SPECIAL DIETS AND CONTROVERSIAL FOODS

Special Diets

If you are considering a special diet, like vegetarianism, please let your child’s healthcare provider know. They will likely refer you to a nutritionist that can carefully plan meals with you and assure that all the nutritional needs of your toddler will be met. It is challenging to do so with any restricted diet at this age, but it is possible. However, WE Do Not recommend a VEGAN diet at this age. 

Dessert: Can You Offer Your Toddler Dessert?

Yes, you can.  We recommend you offer most foods in moderation as a healthy and realistic practice. We don’t recommend making dessert a daily thing. Decide in advance how often dessert will be part of a meal and keep to that plan. Eating out, for example, might be an appropriate time for a treat. The main principle is that dessert either is planned or isn’t. Your child’s appetite at dinner or behavior during the day should never decide whether dessert will be served or not. Food should never be earned or taken away and your child should never have to eat one food in order to have access to another. This is true for dessert, vegetables, or any other food or beverage.

Juice: A Word About Juice. Can You Offer Your Toddler Juice?

Yes, but we would rather you do so infrequently. Instead offer mostly milk and water in a cup. If you want to offer some juice on a rare occasion, or if they are constipated, offer 100 % juice options and water it down. Lastly, limit to 4 ounces of watered-down juice/day on the day that you offer it. Juice should never be served in a bottle.

We don’t want to speak too harshly on this topic, but juice has little to offer your toddler nutritionally. Juice is mostly water and sugar. However, we would be hypocritical if we didn’t admit to drinking juice ourselves or offering it to our own children every once in a while. 

Moreover, we don’t want you to make too big a deal about the “juice thing,” as we have found the more we make a big deal about anything, like juice or dessert, the more your toddler will want it. Just offer juice infrequently, like when you're out for a meal. Help your toddler to love drinking water regularly.