not healthy enough so nobody worry about that! We do those types of things too especially when out, Kiddylicious/Ella/Organix snacks, baby biscuits etc, we do give her stuff like that but they're expensive and not the healthiest so tend to reserve them as on-the-go snacks where poss. Also if she was eating loads of vegetables at meals etc I would be far less bothered about her snacks! But given her poor meal time eating I'm more concerned about them.

Today she has eaten :
Lemon drizzle Nakd bar for breakfast - first time she's had one and she liked it so that's good. It was an on-the-go pram meal on the way to swimming.
Lunch we went to Macondalds it's only the second time she's been. She ate most of the veggie nugget thing and about half of the wrap, picked all the lettuce out of it although she did actually put some in her mouth at one point and quickly took it out with a look of disgust. Two chips. A few grapes. Refused to even try apple, she used to eat apple and has now started to refuse it. Tried carrot sticks but I think she couldn't eat them in terms of biting and chewing the pieces off.
Afternoon snack I just gave her an apricot munch bunch yoghurt (47g tubs) and one mini Soreen thing after reading on here.
Dinner we are going to DM's and she is making home made chips and home made lentil soup. I hope she will eat both but who knows...

Hi, don't know if this helps but DM used to leave "snack trays" for me. Trays I could reach with little tidbits (did I spell that right?) that she knew I ate along with new things I could try. Apparently the Gp/paediatrician said that kids that age eat what they need and ignore what they don't. She also had success letting me have a nibble of what she was eating. still not sure about the jam and cheese sandwich though

My wee boy loves mars bar buns. So easy to make, here my video m.youtube.com/channel/UCMkCb4rKY18i9oYt6Jjn5hw