Healthy eating for children

The Eatwell Guide was designed for adults, but the principles translate well to children over five. The proportions it recommends are a useful starting point, but children under five have different requirements — they need proportionally more of certain nutrients, and applying adult dietary guidance directly doesn't work. A consultation adapts these principles to your child's age and individual needs.

In practice, families are often doing better than they think. The eat well plate isn't about perfection at every sitting. It's a guide for the overall pattern. A child who has cereal for breakfast, a ham sandwich and fruit at lunch, and pasta with veg and cheese at dinner is doing fine, even if Tuesday's dinner was fish fingers and beans.

What the Eatwell Guide doesn't cover well is portion sizes for children, or how to handle the reality that a four-year-old and a ten-year-old have very different appetites and needs. That's where individual assessment adds real value - working out what your child specifically needs rather than following generic advice.

Iron is one of the most common gaps. Children aged one to three are a particularly high-risk group for iron deficiency, and it doesn't always show up as obvious anaemia — it can present as tiredness, poor concentration, frequent infections, or irritability. There are well-established dietary strategies to improve iron status, tailored to what your child actually eats.

Calcium and vitamin D work together for bone health, and childhood is when the bone bank is being built. Whether your child gets enough depends on their diet, any restrictions, and where they live. The NHS recommends vitamin D supplementation for children under five, and individual needs beyond that are assessed in a consultation.

Fibre is another common gap. Most UK children don't eat enough, and it shows up as constipation, which is one of the most common reasons school-age children are referred to dietitians. A consultation identifies whether fibre intake is adequate and how to improve it practically within your child's current eating patterns.

The evidence on children's eating behaviour is clear on a few things. Family meals matter. Eating together, even a few times a week, is consistently associated with better diet quality and lower rates of disordered eating later. It doesn't have to be a formal sit-down dinner every night - breakfast counts, weekend lunches count.

Pressure backfires. Forcing children to eat, using food as a reward or punishment, and making a big deal of what they do or don't eat are all associated with worse outcomes, not better. The principle I come back to again and again is Ellyn Satter's division of responsibility: a structured framework that takes the power struggle out of mealtimes. I explain how to apply it in practice during a consultation.

Modelling is the most powerful tool you have. Children eat what they see the people around them eating. If vegetables appear on your plate regularly and you eat them without commentary, that does more than any amount of 'just try one bite'. Research suggests that families who shift the whole household's eating patterns, not just the child's, tend to see better outcomes.

Most children eat well enough without specialist help. But there are situations where a dietitian adds real value. If your child has a medical condition affecting nutrition - diabetes, coeliac disease, food allergies, a heart condition - the BDA emphasises that dietary advice needs to be specific to them, not generic. If growth is faltering or excessive, a dietetic assessment can identify what's driving it.

I also see families who've received conflicting advice and are confused about what to actually do. One website says cut out sugar entirely, another says don't restrict anything, the school nurse said something different from the GP. Part of my role is cutting through that noise and giving you a clear, evidence-based, practical plan that works for your actual family and your actual kitchen.

If any of this sounds familiar, this is exactly the kind of thing I work through in a consultation. We look at what's happening now, identify what's working and what isn't, and build a plan that's realistic. No perfection required.