Food fuss pots

Make it clear what children can have between meals – probably fresh fruit or raw carrot sticks. Avoid squashes. Offer water, milk (ordinary not skimmed) and small amounts of fruit juice.

If you are out on a local trip, then offer to buy bananas (good street food because you peel them) or bread rolls. Your children will soon learn that non-stop buns or sweets are not an option.

What do children need?

The most important messages about children’s diet are:

• Children need to draw from all four main food groups: carbohydrates, protein, fats and the vitamins and minerals grouping.
• The low-fat, high-fibre diets promoted for adults are definitely not a healthy route to take for your children. Children need to fuel physical growth and intellectual development. They need the fats in their diet and they cannot easily digest lots of fibre.
• As with adults, a healthy diet for children includes as much fresh, home-cooked food as you can manage. Convenience meals and desserts include surprising amounts of salt, sugar and artificial sweeteners. If you make a meal, you know what’s gone into it.
• Children benefit from suitable vitamin supplements. But they are a supplement to a balanced diet, not a substitute. Artificial preparations cannot reproduce the exact effect of vitamins and minerals taken in food.
• In a similar way, buying convenience meals or snacks that are ‘enriched’ with vitamins is not a useful tactic. There is concern now in the United States, where manufacturers add even more to foods than we do in the UK, that adults and children risk overdosing on some vitamins when they are added willy-nilly to foods.
• There are no absolutely ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. But of course, if you suspect that your child is allergic to foods containing wheat or dairy products, then you will need to consult your GP about how to handle this.