Tips for Feeding a Young Family

Do not be put off and think that feeding your child good food has to mean making everything yourself, expensive trips to the health food shop or spinach four times a week.

Fruit and Vegetables

Most children like some kind of fruit. Seedless grapes, bananas, melons, satsumas, apples and pears can all be cut into pieces as soon as they are old enough for finger foods. Once they get to the stage of noticing what they eat many children go off vegetables. Do not force them to try to eat vegetables because you will be enforcing the idea that they are unpleasant. Instead, make sure they have some fruit and fruit juice each day for vitamin C and go on enjoying and experimenting with vegetables yourself. Children are tremendous imitators and at some stage their curiosity will make them want to try what is on your plate. In between you can occasionally try them with raw pieces of vegetables to eat with their fingers while waiting for the meal to be ready – carrot, celery sticks, chunks of cabbage or cauliflower, uncooked peas and beans in their pod, cucumber and tomatoes are all likely favourites.

Convenience Foods

Manufacturers process foods in many ways to allow them to be kept for extended periods. In general, the more processing a food undergoes, the more additives it will contain. These may be chemical colourings, flavourings or preservatives. Thus frozen fish is a useful and nutritious buy, but by the time it has been turned into a ready-made frozen fish and potato pie it will probably need to contain a preservative to keep it fresh. It will also be more expensive. A rough guide is to go for convenience foods which still resemble their original state – that is, you can recognise them when they come out of a packet or tin! Frozen vegetables can be as good as fresh shop-bought ones because they retain their vitamin and fibre value, but tinned vegetables have had to undergo more processing and will usually have had salt added.

Weight Watching

Only a small number of young children are overweight, but the tendency increases by the time they reach their teenage years. Children who are allowed to follow their appetite and are not encouraged or expected to eat more than they want and who keep active will rarely get fat, but it makes sense not to feed too much sugar or too much fried fatty food. Grilled and baked foods are preferable to frying – for example fish fingers, hamburgers and bacon, which are just as easily grilled. Naturally this makes even more sense with a child who has a tendency to put on weight, but if you have a serious problem you may need expert advice to help him to slim down (Fat children).