Healthy Meal Ideas for 1 Year Old
For every mom, it requires a lot of effort to feed healthy foods to babies and toddlers. If you have a 1 year old kid at home, then you might be acquainted with the way your baby eats meals. With kids, you need to be more patient and follow certain tips to feed them. For example, toddlers are very reluctant to eat alone. Hence, make sure that you eat meals together with your kid. They are very picky and usually, don't eat much. When we say healthy meal ideas, they include a list of fresh fruits and vegetables with a minimum serving of fat and refined sugars.
Healthy Meal Ideas for Toddlers
While planning these meals, always try to incorporate the four basic food groups, namely, milk or alternatives, vegetables and fruits, grain food products and meat or alternatives. While preparing snacks, you can include 2 food groups at a time. Plan meals and snacks for your toddler this way and you will succeed in feeding balanced and healthy food with the necessary nutrients. As far as the eating routine is concerned, feed 3 meals a day with 1-3 servings of snacks. This will help in meeting the high energy requirements for proper growth of your baby.
Breakfast
Breakfast is considered as the most important meal of the day. Start your baby's day with a tempting and healthy breakfast. Some of the food items and recipes that you can include in breakfast are milk, whole milk with oatmeal, yogurt, bean soup, scrambled eggs, bread, cheese, macaroni, whole-grain cereals, waffles, soft fruit pieces and boiled or grated carrots.
Lunch
For serving lunch, you can consider adding solid foods containing rice and bread along with vegetables and meat. Soft rice with meat pieces, fish stuffed in a sandwich and fish sticks are some nutritious ideas for lunch. Do not forget to feed your child with pieces of apple, banana, melon, pear, berries, etc. after removing the hard skin and seeds.
Dinner
For a 1 year old baby, healthy meal ideas for dinner include meatballs with pasta, chicken pieces with vegetables, baked beans, soft cooked vegetables in dip sauce, ground meat, fruits pieces, soups, fish and lean meat dishes. While serving, make sure that the meats, vegetables and fruits are cut into small pieces, so as to prevent choking.
Snacks
Offering healthy snacks is necessary to provide midday energy requirements for your toddler. While offering snacks, you can incorporate dairy products, flavored yogurt, fruit pudding, mashed fruit, pancakes topped with applesauce, grapes cut into pieces, tomato juice and mixed vegetable juice. Allow your child to feed to on his own and do not force him to eat foods.
In order to avoid dehydration, water, juice, soup and other liquid diets should be offered during meals and snacks. Be a little creative while planning the healthy meals, so that your kid can enjoy eating them. Coming to our picky eaters, try to make a note of the food items that your 1 year old likes the most. You can plan healthy substitutes that taste somewhat similar to his favorite dishes. With these useful and healthy ideas, I hope you will succeed in helping your toddler eat well and remain fit.
