Underweight toddler. Need high calorie foods please!

[sneezecakesmum]

Will also post on child health.

DGS has Cp which is not the issue. He has always struggled with his weight, just not a foodie unfortunately. 4.5 lbs at birth. He was going along OK and slowly gaining weight, but after a recent cold with lots of vomiting has lost weight for the first time.

He now weighs 10 kg (22 lbs) is age 2.10 and on the 50th centile for height (normal height) his BMI is now 11.3

We have all the supplements under the sun and add butter, cream cheese etc to food. The dietician said loads of high fat calories. We have discovered mascapone (fabulously calorie laden!) but wonder if anyone else has any suggestions for REALLY high calorie food, so we can feed him up again.

PS CP really not the issue here, and we are going to get him checked for tongue tie but in the meantime PLEASE list the highest calorie foods possible to get his weight back up.

Hi - a few years back I met a family in the US who's son has CF and he had to have a ridiculously high calorie diet - they used to give him jars of peanuts which were soaked in oil. Not sure if they're even available here but peanut butter might be an idea!

Peanut butter?

My DS has Complan 4 times a week but he's 11.

Ha, cross post!

Would he drink a banana, yoghurt/milk/ice-cream (full fat) and peanut butter smoothie - fairly healthy but packed with calories

Well I don't know about the health issues but some good high calorie toddler friendly foods are peanut butter, as suggested, avocado, bananas, cheese. Eggs too I think.

avocados and bananas are among the highest calorie foods, as others have said.

when dd1 was a baby, I used to give her (as a fabulously easy to take anywhere meal on the go) banana and avocado mashed up together, with a big dollop of natural yoghurt in and a couple of teaspoons of ground almonds.

I also occasionally added pureed mango to it, for a taste difference.

it was not as hideous as it sounds, btw, and she used to really love it

oh, also the thing to watch out for with avocado and banana is that they can give a false "full" signal - sometimes when eating them, your brain triggers the "I'm full" bit after only a few bites, as they are so calorie laden.

if your dgs will eat the same amount of the banana/avocado mix as he would any other meal (in amoutns of spoonfuls) then all well and good, but watch and check. no good him only eating a few spoonfuls of that if he would eat twice as many of somehting else!

I used to work at a private anorexia clinic and we used to add full-fat cream to virtually any food...

peanutbutter
any cheese - a cube of chese willfit in the mouth really easily and contains a lot of calories
Butter everything

So a cream cracker with butter and a heap of grated cheese (popular with toddlers) with single cream with Crusha added (as a 'milkshake' drink) will make a very very calorific snack.

We always had this problem with DD before she was tube fed. Only ate pureed food so used to add double cream to everything! Also mashed avocado as mentioned by others. Did have a powder from dietician think it was callled Maxijule (?sp) to add to drinks etc for extra calories. High calorie drinks are available from dietician too (we now use Provide Extra which comes in different flavours - contains 1.5kcal/ml).
PS Did find when using Maxijule in milk that the more we added the less DD drank - so wasnt actually that sucessful!!!

DuoCal can also be prescribed, which is an powder to sprinkle on foods or mix into drinks. Sounds a bit like Maxijule, but all of the children I've known who have it have never refused or eaten less when it's been used. I think it's got about 50kcal per tablespoon.

Those chocolate bar themed yoghurty puddings like Rolo and Milkybar have absolutely loads of calories in them and they are small pots. Otherwise, all the suggestions on here have been great. Cheese on toast? Cheesy pasta made with double cream?

Thank you all loads for the ideas. Forgot to mention DGS has only 4 molars as the others were taken out because of enamel hypoplasia (defective placenta!) so chompy things are out. Also (sadly) large volume drinks/foods as he does a good exorcist impression when overfull!

Full fat cream we already do and also procal powder, bit like duocal jelly ? I guess. We will look into maxijule BBB as bloody water has no flaming calories, and he wont drink milk. We need calorie enriched water!

Smooth peanut butter a definite yes to trying that, and looking at ground up nuts with a mild taste like almonds to put in Rolo and milkybar puds!! If you notice those baby type pots/foods are miserably poor calorie wise! No worry about rotting his teeth lol.

We already do try to give him cheese in a spag bol type meals, and also put butter in everything! DD is overjoyed with the mascopone - a thousand calories in a little tub, and he's through most of it in a couple of days.Yea!

zzzz coconut cream sounds a good one too, along with avocado, bananas - I think its a matter of mixing flavours. You are right on the snacks issues, because he is underweight he seems to have a very small tummy - hence the ease with which he upchucks!

Thanks all! xx

Have you tried Just Frying Stuff? So for eg carbs do fried rice not rice, and rosti not potatoes. We also got through a lot of puff pastry. Tbh we didn't do a lot of pasta, because although it carries a high-cal sauce well, it's not particularly lardy in itself.

Oh re: snacks, layer cheese into puff pastry (roll it out, put a thin layer of grated cheese on, fold over, roll out again, repeat until bored) and then slice it up into whatever shape pleases: cheese straws is usual but small people seem to like something crisp-sized. Bake in oven for whatever amount of time it says on the pack, 10 or 15 minutes I think.

My DS2 (asd) has a terrible diet and is underweight too -

We add cream to everything. Banana milkshake made with bananas, double cream and full fat milk - he has 4 a day.

He eats alot of cheese too which is good, so he has a couple of babybels for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Good luck - we havent cracked it yet but thats because his diet is so limited.

I had never though of frying stuff! ? Good idea, but maybe a bit crispy with no teeth to speak of ? Think the puff pastry and cheese straw idea is a goer though.

I cook tons of healthy meat and vedge larded with butter and cream cheese, but by the time it is mashed and mixed in with his procal powder the flavours all merge into one homogeneous flavour!! SLT said offer different flavours to interest his appetite, there are tons of flavours in there but all merged into one......So 2 varieties - meat and vedge or spag bol flavour!!!!

Can't believe we forgot about babybels because he used to eat those! Will also give rice a go too... Think we took our eye of the weight gaining a bit as he was gaining steadily. The paed woman never got a chance to say PEG again as DD refused to go to MDT meeting but she will get DGS weighed fortnightly from now on so we don't get this shock again.

Leonie Wish we were in your position, as DGS has always been on the very bottom line (?9.0) or below it

He did creep up slightly over that line on a previous weighing but his recent cold and constant snotty vomiting has plunged him again. Your DD is sounding good on the 25.0 centile, so you can imagine what DGS looks like 50.0 centile for height on

sneezecakesmum -
I think this is a complex issues. DD is arguably underweight due to genetic condition. She is 1st percentile (probably below 1/100), but also very short,
so the weight per length is not too bad. I have tried everything under the sun
and have to admit that her caloric intake is the same no matter how calorically dense her food is. I add cream - she eat's half as much. One spoon of seed butter - she won't eat dinner. So while the experts recommend high caloric dense food (and you definitely have try that route), there is also work that suggests that (especially infants) totally control their caloric intake, not the amount they eat. E. g. when fed enriched formula, they drank less. Again, I have tried everything and you have to do the same, but our in our case I gave up. Now she eats as much as she wants (dense or not) and she has not really reduced her weight gain. I am much more relaxed about eating which has helped everything. I am at the point where I would rather feed her artificially then have food fights. Just to share my experience.

Oh, Zinc supplements have been very good to stimulate her appetite.
Ours are on prescription, so good to check with GP, although there is zinc in
muost multi-vitamins.

Know exactly what you mean glimmer. DGS will eat like mad - sprout an inch or two - then stop eating again when the growth spurt stops, so he always looks skinny. He has started eating properly over the past few days and his cheeks look a little more filled out (wishful thinking?) He does seem to self regulate but with a BMI around 12 its not good.

He has multi vits and fish oils since forever, but I will check the zinc content and change if necessary. His iron level was 6.4 at age 6 months but we built it up again with the most foul syrup ever, 9 times out of 10 would vomit it, but it reached acceptable levels after a few months, so now we make sure he has plenty of red meat, brocolli etc. Its so frustrating that everything is just borderline OK, eating, weight, sleeping, and it doesnt take much to tip him over the edge. Keep plodding on though, batch cooking time is coming around again!