Answer

Feeding your children should not be complicated. To simplify it, keep in mind these strategies and next I will give you a meal plan example for a one year old:

• A meal plan should include the 5 food groups (fruits-vegetables- meat and/or legumes- grains and dairy products
• The division of these meals should go with the family’s lifestyle. If you feel that your family does not have varied balanced healthy meals, or does not have fixed time for eating, and that there is no meal planning, then now it’s the right time to start fixing that!

All the efforts one usually put to raise a healthy kid will go lost, if the example we set in front of our kids is not healthy. Kids learn by role modeling.

• Specify time and place of eating at every meal (breakfast /kitchen/lunch dinning table/ dinner kitchen/snacks ) try to stick to a schedule with very mild and rare changes. Children like routines. They feel secure. You will also avoid crankiness from your child while eating.
• Divide the main meals of the week to include (beans/vegetable stew/ fish/chicken/meat). It is ok if your child eats same meal for 2 days if needed.
• Try to share at least 1 meal per day with your child especially when introducing new recipe or new food to show support.
• When planning the whole weeks menu, take into consideration to introduce new food gradually not all in same week. Keep in mind that your child sometimes needs to taste a food up to 20 time to start liking it.
• Using traditional food that your family usually cooks and share at home is better then choosing recipes from a baby cookbook that you will need to do specially for your child and which will not fit in your or his/her lifestyle later on in life. Children should learn how to eat family shared meals if they don’t have any health/ medical problems.

Keeping all these tips in mind, now planning a day for your child should be easy. Remember as parents our role is to provide space, time, and the variety of food. Your child should decide the portion size. On some days you will feel your child has a bigger appetite than other days. It’s Ok! Your child should learn how to listen to his hunger and fullness cues.  As parents obliging a child to finish a plate that we find fit will ruin his intuitive eating. Here is an example to a one-year-old. 7:00 AM: 1 cup milk 9:00 Breakfast: egg sandwich 11:00 Snack:  ½ cup fresh fruits 1:00 Lunch: spinach stew with meat and boiled rice 3:00 Snack:  ½ cup Greek yogurt +1/2 cup fresh fruits 5:00 Dinner:   hummus wrap or cheese wrap +1/2 cup vegetable sticks or ½ cup vegetable soup 7:00 PM: 1 cup milk

Rouba El Asmar Registered Dietitian Nutritionist

2 years ago