What Do One Year Olds Eat?

A.,

I have 4 children, ages 3 to 10, and I can relate to your concern. I BF all of mine, and transitioning to other foods was sometimes a challenge. I am now a nutritional consultant working with a dr. of nutrition (we do healthy cooking classes in DeKalb & metro area); therefore, my view of what to feed children has now changed somewhat. My biggest understanding now from a health perspective is that every food is not for every body...particularly not cow's milk. You didn't ask to get this health-conscious, but I thought that I might share this information anyhow. I have now learned that eating according to your blood type is very important because certain foods are either beneficial or detrimental for your particular make-up. That's why so many children and adults have allergies and health issues, and may not be able to figure out why. For example, blood type O's & A's are not to eat dairy products.

You are right on point to make getting "nutrition" into your child the top priority and point of eating. One thing that your child might take to is a home-made smoothie. These are tasty and a great tool to 'sneak' some nutrition into them. You can use frozen or fresh strawberries, bananas, etc. as a base. But the next point is to add some 'nutrition', whole foods. In place of grinding up a vitamin you can start with a whole food such as a high quality flaxseed, wheat germ (both of which I can recommend the brand). You can also add a high quality supplement for children that has all of their vitamins & minerals, etc, but in a more natural, healthier formula than even baby formula. (I can recommend that supplement as well.) Add filtered water & ice (opt.) & blend 2 min. Also, get a food processor and make little meals out of fruits & veggies i.e. papaya, pinneapple, broccoli, etc.

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But whatever route you take, understand that you are ate an important crossroads in formulating your child's future eating habits and health. It is easier to start a good habit now than to break a bad one later...I know from experience.

My only advice is to keep trying everything you're offering her, even if she rejects it. It takes many, many times for a child to get accustomed to the texture and taste of all foods. I have had several friends give up, and their children won't eat foods like fresh blueberries, strawberries, etc. In other words, don't take no for an answer unless you've tried it 20 or more times (and even then I'd still say try, try again). My boys were both breastfed until a year as well. They liked Cheerios at that stage (they both had a number of teeth at that point, and that my play a role in eating more solids too). They loved plain yogurt mixed with fruit puree (no sugar added). They also got bits of our food mashed up. Best of luck!

Hi A.,

My daughter is 13 months old and she mostly eats whatever the family is eating. She eats 3 meals and 2 snacks a day. With 2oz of fruit juice mixed with water to make 4 total ounces and around 16oz of whole milk. For breakfast she usually has oatmeal or scrambled eggs, on the weekends I always make pancakes and she has those with NO syrup and milk. Lunch can be 1/2 a grilled cheese and some peas or carrots, home made ravioli with a tiny bit of sauce or leftover chicken from dinner (casseroles, grilled, not fried). After her nap she gets a hanful of goldfish crackers or 1 cheddar cheese rice cake (this is when she has her juice). Then at dinner she has whatever we are eating, plus some milk. Then right before bed she has a little snack and a larger drink of milk. She now sleeps 11-12 hours a night, before she starting eating "real" food and was taking mostly formula she slept around 8 hours a night, IF we were lucky. I breastfed her until she was 5 months old, which is when we discovered that she was allergic to my milk... I had to wean her immediately, so I know how you are feeling trying to wean your little one. You may want to try some baby cereal to help her with texture issues, and using a food mill or food processor to puree her food is a good idea. You can try mixing some veggies in with the sweet stuff she already likes, getting her used to veggies now is really important. I know this was really long, but I wanted you to get a good picture of what we do here, it works for us but you may find it doesn't work for your little girl. Every baby is different!!

Hi A.,

Avocado is almost a perfect food. It is nutrition, tasty and has the right type of fat for a little one that is not getting breast milk anymore.

As long as the sweet fruit has fiber (Apples are fine, apple juice is not)it's not as bad as you think. Mixed fruits will resolve that as well; plums have a lot of fiber, bananas are pure sugar. Just for your information, added protein balances sugars. Remember white bread and white potatoes, i.e. french fries, are sugars as well. Make sure you are feeding her and not trying to let her feed herself. The textures of food are so intriguing at this stage she may only want to play with it!

God bless you as you start this wonderful journey!

M.
www.squidoo.com/ifyourbabycouldtalk

I would puree her vegetables (preferably organic) and mix them in with her bananas, pears, and apples. It looks gross but generally the sweetness from the fruits will mask the fact that she is eating vegetables and getting valuable nutrients. I would cut out the ice cream...that should be a treat and right now she needs to learn to eat her meal first. Also, I don't let my children tell me "no". My 16 mo old will sometimes say "no" and I say "yes, maam". Then I will say do you want this cracker? The answer 100% of the time is "yes" so I will then say you must take a few bites in order to get the cracker. Then after she takes a few bites I give her part of the cracker and we go through the process all over again. She does not tell me "no" as much anymore so I think she understands a little that what I give her is what she is going to eat.

Good luck.

About me: SAHM of 3 (6yr, 3yr, 16 mo)

I see your baby is now in love with just the sweet, I would advice that you take the sweets away for a while and re-introduce some veggies, if you love to cook, butternut squash has a nice sweet flavor and it very fluffy, a lot of picky eaters love this. The key at this point is to try and make sure that you implement good eating habits. I know it can be frustrating but it is doable. If you keep giving only the sweets it is going to be very hard when the baby is older to change it. We have on our website a feeding chart on the helpful hints page that might be helpful. We personally don't do cow's milk but if you should pls make it organic.

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Cheers

A.
www.yummyspoonfuls.com

HI A.,
Try gerber.com. They have a nutrition and feeding section that actually breaks down the age of the child and tells you what nutrition he/she needs. It could be a good start for you. Sometimes seeing measurements makes us feel better:) Good luck!

Veggies should always be the first food due to this problem with some babies. Sugar such as ice cream and the like shouldn't really be introduced until after the age of 2yo. But of course, I'm not so great about that either..my sis was always so good with that.

I usually like to give my children avocado as their first food. My 4th child loved this. As she grew older, I add a little salt, garlic powder and even a bit of salsa eventually. Once she was able to do tortilla chips, she dipped it in there and sucked it off mostly and then eventually ate the chips. She loved avocado, as do we. I usually buy them at Sams in a bag of 5, I believe. Avocado will look like a weird color to your child, but if they take that first bite with the salt and garlic powder, hopefully they'll love it as mine do.

Another thing I do is not do the baby food jars. I make our own veggies, which taste so much better. I just make up a batch of say, green beans (a bag of frozen one). Then puree it and then spoon it into ice cube trays and after frozen, put them into a ziploc bag. I do that with a variety of veggies. I take out how many cubes as I need. You can do this with leftovers too. Even keeping them in chunks as they get older.

Hey A.,

Some say that's it's best to try vegetables like green beans and sweet potatoes and cream corn before fruits. Then they don't develop such a sweet tooth. If my daughter didn't like something, I would still try it the next day until the food got old. At least keep introducing it. Seems like a tough battle, but persistent helps.

What's your daughter's name? You're daughter may not be ready for cut up food yet. They may not digest real well still being breastfeed still. I know it's tough weaning. I breastfeed my daughter till she was 18 months old. I had a hard time switching her to cows milk. So I was in your same boat!

My daughter, Paley, just turned 2 and still won't eat meat. I still feed her the baby jars with apples and chicken with meat mixed up. They'll develop a taste and texture. Takes time.

Have fun eating!

A.
http://squidoo.com/A.-stringer

I also have an almost one year old and we are looking to wean soon too(from the breast). I slowly introduced foods to him and we love the sweet potato. Cook up a few of those and mix and mash it w/ other stuff (green beans, carrots, chicken). I've even mixed up fruits w/ the veggies...like pureed pear w/ baby oatmeal or green beans.
hope this helps! Good luck.

You probably need to use the gerber foods. Start with stage 1 and once she is used to that move to stage 2. This gets babies used to textured food. Stage 1 is basically pureed, and they get chunkier through stage 2 and 3. This worked great with my son and now I haven't found any kind of food he won't eat. Good Luck:)

I feel for you. My youngest is turning 1 on the 22nd and we are in a similar boat. He is the youngest of my four and all of them have been SO different. Part of the difference I think is when they got their teeth. My oldest got a bunch of teeth right around 6-7 months. By 1 year he had his first molars and was eating anything we ate. Now my little guy had no teeth until 10 1/2 months and is now getting his 5th. Of course those are front "biters" not really "chewers" so he still needs food that he can gum up.

He eats Yo baby Yogurt pretty much every morning and has baby cereal mixed with unsweet applesauce once almost every day as well. Whatever we are eating a mix to a consistency that he can manage and let him have a go at it. Some things he likes, others not so much. With 4 children, my oldest is 6, and homeschooling I really don't have time to constantly be prepping special little meals just for him, but I find that most of the time he can handle what we're having, though not really in amounts that constitute a full meal. He usually breastfeeds 3 or so times during the day and then 2-3 times at night. I would LOVE to get a full nights sleep. He is definitely taing the record for the child NOT sleeping through the night!

I have a book called "first meals" that I've found helpful sometimes with the kids. It breaks things down into appropriate foods for different ages. Some of the things are too time consuming for me to make for the child but it does give me good ideas.

Oh, and I have a theory that breastfed babies are more prone to lean toward the sweet foods than formula babies as breastmilk is much sweeter than formula. It has played that way with a lot of my friends. The ones doing formula had little trouble introducing veggies while the b'fed babies leaned towards the fruits. just a thought...

By the way, my little guy loves Ice cream too, but he only gets a few tiny tastes when I am happening to have a bowl, which now a days isn't very often as I really want the last 5 pounds of baby weight to go away! lol. But anyway, I just wanted to say that just because you said your little girl liked ice cream didn't say to me that you were dishing her up a nice big bowl on a regular basis. :)

For snacks we do a lot of the "crunchies" by Gerber. My guy totally loves thse, along with baby fruit snack, crackers, and butter cookies. All favs. He doesn't drink much of anything despite my encouraging him. It will come in time I know. We haven't used any baby food with him, instead I've made some or I grind what we are eating in a food grinder.

Anyways, hope some of this helps. Mainly I wanted to say that every kid is different, does things at a different pace and that it will come!

The only advice I can say is that make sure to mix your breastmilk with the cow's milk. I started out using 2oz of cow milk to 6oz breast milk and did this for a week and then the next week I used 4oz of cow milk to 4oz of breast milk and on and on. It really worked out great for me and that is what my pediatrician suggested to me to get my sons used to cow's milk and make sure that they can stand it on their stomach. I also did use baby food for a while after they turned one b/c the hardest thing for the kids was getting used to the texture. I would try and introduce some other foods at the same time such as mashed potatoes or something like that. It takes awhile before they get used to textures, I know that was the hardest thing for me b/c I wanted them to start table food right away but they didn't won't to b/c it does feel so much different! I hope this helps!!