The ultimate guide to what children should eat at every stage of development

About seven years ago, I experienced what is probably the highest point of my parenting life to date. I was at home with my then three-year-old, and decided to make us a nice lunch. 

Feeling jazzy, I put together some linguine with crayfish, rocket, parmesan, a drizzle of olive oil, and chilli for me. He wolfed the lot, and I smugly patted myself on the back, particularly as it followed hot on the heels of my children complaining that the peanut butter I’d bought in a rush from the supermarket was too sweet – I’d not been able to get the usual whole nut, sugar-free version. 

In case I sound unbearably smug, let’s fast forward a few years. My boys are now 12, 10 and seven, and while they eat a relatively balanced and healthy diet, they maintain an unhealthy love for Pot Noodles, can mainline sweets like crack addicts and would almost certainly turn their noses up at crayfish (middle son aside, who remains my most adventurous eater). I don’t think I’ve done a terrible job, but could I have done better?

We know general eating habits are formed in the first few years of life, and we know also that food can be both an immense source of familial pleasure and the cause of an awful lot of stress. We’ve all come across the child who will only eat beige food, or refuses to eat any vegetables except frozen peas. 

Researching this article, I dug around to see what had happened to Craig Flatman, who enjoyed a brief period of fame 19 years ago aged 15, when he hit the headlines for having eaten nothing but jam sandwiches for 11 years. (He remains alive, well, and apparently working in the insurance industry.)

“All children go through phases of more or less restriction,” says Henry Dimbleby, a father of three himself, who wrote the 2013 School Food Plan, put together the National Food Strategy in 2021 and is the author, with his wife Jemima Lewis, of Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet into Shape. “One of ours ate only meat and fruit for a while,” he says. But, he adds: “They come out of it at some point. Children will eat in the end.” 

The problem is making sure they eat the right food. According to a recent report published in Nature magazine, undernutrition remains one of the most pressing global health challenges, contributing to nearly half of deaths in children under five, and with consequences that impact all areas of development: growth, neurodevelopment and metabolic development. 

Neither are children immune to the “dual burden” of malnutrition – like undernutrition and obesity, which can manifest throughout a lifespan and increase the risk of adult diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. According to the most recent figures from the UK’s National Child Measurement Programme, 9.2 per cent of reception-age children in Britain are obese, with a further 12.2 per cent overweight, and by age 10-11, 22.7 per cent of children were obese, and 13.9 per cent overweight. 

So how, in a world where we are bombarded on a constant and daily basis with readily available, cheap, sugary, fatty foods, can we best navigate the challenges as parents? 

I have given up taking my children to the supermarket with me – it’s too stressful – and constantly seem to find sweet wrappers underneath their beds (we spend more on sweets alone in this country than we do on fruit and veg – £3.9billion on confectionery compared to £2.2billion on fruit and veg). But rubbish has sneaked into everyday foods as well – not just sweets, but the sort you eat at meals, from breakfast cereal to mass-produced bread. 

In December last year, a group of cooks and authors including Yotam Ottolenghi and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wrote to Rishi Sunak warning him that exposure to ultra-processed foods such as these is “hijacking” our children’s brains and taste buds, “blindfolding” them to flavour and texture and posing long-term risks to their health; a recent report from First Steps Nutrition Trust found that high levels of ultra-processed food consumption in infancy “undermines taste development”, warning that the now-standard diet of very young children normalises snacking, sweet tastes and soft textures. 

It often seems nigh on impossible to avoid the rubbish, although as Dimbleby (who himself resigned in 2023 as government food tsar in protest at lack of action to tackle the problem of rising obesity levels, especially in children) puts it, “the most challenging thing as any parent will know is trying to get children to eat the things they should be eating to maximise health, growth and happiness”. 

So what are those things our children should – and should not – be eating? And should we really be forcing them to eat broccoli from toddlerhood? We spoke to the experts, and here’s our comprehensive guide. 

Getting your children used to eating healthily

“Everybody needs habits”, declares the American paediatric dietitian nutritionist Jill Castle, whose book, Kids Thrive at Every Size: How to Nourish Your Big, Small, or In-Between Child for a Lifetime of Health and Happiness (published in August 2024) addresses how to form healthy ones. When it comes to eating and mealtimes, that means routine, structure and predictability. 

“Kids want to know what’s going on with food,” says Castle. “Having structure [with mealtimes] allows that predictability… relying on having meals at certain times builds trust.” Set meal times also help children tune into the appetite cues of hunger and fullness, adds Castle. 

“It allows you to sync up the digestion and appetite cues so when it’s time for a meal, your child is hungry” – impossible if your children are constantly grazing, so don’t recognise the feeling of hunger. That said, you’ve got to get your gaps right – very young children should eat every 2.5-3 hours, Castle advises; younger school-aged children can go up to about three hours and older children can have four hours between meals. 

Stick to the same meal for everyone.

Once you’re out of the weaning stage, “the fundamental principle should be to try and keep one meal for the house,” says Dimbleby. Of course, he acknowledges, there may be children with additional needs or allergies which make this complicated, but “if you possibly can, don’t get into the situation of making everyone a separate meal. If you can, make that meal one that is cooked from scratch, with a variety of things in it.” 

And you can’t go far wrong with Michael Pollan’s three simple rules for healthy eating: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. 

Start with vegetables and keep the fruit bowl out

There are other ways to establish healthy eating patterns, some of which seem almost blindingly obvious once you think about it – like starting with the veg, especially if you’ve got a child who’s not so keen on it: a plate of chopped-up carrots, cucumber and tomatoes put down before the main event is much more likely to get eaten when a child is hungry. 

Keeping a full fruit bowl permanently available (and reachable) by all members of the family is another one. And, although you might not like the idea, remember, “the child’s the customer”, says Dimbleby. That means you’ve got to get your branding right: don’t serve vegetable fritters, make them Mum’s Martian Meteors; it’s not plain old porridge, it’s Daddy’s Delicious Porridge (in the Dimbleby household anyway). 

Is the atmosphere around the table a nice one – has the table been laid beautifully, does the food look good? Making mealtimes fun family events where everyone sits down to eat the same thing improves the odds no end. Get them involved – in laying the table, in clearing up afterwards. And, if they haven’t eaten much at a meal, do try not to fill them up with biscuits afterwards.

What foods should young children eat?

Children eat for three basic reasons: to stay alive, to grow and to move. However, while babies grow more quickly than at any other time in their life during their first year, in their second and third years, the growth rates drops off: between six and 12 months, babies use only five per cent of what they eat to grow, and in their second year, barely three per cent; 18-month-old babies eat little more than nine-month-olds on average, and many will actually eat less. 

 This means you don’t need to panic if your baby “stops eating” around the time of weaning – particularly if they are still breastfeeding, as breast milk contains 70 calories per 100g, so continues to be a major source of nutrition. 

The crucial thing is to be led by your child. “It is appetite that regulates the intake of food”, writes Pilar Serrano Aguayo, a Spanish nutrition specialist, in the introduction to Carlos Gonzalez’s book My Child Won’t Eat. In children, she continues, “it does so in a way that adequately meets their needs”. And remember, different children have different needs: babies differ hugely in size and weight, and will grow at different rates, while multiple studies have shown that small children, when allowed to eat what they wish, both in a lab and at home, will take in a consistent amount of calories from day to day.

Infants

According to the most recent guidelines from the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN), babies should drink exclusively milk – ideally breastmilk, or formula if this is not possible - until they’re four months: no baby food, juice, water etc. Other foods should not be introduced before four months, but not delayed beyond six months, offered in small amounts to begin with, and always after breastmilk or formula (between six and 12 months, babies need about 500ml of milk per day on average). 

It doesn’t particularly matter what food you start with (within reason: weaning a child on chocolate buttons is not advised), but vegetables, whole fruit and cooked chicken all work. 

Go carefully on gluten (and when you do introduce it, avoid refined grains such as white flour and opt for brown or wholemeal instead), and if there’s a history of allergies, talk to your GP before introducing nuts; otherwise, you can give your baby nuts from six months as long as they’re crushed or ground into peanut butter, for example. Eggs (cooked) are fine from six months.

Foods which should be avoided 

A few no-nos: children under one shouldn’t have cow’s milk (it’s difficult to digest, and doesn’t have all the nutrients they need), and neither should they be given honey – it occasionally contains bacteria that can produce toxins in a baby’s intestines, leading to infant botulism. 

You should also avoid unpasteurised and soft cheeses, fish with high mercury levels (shark, swordfish and fresh tuna) which can affect the development of the nervous system and don’t add salt to your baby’s food. 

Because their stomachs are still small, young children need concentrated food that is high in calories, but low in volume – such as breastmilk or formula, for example, which has both high caloric and protein content. Vegetables and even meat, by contrast, are much lower in calories, so if your just-weaning baby isn’t bolting broccoli, don’t worry – they don’t actually need much of it. 

Toddlers

Over a year, children shouldn’t drink more than 500ml of milk a day, as it gives little room for other foods, which is why bottle-fed babies in particular should be weaned onto a cup once they’re one-year-old, as a bottle makes it easy to drink too much. 

Stay relaxed about it, and this is the age when feeding your child can be really fun, as very young children are quite trusting when it comes to the food their parents give them, so will eat all sorts of exotic things, from olives to prawns. 

Try cooking from scratch as much as possible

It’s also when cooking from scratch becomes a little easier, as “with a little planning, you can cook for your baby almost the same thing you would cook for the adults in your family”, writes the Spanish paediatrician Carlos Gonzalez in his book My Child Won’t Eat. “Cook without adding spices or salt and add these things after taking out the baby’s portion.” Something like the River Cottage’s Baby and Toddler Cookbook is an excellent guide to have to hand: full of quick, easy and tasty recipes divided by season, with advice on dialling them down if you’re serving babies (things like leaving out the cornichons in fishcakes), or up if you’re cooking for the whole family (add white wine to a pea risotto if you’re cooking it for grown-ups and older children). 

If they won’t eat it, don’t panic. “Most children are quite selective in their diet,” says Gonzalez. “That’s quite normal. But the fact that they prefer pasta doesn’t mean they can’t eat anything else.” The key, says Gonzalez, is to offer other foods but not make a fuss about “trying this” or “have one bite for you and one for Mummy”. Do that, and pasta becomes the only food they can eat in peace, making them even more resistant to other foods. “It is better to say nothing.”

There are some foods that are best avoided at this age: as a general rule of thumb, children under five shouldn’t eat raw fish, as they are more susceptible to foodborne diseases – so no sushi just yet. 

What foods should children aged 5-12 eat?

Ensuring your kids eat well is not always easy – it requires thought, planning and commitment, which can be exhausting, especially if you’re also trying to juggle work and your kids’ school and extracurricular activities. You don’t have to be perfect, however. 

“Just a basic awareness of what your child is getting and not getting helps parents to maybe say, ‘OK, let’s make dinner a home run tonight’,” says Jill Castle. “Parents are good at self-correcting like that.”

Castle has a fairly simple way of categorising food: into highly nutritious food (whole foods, from which meals can be cooked from scratch), decently nutritious foods (they might have come in a box or a packet or be frozen, but they still have a good amount of nutrients) and minimally nutritious foods – the ultra high-processed, extremely sugary and fatty foods that should be avoided. 

How to balance out the food in your child’s diet

Throughout the day, children should be getting a good balance of protein, fibre, fruit, vegetables and dairy, and you can use snacks to fill in the gaps that might have been left by other meals – so, if your child’s gone all day with no vegetables, cut up some carrots and serve them with hummus as a snack. 

For a younger child, three meals and two snacks – one in the morning and one in the afternoon – will keep them going; “some children still need a cup of milk before bed and that’s perfectly fine,” says Castle. 

Think about portion sizes in relation to plates – give younger children their meal on a salad plate; use saucers for snacks. And, even if you are in a huge rush and serving your child something processed out of a packet, there are always ways to beef it up nutritionally by adding, say, some fresh fruit to a yoghurt, vegetables or a side salad with a pre-made chicken kiev or ham turned into a sandwich with a wholegrain roll. 

Don’t stress too much about calorie intake. “Calorie needs are a general framework for a whole variety of kids of all sizes and ethnicities,” Castle points out. “It is really just a general ballpark number.” 

Until adolescence, boys and girls need about the same calories per pound of their own weight; only just before adolescence does that start to shift as boys put on more muscle and girls put on more fat in preparation for puberty. As a rough guide, children aged between five and 10 need about 1800 calories a day, made up of 24g of protein, 220g of carbs, 85g of sugar and 70g of fat. 

Foods children should eat before sport

Unless a child is training to become an elite athlete, you don’t need to think too hard about this, but a light, carb-based snack with some protein at least an hour before exercise can keep them going. That could be something like toast with peanut butter or cheese. Post-exercise, there’s no need for any sort of recovery food; “When you’re 10 and playing football, just come home and have dinner,” says Castle. 

The foods kids should absolutely not eat for a balanced diet

The world of ready-made food can seem like a minefield – we all know that cakes, sweets and biscuits are bad, but are baked beans from a tin ok? What about sliced bread? 

“It’s difficult if you’re not cooking from scratch,” acknowledges Dimbleby, who points out that 85 per cent of processed foods are deemed by the WHO too unhealthy to give young children. But, he adds, “Don’t make it a battleground for yourself.” As with most things, if your children eat a healthy, balanced diet most of the time, an occasional lapse is ok. “Don’t give them a Pot Noodle every night, but every so often on a Friday is fine,” Dimbleby tells me. He himself keeps a stash of cheap pizzas in the freezer “which are definitely UPF – but we got fed up giving the kids Hackney sourdough pizza that cost a fortune, and they’re happy to eat a £1 pizza once in a while”.

But it’s also good to set your ground rules: Dimbleby keeps no breakfast cereal in the house, for example (“it’s the devil’s work”), doesn’t buy biscuits and doesn’t do pudding at every meal, unless it’s fruit or yoghurt. 

Label reading is tedious but helpful: if you can’t pronounce an ingredient, it’s probably best avoided. As for the baked beans, the British Nutrition Foundation deems them OK as part of a healthy diet, and when it comes to sliced bread, not all breads are created equal: go for something with a variety of grains and maybe some seeds, plus nothing you can’t understand on the label, and you should be fine.

How to cope with a picky eater

Carlos Gonzalez boils it down to one extremely simple statement: “Do not force your child to eat. Never make him eat, in any way, under any circumstance, for any reason.” 

It may not be easy; “I’ve known mothers who had to go to another room to cry when they stopped trying to make their children eat,” says Gonzalez. But not making a child eat doesn’t mean stopping feeding them altogether: it means not trying to distract them with TV or stories, not turning the spoon into an aeroplane, not using dessert as a reward, or using the food itself as a punishment. 

“There is one very simple method that you can use to monitor your child’s health to make sure she is not in any danger,” writes Carlos Gonzalez; “a simple scale. While your child does not lose 1kg, she is not in danger.” 

It’s unlikely for a child to go all day without eating; if she doesn’t eat at all at mealtimes and gets hungry after a couple of hours, you can feed her, as long as it’s a healthy snack. Don’t offer treats instead of healthy foods, and don’t become a short-order cook. 

Remember also that children have smaller stomachs: eating half a banana or yoghurt doesn’t mean they’re “not” eating. 

And, to revert to Craig Flatman, “sometimes I see children with very strange diets – children that only want to eat bread and yoghurt or something,” says Gonzalez. “But usually this is a quite healthy diet. Not perfect at all but instead of chocolate and ice cream if he has bread and yoghurt – this is a saint.” And even Craig Flatman eats more than bread and jam these days. 

What to do about a greedy child

For some kids, it seems, “enough” is never enough. Are they really hungry – and should you let them keep eating?

Emerging research looking at “food approach” in children suggests that some children are genetically predisposed to eat more, and are more focused on food than their “satiety-responsive” counterparts. Where the latter child might eat more slowly and not finish meals – possibly appearing picky – a child who is more food responsive might eat faster, be hungry all the time and find it hard to stop eating. “It’s a genetic tendency that parents don’t often understand,” says Castle. 

That doesn’t mean you should just give in completely to their desires, however. “Because their tendency is to be a little bit more focused on food, these children need guardrails”, says Castle. “That doesn’t mean being really militant in how we feed them and what they can eat, but you probably don’t want to leave cookies out on the counter all day and expect them to intuitively not eat them.”  

We need to understand our children’s food approach and set them up for success, says Castle, so the child who is more food responsive needs more structure around mealtimes and snacking (ensure they are regular, and don’t leave too long a gap), while the child who is satiety responsive needs more patience and for us not to push them. 

Five ways to talk to your child about food

1. Do not label food as “good” or “bad”

Attaching moral value to food can create a judgmental picture of food, or make your child feel anxious. Instead of calling crisps “bad” and broccoli “good”, create an atmosphere where children can explore all sorts of tastes and textures, without ascribing moral value.

2. Give your children choice

Introduce your family to a variety of foods, mixing old favourites with new things to try. From toddlerhood on, children should be in charge of whether they eat something and how much. Putting a variety of food on the table every night and allowing kids to choose for themselves gives them a sense of independence while allowing them to discover what they like.

3. Get them involved in shopping and cooking

Young kids love to learn, and help their parents. Cooking – after choosing the ingredients in the supermarket – is a great way to teach kids how a meal is made while allowing them to tap into their creative side and build positive memories and experiences of family and food. Plant a vegetable or an herb garden, and watch it grow together.

4. Model a healthy relationship with food

Parents who are diet-obsessed can pass those hang-ups about food and their bodies onto their children. So, it’s important to be mindful of how you talk about food, nutrition, and your body in front of your kids. That means refraining from “food moralising”, criticising your own eating habits or those of others, and taking joy from eating.

5. Trust your children to know when they’re full

Babies eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. Unfortunately, this instinct can slip as children grow, as parents strike bargains to eat just one more mouthful of spinach,  insist they finish their dinner even if they’re full, and refuse them food when they claim to be hungry. So, to help your child build a strong, healthy relationship with food, it’s important to trust them.

Source: Center for discovery, eating disorder programme