Is my 15m old eating too much?

[superstarglo]

I just have no frame of reference? What’s everyone else doing?

Breakfast:
Bottle
Banana, Soreen Bar, couple of biscuits/ breadstick

PM Snack:
Little bag of snack a jacks

Lunch:
Little dish/ M&S kids meal with extra mixed veg

PM Snack:
Some kind of water based fruit
and a couple of biscuits/ breadstick/ cheese cubes

Dinner:
Homemade bolognese/cottage pie/ rice and chicken
Mini milk for pudding

Bottle and bed

He’s quite a big boy, 85cm and 2 stone. Thanks

Of course you can over feed a toddler if you keep giving too much you stretch the stomachache this is why we have so many overweight children.

The bread is going to be considerably healthier than a soreen bar. It’s about 1.6g of sugar per slice compared to 6.1g in the soreen bar for a start.

I'm not a purist when it comes to kids foods at all but the breakfast isn't great - why did you start giving him those? Genuine question, just wondering if he's refused other options?

I'd switch to something like porridge or eggs or a bagel for example

Snacks - I'd stick to fruit / veg / cheese

Lunch - wouldn't use a ready meal but sandwich is fine with some veg on the side or beans / eggs (both mine loved dippy eggs at that age) .soup too if you can face the mess!

Not Sure why my mind just went to white bread straight away. Can they have the ones with seeds and bits in? I don’t actually eat bread so didn’t even think of that.

omg some scrambled egg / toast is such a good shout. Sorry I just have never really realised these things, as I just don’t eat them.

@HappiDaze 😰 Omg that doesn’t seem like very much though

Healthier than a soreen bar, multiple biscuits, ice-cream, snacks a jacks and a ready meal in one day....

Do you eat that much junk food every day?

Dniece is just turned 2 her normal diet goes roughly

Breakfast: Boiled and soldiers with butter. Or a bowl of porridge with flaxseed. With a Cup of milk.

Lunch: tomato/vegetable/whatever soup and veggies to dip.

Dinner: beef casserole, a bit of dumpling, broccoli

Snacks: peanut butter/chopped nuts, banana, apple, cold meat, cheese, berries

Most people serve too big a portion size this stretches stomaches the same as it does for adults ....a portion is what fits in the palm of their hand....if you think an adult sandwich is 2 slices of bread a 15 month old would have a quarter of that then lots of veg...lettuce, cucumber, pepper, raw cauliflower, carrots bit of humous dip.
Now is the time to try as many new flavours as you can and repeat it even if they don't seem to like it so try new foods 10 times in 2 weeks before giving it a rest if they don't eat it. This is your chance to give your child a healthier diet than your own.

Amazingly lots of people feed shit to their kids....2 year lunch box last week ..jam sandwich, frube winders, dunkers, crisps, box of raisins and winders....
The frube on its own is 3 teaspoons of sugar....Winders almost the same and the box of raisins the most at almost 4 so without the sandwich and what's in dunkers child would have had almost 10 teaspoons of sugar a can of full fat coke is 11.

Soreen bar- 2.6g protein, sugar 6.1g
Peanut butter on wholemeal bread- 10-14g protein, sugar- 3g

There's a vast difference in nutritional value in just the protein and sugar content.
Protein is important and will help lo keep fuller for longer. Toast with peanut butter will probably mean you wouldn't have to bother with the extra biscuits etc so actually keeps things cheaper for you and way less sugar for your lo which we all know is a good thing.

And asking about the nutritional difference between a mini milk and yogurt with berries is just 🤦🏻‍♀️

It's insane!

They also think they need to give "kids food" ... Like the family will be having... baked cajun cod, rice and steamed veggies. But they'll give the 2yo a fish finger or 2 chicken nuggets instead of just the plain/seasoned cod

So so many people don't understand nutrition.

They think they're giving 'healthy' options in things like soreen bars and petit filous, because if the heavy heavy marketing that implies a soreen bar is somehow better than it is. Is sold as "fruity malt loaf" which sounds far better than "sultana cake".
Petis Filous is pushed as a calcium rich, fruit filled 'fromage frais' with "naturally sourced ingredients" with pictures of fruits on them
If they presented it as "fromage frais' sweetened with 3+g of sugar per pot and a sugary fruit puree added and mixed in". Not gonna sound as great is it?

I was just saying that people automatically give children "kids" food from birth, the food industry promotes this heavily...just looks at the so-called ",baby food" aisle, full of jars, shelf stable meals (would YOU eat a chicken and vegetable rice microwave dish that you bought from the same aisle as baked beans?) And highly processed crisps and puffs and crap all marketed as healthy good food for baby, snacks for baby etc
And then they move onto chicken nuggets, kids fish fingers/shapes, kids pasta in a tin, kids crisps, kids squash etc etc

If there weren't the likes of Heinz and Hipp selling the utter shite, then people would feed their babies actual food, whole foods and whatever the family were eating.

Yes, sensory issues exist, of course, but it does make you wonder what the child would eat if quavers had never come to be, but because it's there as an easy alternative and parents would rather they eat that than 'nothing' we don't actually know what the majority of children would do. It can't be disputed that UPF are highly addictive and of course a 'normal' 2 year old might reject a cucumber stick if they realise chocolate is an option etc.

Also, is think people put way too much pressure in themselves to get kids to eat a wide variety of food, the abundance of food these days is phenomenal.

40+ years ago, kids would have a less varied, yet nutritious diet. And familiar foods a lot of the time. So maybe, 4 types of meat, 8 types of veg, 5 types of fruit, potatoes and rice (for example) so let's pick a number they might have been exposed to 50 different foods.
But parents put pressure on themselves to get them to eat 12 types of meat, 20 different veggies, 30 different fruits, quinoa, bulgar wheat, rice, pasta, grains, pulses etc now kids are exposed to (again, picking a number) 250 foods with the "expectation" that's they aren't 'fussy' - makes it harder for everyone!

Relate so much to these last few comments💕

Hmmm. I have a toddler who falls somewhere between steamed veggies and petit filous. She’ll eat some stuff no problem, but other stuff she absolutely turns her nose up at. Which I think is normal and fine.

for many toddlers, what they eat is the only control they have. They’re told it’s time to do everything without a real sense of time - so spend the day being told what to do. What they eat gives them a sense of control and choice, which is why so many toddlers become picky eaters.

toddlers also like predictability. So seeing that a blueberry can look different colours, shapes, sizes to the point where they’re unlikely to have 2 identical in the same bowl can be hard. Whereas a fish finger always looks the same.

I think everyone knows that toddlers should eat the same as the rest of the family, without salt, but the reality is that many toddlers become picky eaters anyway. I don’t think the MN sanctimonious calls of “I just gave mine what we had and they’re great eaters” are very helpful at all and just come across as smug TBH.

Hi guys just a little update, he now has a slice of whole grain toast (Luckily the really nice expensive ones do tiny packs so not much waste/ freezer space) with unsalted butter and a banana for breakfast and bumped the soreen bar up to an occasional snack. He mostly just has his rice cakes though for snacks to be fair💕

Also gave Greek yoghurt with fruit purée a whirl again but he’s not convinced. Thanks for helping me sort my life out a bit!

This is correct but 40 years ago there weren’t any processed food available, everything was home made / cooked from raw ingredients. It’s excess amount of processed and particularly ultra processed foods which have ruined our health and should be kept to a minimum.

I agree that there's way too much sugar in his diet currently. (I just remember watching a documentary about toddlers and having to have their teeth extracted due to decay/too much sugary snacks and it's an eye opener!)

I also have a 16 m old.
Breakfast - porridge mine love (with various fruit/peanut butter/seeds) Shreddies, Weetabix or homemade no added sugar banana and blueberry pancakes.

Lunch - usually egg / bread based. Homemade cheesy sauce pasta a favourite, scrambled egg on toast, omelette, sandwich, eggy bread also a fav.

Dinner - some sort of home cooked meal whatever we are having. Greek yoghurt/fruit afterwards sometimes.

@Peony654 where did you get the idea that 40 years ago processed food wasn't available and everything was made from scratch?! 40 years ago was the 1980s not the1950s!

I'm mid-40s and had a childhood diet that contained a lot of things like orange squash, white bread (definitely not made from scratch!), margarine, children's sugary breakfast cereal, kid freezer food like fish fingers, nuggets, poor quality sausages, pizza, chips. Lots of convenience puddings like Angel Delight (sometimes with a Mars bar chopped in!) or sugary hot puddings with custard.

I think the only difference with now is that ready meals weren't really a thing. My Mum is horrified I sometimes give DD one of those M&S children's ready meals whereas she "always cooked" for us . I think she's forgotten what she cooked!

40 years ago there waa a plethora of processed foods and dreadful behavior altering food colourings and E numbers

But there certainly wasn't the variety of different foods.

Yeah, we gave our kids what we eat and the first is a rubbish eater (always has been, right from weaning) and the second is so far a good eater (and always was, right from weaning) but slowly getting slightly worse as he ages (21 months). They both got the same approach, and second gets more rubbishy snack food etc than eldest did at this age but eats better anyway.

I would say it’s seems like a lot and he’s fairly heavy no for his age/ height?

As a comparison, my 3 year old doesn’t eat that much. He was recently weighed for 3 year check and he’s 13kg ( just over 2 stone) and 97cm. He was deemed perfectly average weight and height.

Mine doesn’t have two large cooked meals a day either. Tends to have a smaller picnic type lunch ( sandwich/ fruit/ cheese), and just main meal in evening.