Nuts, fruit, whole grains, meats, vegetables and dairy products
Provide a variety of healthy foods to avoid boredom for you and your child.
Offer a range of colourful foods on the plate and allow your child to pick and choose what they will eat from there. Present food attractively.
Do not use dessert as a bribe and avoid labelling food as either ‘bad’ or ‘good’.
Encourage self-feeding and exploration of food and textures from an early age. Try to ignore the mess!
Aim to give new foods alongside ones they like.
Top Tip: Introducing new snacks Giving your children interesting flavours that go together well and stimulate their taste buds, while also introducing a variety of textures, is a fun way of ensuring that new and healthy foods begin to find their way into their regular selection of foods.
Some interesting combinations include snacks like:

• oatcakes with cream cheese and cucumber sticks
• celery sticks filled with peanut butter
• satsuma sections with cheddar cheese
• melon slices with raspberries
• avocado and bread strips

A good general tip is to use a child’s ‘favourite’ food, like a jacket potato, pitta bread or pasta, and to add different toppings to these familiar foods. For example, if your child loves jacket potato with cheese or tuna, try a different type of cheese or fish like some ricotta or salmon. If they love tomato pasta, try adding some finely chopped black olives and finely grated Parmesan cheese. ‘Diluting’ the impact of new foods by combining them with well-loved, familiar ones is a doable, step-by-step way of widening a child’s range of foods at mealtimes.