Is this a balanced diet?

[buckyou]

My 22 month old occasionally suffers from constipation. Her little cousin does as well, and apparently a family member has said 'it must be our fault and that they don't get a balanced diet'. It's annoyed me.. but I'm now questioning myself.

So, this was what my DD has had today, fairly typical I would say.

Breakfast: innocent kids fruit smoothie, few mouthfuls of cheerios

Snack: 1 1/2 bananas

Lunch: chicken and potato toddler ready meal (the ones from chiller section), yogurt

Snacks: mini muffin (to keep her quiet in supermarket), grapes

Dinner: home made bolognese (lots of veg) with whole meal pasta. Water melon and mango.

Bottle of milk at bed time.

She has a mixture of juice, water and squash through the day.

I didn't think that was bad for a toddler?

She often has peanut butter on toast for breakfast instead and have jacket potato for lunch quite regular.

Do you think this is balanced?

Breakfast isn’t great. Smoothies are not as good as actual fruit in terms of roughage and cheerios are not a great cereal. No wonder she needs all that banana later, she must be starving. Could you not give her weetabix or porridge with home stewed fruit?

Lots and lots of sugar.
Smoothies aren't great.
Cheerios are pure sugar.
Banana one and a half? That's a lot!
Ready meal processed?
Muffin and grapes more sugar
Fruit after tea. More sugar.
Juice and squash more sugar

Fruit is great but should be more veg. And watch fruit portion sizes.

Lots of water will help.

To be honest I struggle to get her to eat much of anything for breakfast hence why she has the smoothie because she will have that. She's never really eaten porridge or weetabix when I've given it her (although I believe she has it at nursery).

Bananas can actually bung them up unless they're super ripe. My toddler was refularly constipated last year and we saw a massive difference when we stopped giving her bananas for a while.

It think it sounds like a reasonable diet. However, bear in mind that bananas can cause constipation in some people, and 1 1/2 bananas is quite a lot for a toddler.

I would rather wait until a bit later in the day to give her "breakfast" than give such a sugary breakfast to be honest.

It was this ready meal

http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/gb/groceries/annabel-karmel-chicken---potato-pie-200g?langId=44&storeId=10151&krypto=3mGRTWWi6uBCF%2F7p0ER8MeAFPMI6v051U5JseCODYauURUYLJKLoOxnt6jTzXZBLqGJSDXQsOXqms%2FVZiD0eYD0jLndGhqFWQkvjLDzAizWIeQINLpRi3MArk20JuHK8KYNzaSgjdYUyCjzy%2F3vfshUF%2BHeKhrxQr2RXsA5r7v0%3D&ddkey=http%3Agb%2Fgroceries%2Fannabel-karmel-chicken---potato-pie-200g

From a constipation point of view though - the sugar (mostly from fruit) is not going to cause constipation?

Some kids just get more constipated, my oldest has bananas and lots of milk every day and has no problems, youngest not keen on milk and doesn't like bananas so has pears every day and lots of water yet still gets constipated most days.

Also, have you tried the low-sugar oat cheerios? Not as healthy as proper porridge but certainly better than the sugary multigrain version.

Would she eat say a slice of whole meal toast with a no added sugar/salt nut butter for breakfast?

I'm wondering if it would be worth reversing things a bit. Maybe a lighter tea would mean she was more receptive for breakfast and them give the main meal at lunch. Could get out the habit of needing to snack all day.

So scrambled egg or boiled and and soldiers for breakfast.

Spaghetti Bolognese or a chicken curry and rice with lots of veg for lunch followed by fruit and yogurt and then maybe a home made soup (lots of veg opportunity here) for tea.

It's not amazing. Could be worse though.

Breakfast - Cherios are high in sugar and processed. Smoothy is a sugar fix due to lack of fibre.

Replace with Greek yogurt and berries or porridge and banana or egg and grilled tomatoes with wholewheat soldiers

Snack. Mix it up. Various fruit and veg. So apricots, cucumber.

Lunch - what about giving some vegetable soup with cheese and rye

Tea - nice!

Drinks - water milk.

Maybe give dried prunes or dried apricots or oranges if particularly constipated.

She has toast and peanut butter more often than cheerios. I normally give her the option. If she has toast she will only have a 1/4 slice probably 1/2 max. I don't think she has ever had a full slice of bread.

She doesn't eat anything in large quantities really but does get a bit obsessed with different fruits every now and then (hence all the banana today!).

She hasn't today but is quite bad for wanting milk quite often.

We like to eat as a family hence why she has her main meal at night.

Sounds like I should ditch the cheerios and make some veggie soup. Never made soup before!

Soup is easy :) and freezes well too.

Have a google.

I usually make a tomato and lentil one.

Or butternut squash- onion garlic squash sweet potato carrot and lentils.

Minted pea soup is also lovely.

Curried parsnip and ginger

Hell even beetroot

I usually make ones you blend as you can hide a shit load of stuff in them

Same problem here although better lately. She also eats loads of fruit as snacks and pudding - I worry about the sugar but it's better than biscuits I suppose. Today we've had boiled egg and toast soldiers for breakfast, tangerine for morning snack, homemade veg curry with granary bread and half a scone for lunch, apple for afternoon snack, homemade pizza with ham for dinner with two yoghurts for pudding.

Just looking at that there's a lot of bread!

Innocent smoothie is not low in fibre.

DD was constipated due to drinking too little fluid, full stop.

The kid's smoothies have only got 1 gram of fibre, so that is pretty low. A weetabix is about treble that.

Ah, fair enough, I didn't see OP said a kids version of Innocent smoothie.
Toddlers are supposed to have ~19 g fibre a day, though.
So 1 gram isn't especially low if it's 1/14 items the child had that day.

I'm reading that one banana might be 4g fibre, so the 1.5 bananas the child had was 6g. If we added all that diet diary up, I bet it's close to the recommended 19 g of fibre.

Soups easy! And you can batch make and freeze.

It's fine maybe abit high in sugar but Hardly a poor diet for today's culture.

First thing to try would be completely removing bananas. Unless they are super super ripe a lot of kids do have problems with them. At that age half a medium banana would be a better portion size too. You could also consider a sachet of Optibac kids probiotics each day mixed in a small amount of yoghurt. Try that for 30 days & see what happens.

2 easy changes to try.

You definitely need to find a solution though as this can spiral into a serious problem from what I've heard. Good luck!