Comments PLEASE on the nutritional content of dd's current diet

[prefernot]

Hi, my dd's 2 next weekend and is fairly small and has always been a very small eater. She's been very ill this last week with a horrible viral mouth infection which has meant she's eaten virtually nothing all week, just drank milk and juice, had the odd banana or bit of icecream. The fact that this and other viral things she's had seem to take so long to shift, plus a conversation with a friend today, has left me worried about how good / bad her usual diet is in terms of what she's getting that she needs at this age. This is what she eats every day with very very little variation:

Breakfast - cup of milk (8oz?) / 1/2 slice of toast with butter
Lunch - 3 pieces of baby corn, 3 broccoli florets, half a small boiled potato, 1/3 adult sized bean burger
Afternoon snack - small cup of milk (5oz?) / half a banana
Tea - small bowl of pasta in tomato and cheese sauce
Bedtime - Cup of milk (8oz?)

I try and try and try to get her to vary her diet. Dp and I eat all sorts of things at the same time as her but she won't even try them. I've tried not giving her anything else but she'll go days with no tea so I've given in and give her what she'll have.

That sounds like a pretty good diet to me. Have you thought of a daily multivitamin if you're concerned about her susceptibility to illnesses?

One thing that does concern me though is that you say that you end up giving in to her. A lot of people do that at this age when their appetites are so small, and then the child ends up being a fussy eater when they're older. I have a 2.5 year old who some days will refuse lunch and dinner, and I just say to her well I guess you're not hungry then. I did the same thing with my now 5 year old, and she now accepts that her dinner will be the same as everyone else's and she has a great appetite and a pretty varied diet.

That really doesn't sound too bad to me! There's protein with the milk, beanburger, cheese; carbohydrate from the potato, toast, pasta; vitamin C in the tomato, corn; potassium etc., in the banana; and some fat in the milk, cheese and butter. You could try a vitamin supplement (one of the syrups) particularly as Winter is coming but I really wouldn't worry, I know many children with far worse diets than that!

Just keep trying her with a little bit of what you are having on her plate - with the stuff you know she will eat.

does she eat any kind of meat or fish, no matter how small the amount? any other fruit apart from banana?
it's very frustrating when they don't eat, I know. Don't really know what to suggest in practical terms. try and make a special meal for yourself see if she's interested in your plate (without offering her own plate, just to see if she'd like to try soemthing different). or try and not give her milk in the afternoon, perhaps she'll have a yogurt instead or in the evening. just for variation really. or less milk in the morning see if she's willing to try some fruit after her toast as an extra. or add some jam on the toast for extra callories.

i don't think the quantities are bad. and what she eats looks OK to me. my dd is not great eater (she has moments when she'd eat loads of food but mostly she's not too bothered about food)

Prefernot - I know where you are coming from as my ds1 (3.5) is a complete nightmare too and always has been - right from being a baby when he had no interest in his milk. He is a small eater (but then so am I) but he is sooo fussy and I struggle to vary his diet too. There are only about 4 different meals he'll have for tea (fish fingers, sausages, pasta - though I can sneak quite a lot of stuff into this like tuna, spinach, ham, cheese, tomatoes, onions) and apart from the pasta, they are all accompanied by Smiles (the frozen potato chip type things). For lunch he always has wholemeal bread sandwiches with either jam, marmalade, ham or cheese spread. For breakfast he always has cereal (rice krispies or cheerios). Apart from the extras like fruit and yoghurts - that's about all he will eat!

Your dd's diet, although the same all the time, does at least cover the food groups as she is eating carbohydrate in her toast and potato, she's eating fruit and veg, eating dairy in her milk and cheese. She doesn't seem to eat any meat though?? Could you sneak chicken into her pasta - cook a chicken breast and shred it in the food processor and stir it into the sauce so she doesn't notice?

Another thing I've just recently got ds1 to eat is eggy bread - a good way to get him to eat egg without realising. I give it him with baked beans and just tell him it's bread - I don't mention the word egg or he won't eat it!

DS2 is the opposite and is like a human dustbin .

I don't think I'd worry too much about the amount she is eating - she will eat enough for her and don't forget she does only have a small tummy and pasta is really quite filling. I used to stress and stress about the amount ds1 ate but now I'm so used to it and he is thriving and developing and is perfectly happy and healthy, that I don't worry too much. She will eat what she needs to and just balance out at her normal size.

Will she not eat any other types of fruit - raisins or apples or pears? If she will eat the pasta dish, is there anyway you could sneak different things into that? Even if just a tiny bit that she hardly notices then you could increase it?

Will try and think of other things but as I say, I've the same problem as you! DS1 eat about 2 slices of carrot and 3 chunks of chicken from his Sunday roast tonight and he's gone to bed on that plus a cup of milk.

feel the same prefernot, Eve just says"NAH"! if i try her with something other than 'nanas', grapes, cheese,etc unless she's hungry! tonight she had an adult portion of fish, potato, turnip and swede and polished almost al off plus a sugarfree jelly however, she wouldnt touch her luch and i 'felt sorry' for her and fed her grapes, bread sticks and even buttons!!!! as i wanted her to 'eat something' my hv has already told me in my circumstance, its best to cut out snack and let her feel hungry so she will 'want' her meal but if Eva is eating them, grapes, bananas, apples and other healthy stuff are an ideal way to fill up instead of the rubbish we sometimes succomb too(buttons!!)

Sounds great to me. My DDs have had seriously fussy phases and worried me to distraction at times so I know how stressful it can be.
One thing that has helped with DD is if I let her help make/prepare her food - has encouraged her to try different veg and fruit if she has been involved in the cooking. Also has helped to make her think of food as fun rather than a serious task. Even a trip to the market and let her help choose which apples etc. and talk about them being "hers" might help. Good Luck

To be honest, I wouldn't be worried about the lack of meat, if she's eating a bean burger. That's probably better for her anyway. Meat is the one thing my 5 year old really doesn't care for. She'll eat chicken if I force her to and she's just discovered that she likes ham sandwiches. She doesn't like fish, but she likes prawns and calamari.

Thanks for the replies and generally reassurance.

Branster, no, she doesn't eat any other fruit except now and then maybe a strawberry. We have lots of fruit around though. We were actually delighted when she took to bananas a few weeks ago . And she won't eat anything on her toast, sweet or savoury. Neither will she eat yoghurt.

Skate, thanks for the long reply. Gosh, your ds's diet looks very varied compared to dd's!! You have meal 'options'. I've tried very hard to get her to have meat or fish but she detects even the smallest amount in her pasta, the same with egg. She doesn't have anything with toast for me to hide some eggy bread underneath and she won't eat it on its own.

EvesMama (hello!) I'm afraid I missed off the list the occasional bag of milky way stars that I give dd when desperate ... .

StripeyMouse, we do lots of cooking together and she's SO interested in it. She plays at cooking for me, dp, her toys and is mad on feeding people. She also says she wants certain things but when I give her them (and things we've made together) she just says 'no, don't want it.'

Iron. I think she's lacking iron? What's a good way of getting that down in a disguised kind of manner?

Iron -- You didn't list juice in the menu below, so maybe she only has it rarely or maybe you forgot??. Anyway, if she drinks juice most days, you can probably mix some Floradix in - that's a high iron liquid vitamin supplement from health food shops. Floradix tastes sweet and the taste is easily masked by orange juice. Is Spatone (from Boots) similar? Does anyone know?

There are vitamin-fortified juices out there, too, with iron in them (LIDL sells).
She really won't have breakfast cereal? That's usually iron fortified... and I think some breads are, too.

ps: I think wholemeal bread & pasta are decent sources of iron, too.

You're doing well too if she eats Broccoli which is really high in iron and it looks like she is eating that every day.

There's iron in her milk too which she seems to have a lot of and isn't there iron in the beans in the bean burger?

Hi prefernot

I've also been told to get more iron into dd2 (9months), who is pretty picky. Despite her principled rejection of anything savoury, we've scored a success with minced lamb and apricots (dried ones, and lots of them), pureed into a tomatoey pulp, but would work as a pasta sauce, too.

Just a thought.

In theory you could puree down high iron veg (brocli, nettles, kale, ?) and mix a bit into her pasta sauce, too.

Would you like to play "My DD is smaller than yours" (only half-joking)? I reckon my DD weighed about 10.4kg (23 lbs) at the same age..9th percentile. But she eats a lot... have never been able to figure out where it goes.

Hi - I too worried myself silly that dd wasn't getting what she needed nutritionally. It became a real source of tension between us (me making a big effort to give her "good" food, and her rejecting it), which I imagine is one of the ways a child develops strange attitudes toward eating/meal time and possibly sows the seeds of an eating disorder. Anyway, I finally just bought her some children's chewable multivitamins and hoped that would supplement her food intake. She seems fine, is growing, has energy and is rarely sick. So, I hope all is OK. And mealtimes are much more pleasant for both of us now.

It is so hard to know when to keep pushing them because it's the right thing, and when to simply let go and trust that things will be alright. Is she feeling better today, btw?

Prefernot and Zebra - my ds1 is also on 9th percentile.

So what though - those charts are just a bloody waste of time. Anyone can tell by just observing a child whether they are healthy and developing well. You don't need to plot their weight on a chart! All they do is cause angst!!

Have you tried making smoothies with her prefernot? I can get lots of variety into dd by this method. We've also got a 'special' cafe we go to for 'special' drinks. She thinks it's a big treat...you've probably tried this already....

Oh, yes, she does have a cup of apple juice with her lunch, won't eat orange. And no, alas, no cereal even as a crispy finger food. Sigh ... I'm going to buy some floradix at lunchtime thanks, I remember that stuff I had it years ago. She does have wholemeal bread too, just not a lot of it.

Hi earlybird! I honestly don't know if she's better. She hasn't eaten for over a week now and I'm sure that's not helping her energy or mood. Thank goodness for milk and bananas!!!

Zebra, she's 2 next Sunday and she weighs 11kilos so a bit bigger than yours? Don't know what centile rubbish she's on, I gave up looking as it just made me more worried about what she doesn't eat. So Skate I agree with you, except she keeps getting these illnesses and taking a long time to get better and also seems kind of lacking energy a lot of the time. She'd rather sit around at home with books than race about in the park like all the other mad toddlers I see ...

TBH, Skate, I find the charts reassuring. Means I shouldn't take it as that odd that DD weighs less than 3 stone at 3yo, or that 18-24month-size trousers are still too long for her. After all, almost 10% of her peers are smaller still!

All DD wants to do is play cbeebies & watch videos. I think it's just her character.

prefer not, if she is lacking energy it may be that she is a bit anaemic. there isn't much iron in what she is eating there. Is she quite pale generally and does she have quite pale rims to her eyes? if you pull down your bottom lid a bit and look at theinside of your eye you'll see it is quite red. if hers is a bit paler, like a pale pink, it is a fairly good indicator that she is anaemic, which is very ennervating. I'd try and supplement her (and maybe get her tested at her gp, although that will require bloods, which is a bit traumatic at that age).

Skate - don't worry about her not wanting to run around. DS1 is mental and runs everywhere but ds2 (who eats for England) is a right lazy so and so and when we go to the park he always wants to be carried rather than walk!

Skate, there is no iron in cows milk, only the fortified follow on milks.
wholemeal bread and wholegrain breakfast cereals

other sources of iron:
pulses such as lentils, kidney beans and chickpeas

green vegetables such as watercress, spring greens, broccoli and okra

eggs

tofu

dried fruit such as prunes, apricots and figs

nuts such as peanuts, almonds and brazils

best absorption of iron when eaten with vitamin C rich foods, eg fortified cereal with a glass of orange juice.