What did your 2-5 year old eat today?

[Alloveragain3]

So, I'll be the first to admit we eat too much UPF in this house and I'm trying to make a change.

Today was day one and I'd love to hear what others are feeding their kids of a similar age, especially if trying to feed whole foods.
I know there's still quite a bit of processed food on the menu today.

DS is 3.5 and has several food allergies (including dairy and egg) so we're a little limited and can't give e.g. milk, cheese or yoghurt. This makes avoiding some UPFs impossible, but we're trying.

Today he's had:

Cheerios with oat milk, raspberries and blackberries

Half a bagel with plant based butter and walnut butter

Slice of malt loaf
Sliced apple (refused this)

Small pack flying saucer sweets

Pasta with home made tomato/spinach sauce and mussels

Pear flavoured Alpro soya yoghurt

Handful almonds

I'm thinking of trying overnight oats for breakfast tomorrow. We need to move away from cereal, but I don't know if DS will agree...

Bump...

Yesterday my almost 4 year old had

Bowl of Cheerios with whole milk

Fruit and milk

Bowl of egg noodles with grated cheese

Jam and peanut butter sandwich (white bread)

Banana

Waffles, poached egg and peas

I make no-refined sugar breakfast muffins that freeze really well, defrost in a minute or so in the microwave, my children have those for breakfast quite often, though today they did have cinnamon raisin bagel with banana and dried apricot and a fromage frais.

Breakfast muffins: They are best cooked in silicone cases as they stick terribly to paper ones as they don't have much fat.

2 ripe bananas mashed
2 eggs
2 cups fine wholemeal flour
tsp baking powder
vanilla extract if you want
milk/fruit juice to get thick consistency (varies due to size of bananas)

Mash banana, add eggs, then flour and baking powder!
Put in silicone cups and bake at gas 5 until browned, about 10-15 minutes.

Now my children are older I add all sorts of things, like a can of fruit cocktail in juice, nuts or seeds, mandarins, a dot of nut butter in the middle, ground almonds/coconut.

Dinner today is roast vegetables and veggie sausage.
Yesterday dinner was rice/lentil mix with chickpea curry.

All this discussion on UPF is depressing, even when you think you are doing pretty well, it sneaks in with ingredients that you don't even expect to contain extra ingredients.

4 year old yesterday had:

toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese and some strawberries for breakfast

fruit snack and milk at school

veg pasta bake school dinner and some kind of dessert (couldn’t remember)

chocolate chip brioche roll and a banana pre and post swimming lesson snack

chicken and chorizo jambalaya (chicken, chorizo, rice, tinned tomatoes, pepper, onion, courgette, celery, peas) and a mini cucumber for dessert, which I thought was an odd choice at the time!

my nearly 3 yo

B. brioche roll, strawberries, milk
S. raspberries and dry cereal, babybel
L. half a cheese and ham panini, packet of mini cookies
S. Yogurt pouch
D. Sausages, salad, beetroot, one bite of a hot dog bun

He normally eats loads more and not "healthy" tbh but we were out all day yesterday and he was too busy to be bothered with loads of food he askes for snacks every 45 seconds at home.

Typical day for my almost 4 year old below. I am very strict on no cereal (except weetabix) and I make our bread. No 'sweeties' at all either except at other kids parties. But she is offered chocolate, homemade cakes and ice cream regularly so I don't feel like I am depriving/making her liable to go mad around certain foods in future. She has no interest in drinking anything but water of her own accord, thank goodness.

Porridge (whole milk) and a banana
Apple and babybel (or flaked almonds) but may do without a snack until lunch
Bread with smashed avocado, scrambled eggs and cucumber
Mini homemade cupcake or cookie (I make a batch of one thing per week).
Homemade (no jar sauce!!) spag bol
Mini ice cream

Other dinners:
Tuna or salmon steak with sweet potato and veg
Roast chicken and homemade yorkshire puddings plus veg
Green pasta (peas and spinach sauce)
Jacket potatoes etc

I would love it if my DS ate like the other children on this thread!

He's going through such a difficult phase and if it's not beige, he won't even touch it at home (nursery, as ever, is a different story).

It was Cheerios here too for breakfast and he studiously ignored the strawberries.
Lunch was a selection of salad/sandwich bits and he ate some bread and cheese.
Dinner will be homemade fish goujons with a jacket potato probably and some veggies. I doubt he will eat any of it.
The strawberries from breakfast have been joined by a banana in his snack bowl and I'm faithfully trailing round after him with it. I have no doubt he'll end up having a biscuit at some point instead.

Some nice suggestions so far.

I particularly like the home made muffins. I used to be quite good at making spinach and vegan cheese muffins but haven't done it in a while... baking today I think!

My almost four-year old had a slice of home-made white toast and butter for breakfast.

Don't know what she had for lunch at school 🤦🏻 probably not a lot of nothing great.

After-school snack was a cut-up apple, she might have had a banana too, can't remember.

For dinner she refused a burger, had a cereal-bowl of chopped up cucumber, tomatoes and avocado, and another slice of home-made toast and butter.

She's gone off protein over the last year, and prefers just rice and (green) peas and butter without the chicken/mince/whatever we're having... but at least she happily eats some fruit and veg, so I'm not stressing about it.

Oh, she also had some chips for dinner! And if I'd had any biscuits in the house (as I usually would) she'd have had 2 of them with some milk after school too.

Thankfully DS is a little carnivore so meat is generally accepted. Veggies... not so much.

Today was good compared to usual, he had:

Cheerios and oat milk again (DH does breakfast)
Banana and peanut butter smoothie

An innocent smoothie
Rice cake (refused this)

Small home made spinach and vegan cheese muffin

Raspberries, blackberries and apple sliced in a bowl

Roast chicken with potato, green beans, carrot and gravy. The ingredients for Sainsbury's Basic gravy are a bit grim so I might try and make my own next time.

Slice of Soreen malt loaf
Chocolate oat milk

4 year old

yesterday
Toast with marmite. Strawberries. Banana. orange juice
nursery snack is usually fruit, sometimes with breadsticks
lunch at nursery- roast dinner. Refused rice pudding as usual
back home - watermelon
dinner - salmon, rice, green beans and tomatoes

today
Egg in an English muffin, an apple. Orange juice
A banana
missed lunch due to an epic nap and didn’t want a snack when he woke up
ice cream
Chicken, slaw (homemade), new potatoes, tomato and cucumber
pre bed banana.

He still breastfeeds at night but I’m not sure it counts anymore.

That sounds really good @GenAndWine

We had a pretty "bad" day yesterday because they served squash and biscuits at forest school and then a little girl gave out chocolates because it was her birthday (DS got some dairy free chocolate buttons I had on standby in my bag).

Our routine is a treat after montessori on Fridays so he also had a small pack of jellys. Eep.

Dinner was roast chicken, rice and black olives, so at least that was OK!