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Tiny Bites, Big Nutritional Needs
Exploring a Toddler's Dietary Requirements
By Katherine Bontrager
Swinney also recommends that toddlers get plenty of choline, a B vitamin necessary for healthy cell membranes as well as neurotransmitters that can affect memory. "For toddlers, one egg per day helps meet over half of a toddler's needs for choline," she says. "Another rich source is wheat germ."
Another nutrient needed for growing bodies is iron, which is essential for healthy brain growth and functioning. Swinney recommends rich sources of iron that include lean beef, turkey and chicken dark meat, black beans, pinto beans, egg, edamame, molasses, iron-fortified cereals, chicken liver and spinach.
"Finally, zinc is important for a healthy immune system and can be a problem for toddlers to get enough of," Swinney says. "Food sources of zinc include fortified cereals, lean beef or pork, baked beans, pumpkin seeds, cashews, pecans, yogurt, milk, eggs and chick peas, such as found in hummus."
Sandon says that proper growth and development is dependent on quality nutrition. "Today we see children with adult diseases such as high blood pressure, type II diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity," she says. "Good nutrition earlier in life can help prevent many of these chronic health problems."
But letting your child subsist on French fries and chicken fingers alone also has further-reaching consequences: Poor nutrition habits in childhood result in poor nutrition habits as adults.
Elizabeth Somer, a nutritionist and author of Nutrition for a Health Pregnancy