Eating well at home

Children like to have routine. To avoid continual grazing throughout the day, try to establish set times for meals. Our page on making daily life easier has more tips to help you structure your day.

Children need to eat regularly, so they do need snacks in between meals. Snacks don’t need to be big, and snacks that include fruit and veg can be fun and tasty. Here are some ideas:

• Plain popcorn - making your own is easy, cheap and fun!
• Plain yoghurt with frozen fruit
• A picnic plate with a choice of fruit, veg, cheese and meat
• Pitta bread, plain crackers, oatcakes or rice cakes can also be used for dipping or with toppings
• Toast or pancakes
• Boiled eggs

You can find more ideas on our page on healthy snacking.

Remember that little ones can choke on small foods like nuts and grapes. Read our page on choking to see what you can do to prevent this. 

Children like to copy their parents, so they’re more likely to eat a meal if you’re also eating it with them. Make sure you offer them a drink if you are having one.

Often when you feel hungry it can be because you’re actually thirsty, so it’s important to make sure kids drink water regularly. Many children take water bottles to schools, so why not do this at home? Or you could set up a table with jugs and cups on a tray so they can help themselves – they could even make a sign, so they can pretend they’re going a café. By making it fun, they’re more likely to drink more often.

Water can be made more exciting by adding some fresh or frozen fruit or vegetables like lemons or cucumber, or letting them to make their own fruit ice cubes using sliced or pureed fruit.

You can also offer them milk and dairy free alternatives as a drink but be careful not to let them fill up on these and be too full for their meals. Try to avoid flavoured milks and dairy free milks with added sugar.

At nursery your child is usually given a third of a pint of full fat milk, which is around 190ml. It will really help support your child’s growth if you give them this same amount of milk each day they're not in nursery, if you can.

Children are more likely to try new foods if they’ve been involved in planning and making them. Planning what you will all be eating together each day means there are no surprises and when they ask for something to eat you don’t need to think on your feet.

Why not try and create a dinner "menu" for the week together? You could use pictures from magazines to make it fun and appealing, or ask the kids to draw pictures instead. Stick your menu on the wall or the fridge. Next time they ask “what’s for dinner” you can get them to look for themselves!

If the kids have never helped you in the kitchen before, now’s the time to start! Letting children make their own food makes them feel grown up and responsible, even if this is just preparing a snack or pouring drinks for each other. Can they make a sandwich? Or cut up fruit and vegetables (with adult supervision) to make a colourful plate of snacks or a meal?

You can find more tips for getting toddlers involved in food prep here and our page on cooking with the kids has lots of ideas for getting children of all ages involved.

To make mealtimes more interesting, why not recreate the restaurant experience in the house? There are lots of ways the kids can get involved in this: they could think of a name for your restaurant, write out menus, set the table, dress up as waiting staff. You could even set up some mood lighting!

Baking is always a fun activity for children and there are lots of simple, healthier recipes here on the Parent Club website to get you started. Some of our favourites include:

• Banana bread
• Raspberry oatie cookies
• Cranberry and orange muffins (swap in any other fruit)
• Cinnamon and berry bars (leave out the dried fruit if you don’t have any)

Want to keep the kids busy and help them learn about cooking, food safety and nutrition? Check out the online games Cookin Castle and Crazy Kitchen from Food Standards Scotland.