Foods Ideas For Toddlers - 7 Interesting Ways To Give It

It often becomes a challenge for a parent to feed toddler meals. Here are few tips for feeding kids to ensure you are giving healthy food for children. These would help in providing your infant the nutrition needed by him/her. [Also Check - 3 Years Child's Daily Meal Plan?]

7 Ways to Feed Your 1-3 Year Old Child

You can give any of this below-mentioned food to toddlers of age above 1 year. These food ideas will offer variety to your toddler, so she/he will easily ready to eat. check here.. 

#1 Chapatti:

It is the most common food rejected by toddlers. Chapatti is dry food, requires a lot of chewing, which might discourage your child to accept it easily. It is always better to knead the dough soft, with either little ghee, milk, buttermilk, dal or with some vegetables. It is better given with some gravy/soup/dal/curd to mash it easily with the liquid and it also becomes easier to chew. Chapatti can be made interesting by adding different colored vegetables like beetroot, spinach, carrot, etc to get different colored chapattis. Different shapes like star, flower, triangle, the heart can be made to make it more appealing. It is more fun for the child to eat chapatti if it is made into a rol/pizzal with some grated vegetables/cheese/paneer/sauce.

#2 Rice - Easy to Chew

Though much easier to chew and swallow, a toddler may be bored of eating plain rice every day. Again different colored and flavored rice can be given to break the monotony. You may give tomato, curd, biryani, sweetened rice, etc for variety. Eggs if your child is refusing to have boiled or scrambled egg, you can include egg in a more interesting way in the diet. Egg dipped toast cut into various shapes with a cookie cutter, sweet or savory pancakes, egg dipped vegetable cutlets are few examples. You can even cut a boiled egg in different shapes like a basket or a flower and serve them with chopped vegetables/sauce. [Read: Food Options for 2+ years toddler]

#3 Pulses - High in Protein

At times a child might not enjoy a plain dal with meals. Legumes and beans like rajma/kidney, chick peas/chana both white and black are better accepted. Pulses can be given in other forms like mung/besan cheela, idli/dosa, dhokla, khandvi, etc.

#4 Milk - Having All Vitamins & Minerals

Plain milk can be boring every day and can be flavored with natural flavors like cardamom, dates or saffron. It can also be given in fruit shakes, custard, kheer and porridge form. If not milk then intake of curd and cheese can be increased in your toddler’s diet to take care of the proteins and calcium requirements.

#5 Vegetables:

They can be given in an interesting way by making their dips/sauce and can be used for Kathi rolls, sandwich, pizza, pasta, fries, and garlic bread. You may use steamed vegetables like zucchini, carrot, squash, spinach, broccoli with a little tomato, onion, and garlic for this. You may also add hung curd/olive oil/lemon to these.

#6 Fruits:

If your child finds eating plain fruits boring you may present them in a different way to make them more appealing. Different colored fruits like mango, watermelon, papaya, cantaloupe, kiwi can be rolled into small balls with an ice cream scooper. You can play a game with your toddler to pick a fruit of the color you have asked for. For e.g for green it is a kiwi, for yellow, mango, etc. You can even freeze the juice of fruits in the ice tray and use it to flavor their water. The juice may also be used to flavor and color the crushed ice candy/lolly.  Read: 4 Ways to Tackle Child to Eat Well

#7 Nuts:

They can be coated with molten chocolates or dipped with some fruit sauce and given. These can also be powdered and added to any dish like milkshakes, dals, soups, gravies, porridge, kheer, custard, etc. Non-vegetarian foods- children may not enjoy the heavy gravies of non-vegetarian foods. But they can enjoy them in finger foods like a chicken lollipop, small pieces of grilled fish/chicken, meatballs, in momos, etc.

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