How to Feed Kids Who Thrive: The Foundations of Childhood Nutrition
In the first article in this series, I looked at some of the ways nutrition can influence more than simply a child's growth.
Energy, concentration, development, bowel health, nutrient deficiencies and even aspects of behaviour can all be worth considering when we look at what our kids are regularly eating.
But pointing out what can go wrong isn't particularly useful unless I also explain what we're trying to get right.
I don't think you need to know how many grams of carbohydrate our child needs at lunch.
We don't need to track their calories.
We don't need to calculate their macros.
And we certainly don't need every meal to look like something from a parenting account on Instagram.
We do need to understand the building blocks.
Then provide them consistently enough that nutritious eating becomes normal.
We're not feeding small adults
This is probably the best place to start.
Children are growing.
Their brains are developing.
Their skeletons are growing.
They're building muscle and other tissues.
They're learning.
They're playing.
They're running around.
They're recovering.
Their immune systems are developing.
Food has to support all of that.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend that children eat sufficient nutritious foods to grow and develop normally and consume a variety of foods from the five main food groups:
vegetables and legumes/beans
fruit
grain foods, mostly wholegrain and/or high-fibre varieties
lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts, seeds and legumes/beans
milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or appropriate alternatives
Water is recommended as the primary drink. (health.gov.au)
I think that's actually a pretty good framework.
The problem is that parents are then left wondering:
What does that look like when I'm trying to get multiple kids fed before leaving the house?
That's what I want to make easier here.
Start by forgetting about perfection
Before talking about protein, carbohydrates and vegetables, this needs to be said.
Your child's diet doesn't need to be perfect.
Neither does yours.
There will be birthday parties.
There will be ice cream.
There will be nights when dinner is something you pulled out of the freezer.
There will be takeaway.
There will probably be periods when your child decides the food they happily ate last Tuesday has suddenly become completely unacceptable.
That's childhood.
What matters much more is the pattern of eating we create over months and years.
If most of the food environment around a child is nutritious, varied and reasonably balanced, there is plenty of room for foods that exist primarily because they're delicious.
That's a much healthier target than trying to create the world's cleanest-eating six-year-old.
The simple framework I like parents to understand
Rather than counting anything, I think about children's meals in terms of a few basic components:
Protein + carbohydrate + fruits and vegetables + healthy fats + water
Not every meal will contain every component.
Not every snack needs to be nutritionally perfect.
But across the day, that's roughly the environment we're trying to create.
Let's break down why.
1. Protein: give growing bodies something to build with
Being a strength coach, nobody will be surprised that protein is first on my list.
But I'm not suggesting we turn children into bodybuilders.
Protein isn't a "gym nutrient".
It's a human nutrient.
Protein provides amino acids that the body uses to build and repair tissues and produce important enzymes, hormones and other compounds.
Children need protein because they're literally constructing a bigger body.
The Australian Nutrient Reference Values set age-dependent protein requirements that increase as children grow. (eatforhealth.gov.au)
But here's the important part for parents:
You probably don't need to calculate it.
Instead, regularly provide protein-rich foods.
That might be:
eggs,
Greek yoghurt,
milk,
cheese,
chicken,
beef,
fish,
pork,
tofu,
beans,
lentils,
or other age-appropriate protein foods.
Nuts and seeds can also contribute, taking age, choking risk and allergies into consideration.
Rather than obsessing over a daily protein target, I prefer asking a much simpler question:
Where's the protein in this meal?
Breakfast might contain eggs or yoghurt.
Lunch might contain chicken, tuna, cheese or another protein source.
Dinner might contain beef, chicken, fish, eggs, tofu or legumes.
Snacks can contribute too.
Do that consistently and you're already creating a pretty good foundation.
Protein doesn't need to come from a supplement
This is another distinction worth making.
Adults in the fitness world frequently use protein powder because it's convenient.
Children generally don't need us designing supplement regimes for them.
Food gives us protein alongside other useful nutrients.
An egg isn't just protein.
Beef isn't just protein.
Yoghurt isn't just protein.
Fish isn't just protein.
They're nutrient-dense foods providing different combinations of vitamins, minerals and fats as well.
For most healthy children, kids need their parents to become good at regularly serving nutritious foods rather than worrying about which protein powder their child needs.
If there is a genuine concern about protein intake because of allergies, dietary restrictions, feeding difficulties or another medical issue, that's where individual advice from an Accredited Practising Dietitian becomes valuable.
2. Carbohydrates: kids need fuel
Carbohydrates have somehow become controversial in adult nutrition.
They shouldn't automatically become controversial in childhood because Mum or Dad is currently dieting.
Kids move.
A lot.
They run, climb, jump, play sport, concentrate at school and generally operate at an activity level most adults would benefit from copying.
Carbohydrate-rich foods are an important source of energy.
Australian dietary guidance recommends grain foods, preferably mostly wholegrain and/or high-fibre varieties, alongside vegetables, fruit and other nutritious carbohydrate sources. (health.gov.au)
Think:
oats,
rice,
potatoes,
sweet potato,
bread,
pasta,
wholegrain cereals,
fruit,
corn,
and legumes.
This doesn't mean children need unlimited amounts of every carbohydrate food.
It means carbohydrates shouldn't automatically be feared.
Active children should understand that food gives them energy.
You can even make that connection for them.
"This gives you energy for soccer."
"This will help fuel you while you're running around today."
That's a much healthier message than teaching a five-year-old that bread is something they're supposed to feel guilty about.
3. Fruit and vegetables: variety matters
Most parents already know children should eat vegetables.
Knowing that and getting them eaten are two very different things.
This is where I think parents sometimes become frustrated too quickly.
A child refuses broccoli.
We stop serving broccoli.
They reject capsicum.
Capsicum disappears.
They don't touch the beans.
No more beans.
Eventually the child's accepted food list becomes smaller and smaller.
Instead, I think our job is to keep creating exposure without turning dinner into a battle.
Fruit and vegetables provide fibre and a huge variety of vitamins, minerals and other compounds.
Different foods bring different things to the table, which is why variety matters.
You don't need to find the world's healthiest vegetable.
Just expose them to lots of them.
Carrots.
Capsicum.
Broccoli.
Peas.
Corn.
Tomato.
Cucumber.
Beans.
Pumpkin.
Avocado.
Berries.
Bananas.
Apples.
Oranges.
Kiwi fruit.
Melon.
Whatever your family actually eats.
And don't underestimate fruit because you've heard someone online say it contains sugar.
Whole fruit is specifically recommended within the Australian Dietary Guidelines. (health.gov.au)
It is much healthier to see a child happily eating different fruits than have a parent unnecessarily restricting them because they're worried about fructose.
4. Fat: another nutrient we don't need children fearing
Dietary fat also gets caught up in adult dieting culture.
Children need dietary fat.
Foods containing healthy fats can also provide important nutrients and make meals satisfying.
Useful sources might include:
avocado,
nuts and nut pastes,
seeds,
olive oil,
eggs,
fish,
and other nutritious foods naturally containing fats.
Again, we're not trying to teach children:
fat = bad.
We're trying to expose them to a varied diet.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend foods containing predominantly unsaturated fats while limiting foods high in saturated fat as part of the overall dietary pattern. (health.gov.au)
That's a much more sensible message than making fat itself the enemy.
5. Iron deserves special attention
If there's one micronutrient I think parents should at least know something about, it's iron.
Iron is required for numerous functions, including oxygen transport.
As discussed in Article 1, iron deficiency in children can be associated with fatigue, irritability and impaired learning and concentration.
The Royal Children's Hospital also identifies several dietary risk factors, including insufficient iron-rich foods and excessive cow's milk consumption in younger children. (rch.org.au)
That doesn't mean we need to count milligrams of iron every day.
It means regularly offering iron-rich foods is worthwhile.
Animal sources include foods such as:
red meat,
poultry,
fish,
and eggs.
Plant sources include:
legumes,
tofu,
some fortified cereals,
nuts and seeds,
and certain vegetables.
Coach Tips
The body absorbs haem iron from animal foods more readily than non-haem iron from plant sources.
Vitamin C consumed alongside plant sources can help increase non-haem iron absorption.
So something as simple as beans with capsicum, fortified cereal with fruit, or another iron-containing food alongside fruit or vegetables can make sense.
Again:
food first, supplements when medically indicated.
Iron supplements shouldn't be casually given to children because a parent suspects their intake might be low.
6. Calcium and dairy foods
Growing skeletons need appropriate nutrition too.
Milk, yoghurt and cheese are useful because they can provide calcium, protein and other nutrients in an easy-to-eat form.
Australian dietary guidance includes milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or appropriate alternatives as one of the five food groups. (health.gov.au)
If your child can't or doesn't consume dairy, that doesn't automatically create a problem.
But whatever replaces it needs some thought.
A plant-based drink isn't nutritionally identical to cow's milk simply because it's white and comes in a carton.
Depending on the child's age and circumstances, appropriate fortified alternatives may be used, but this is another area where professional dietary advice can be useful when major food groups are excluded.
7. Fibre: think plants rather than supplements
Fibre helps support healthy bowel function and is another reason fruit, vegetables, legumes and wholegrain foods matter.
If a child's usual diet looks something like:
white bread,
crackers,
chicken nuggets,
cheese,
biscuits,
and milk,
You can see how easily fibre-containing foods can disappear.
Rather than immediately thinking about fibre supplements, I'd first look at the food environment.
Could we add fruit to breakfast?
Could afternoon tea include fruit?
Could we serve vegetables with dinner even if they don't eat much initially?
Could we choose a higher-fibre cereal or bread?
Could beans or legumes appear occasionally?
Small improvements made repeatedly matter.
8. Water should be boring and normal
This might be one of the easiest habits we can establish.
Water should be the normal drink.
Not a punishment.
Not the boring option they get because juice isn't available.
Just what humans drink when they're thirsty.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines specifically recommend drinking plenty of water and limiting drinks containing added sugars. (health.gov.au)
Children don't need every drink to taste exciting.
If water is normal from childhood, we've already established a useful lifelong habit.
What does this actually look like on a plate?
Here's where I think nutrition education sometimes becomes unnecessarily complicated.
Imagine you're making your child's breakfast.
Ask:
What's their protein? Eggs.
What's giving them energy? Toast.
Can we get a plant in there? Some fruit.
Any useful fats? Maybe avocado or the fats already coming from the eggs.
Drink? Water, with milk potentially included depending on the meal and child.
Done.
Lunch might be:
chicken wrap + salad/vegetables + fruit + water.
Dinner might be:
beef mince + rice + vegetables.
A snack might be:
Greek yoghurt + berries.
Another might simply be:
banana + cheese.
None of those meals are revolutionary.
That's exactly the point.
You don't need every meal to tick every box
This is important.
Sometimes breakfast will just be toast and fruit.
Sometimes the child will eat the rice and completely ignore the chicken.
Sometimes every vegetable you lovingly prepared will remain exactly where you placed it.
Don't judge the nutritional adequacy of your child's diet based on a single plate.
Look across the day.
Then the week.
Then the months.
Nutrition is the pattern, not the individual meal.
That idea takes a lot of unnecessary pressure away from parents.
What about portion sizes?
I don't love rigid portion prescriptions for healthy children because appetite can vary enormously.
A child might eat everything in sight one day and barely touch dinner the next.
Growth spurts, activity, illness, sleep and previous meals can all influence appetite.
Instead of forcing a predetermined amount of food, parents can provide appropriate nutritious options and allow children to respond to their hunger and fullness cues.
This is part of what's often called responsive feeding.
The parent retains responsibility for creating an appropriate food environment and offering suitable foods.
The child has some autonomy over whether they're hungry and how much they eat.
That's very different from allowing a child to dictate that every dinner must consist of biscuits.
Structure and autonomy can exist together.
"But my child won't eat that."
This is probably what some parents have been thinking throughout this entire article.
Fair enough.
Knowing that your child needs vegetables isn't especially useful when the broccoli keeps getting launched across the dining room.
But I think this is where we need to separate two things:
offering nutritious food
and
forcing nutritious food.
They're not the same.
You can keep putting vegetables on the plate without demanding they finish them.
You can eat those foods yourself.
You can let children interact with food.
You can involve them in preparing it.
You can serve familiar foods alongside unfamiliar ones.
You can keep exposure going.
Raising Children Network notes that children's willingness to try foods can require repeated opportunities and recommends continuing to offer new foods rather than giving up after initial rejection. (raisingchildren.net.au)
One rejection doesn't mean:
"My child doesn't eat carrots."
It means:
"They didn't eat the carrot today."
There's an important difference.
Your own diet is teaching them too
This might be uncomfortable for some parents, but it's probably one of the most important parts of this series.
We can't constantly tell children to eat vegetables while they watch us avoid them.
We can't tell them water is important while every drink we consume is flavoured.
We can't tell them breakfast matters while we live on coffee until midday.
Kids watch us.
Raising Children Network specifically highlights parental modelling as an important influence on children's eating behaviours. (raisingchildren.net.au)
That's something I've become much more conscious of since becoming a dad.
My kids don't understand nutritional biochemistry.
But they understand what Mum and Dad does.
They see what we put on the plate.
They see whether we eat vegetables.
They see whether we drink water.
They see that protein-rich foods are normal.
They see whether exercise is part of everyday life.
And they're forming their idea of "normal" from that environment.
That's incredibly powerful.
Healthy eating shouldn't make children anxious about food
There's another side to this that I think the fitness industry in particular needs to be careful with.
I don't want my kids learning that:
bread makes you fat,
dessert is cheating,
you have to earn food,
chocolate is "bad",
or exercise is how you compensate for eating something enjoyable.
That's poor adult diet culture being handed to children who never asked for it.
I'd rather teach:
Some foods help our bodies get lots of the nutrients they need, so we eat them regularly.
Some foods are mostly there because they taste good, so we enjoy them sometimes.
Both can exist.
A child can eat eggs and fruit for breakfast and have birthday cake that afternoon.
Nothing has gone wrong.
If you remember nothing else, remember this
Feeding healthy kids doesn't require perfect nutrition.
It requires a decent food environment repeated over time.
Regularly provide:
Protein-rich foods.
Fruit and vegetables.
Carbohydrates that fuel growing, active bodies.
Foods containing healthy fats.
Iron-rich foods.
Calcium-rich foods or appropriate alternatives.
Fibre-containing plant foods.
Water.
Then allow some room for life.
Birthday cake.
Ice cream.
Takeaway.
Grandma giving them something you probably wouldn't have chosen.
That's okay.
We're not trying to win a nutritional purity competition.
We're trying to raise healthy humans.
The goal isn't a perfect diet
The longer I've worked in health and fitness, the more I've realised how much of adult nutrition involves trying to undo habits people have carried for decades.
That's one reason childhood nutrition means so much to me now.
We have an opportunity much earlier.
Not to create children obsessed with nutrition.
Almost the opposite.
To make nutritious eating so normal that they don't need to obsess over it.
Protein is normal.
Fruit is normal.
Vegetables are normal.
Water is normal.
Being active is normal.
And having ice cream with your family is normal too.
If we can create that environment consistently enough, we're doing more than feeding a growing body today.
We're helping establish what food, movement and health might look like to that person for the rest of their life.
And that's a pretty worthwhile investment.
This article provides general educational information and isn't individual medical or nutrition advice. Children's nutritional requirements vary with age, growth, activity, medical conditions and dietary restrictions. If you're concerned about your child's growth, development or dietary intake, speak with your GP, paediatrician or an Accredited Practising Dietitian.
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