Help - my 20 month old only eats bread

[islasmum]

Hi there, does anyone have any advice or experience they could share with me. Since about easter my daughter has cut out virtually all foods except bread, yoghurt and breakfast cereals. I keep hoping this is phase and offering alternatives but she just won't even handle other foods. I try to vary it, with things like vegemite on toast, houmous and french toast with banana blended into the egg, but these are the only things she eats for meals after breakfast. I am getting worried that she is lacking most major food groups, so she still drinks formula & I give her a vitamin syrup. How have other people got through this? We eat meals together as often as possible, and she looks curious at what we're eating, but none of it goes in her mouth.

If she'll eat things on toast, have you tried roasting some veggies (peppers, courgettes and similar) then blending or chopping finely and mixing with some philadelphia to make a spread?

I presume you only give the formula after her mealtimes, so it's not that she's now too full from that to want to eat?

I've found it frustrating enough that my dd hasn't eaten for a few days (teething), so you have my sympathy if she's been like this for months.

Hiya. My 23 month old only eats cherry tomatoes, cucumber and chips. He has functioned on this for months and screams if I try and force the issue by daring to offer him anything different. Sorry I can't help but I can definitely sympathise as it is extremeyl worrying. I went to my GP a while ago and was made to feel like a time waster as he looks healthy!

OK, first off, I've heard of many many kids living (apparently healthily) on very restricted diets. Remember that breakfast cereals are fortified with all sorts, so she's probably getting quite a bit of goodness from that (I assume she's having it with milk).

Secondly (and I'm cringing at my own beardy-weirdyness here) but do you think she might be getting so much stuff from the formula that her body isn't asking her to eat a varied diet? The reason I say this is that we are non-meat eaters, and DD (now 2.5) was generally a cruddy eater, but she did eat eggs and iron-rich vegetables. It was as if her body craved the foods that were richest in the nutrients she needed.

When we started giving her Spatone (an iron supplement) she suddenly started rejecting those iron-rich things.

Obviously this is anecdotal, and could be complete coincidence, but you could try eliminating the formula for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Hi, thanks for the advice. Maybe she gets too much formula? Anyway, will just keep doing what we're doing and see if anything changes. Fingers crossed!