To trick to getting a good balance of nutrition into a young child who goes through phases of refusing certain meals is creating foods that appeal to their favourite flavour preferences.
As parents we are often given advice from the health visitor to simply puree an amount of our own dinner and feed it to our infants. Whilst this works successfully for some children, it really doesn't suit others no matter how persistent and consistent the parent's efforts. Then parents can often work themselves up into a sweat worrying about their child lacking nutrients or becoming fussy as they grow. Trying to persuade a child to eat their dinner can be exasperating to say the least, and parents sometimes find the more they push, the more the child resists.
With my own son (now two-and-a-half) he ate pretty much everything I offered to him from the age of about 9 months to 2 years, but for the last 6 months or so he has been asserting his will a little more and refusing some foods he previously ate with no issues. It's easy to get frustrated (especially if it means wasting lovingly-prepared expensive organic food!) but instead of making a fuss about it, I appeal instead to his tastebuds. I return to a few simple favourites that he enjoys, trusting that in a few months he may accept a wider variety once again. I think it's best to just relax and not stress about these things.
So, at the moment he eats for dinner things like (homemade) bread, chips/fries (mainly white potatoes or butternut squash 'chips' oven roasted in a little coconut oil) or chopped-up wholewheat spaghetti. For lunch he eats a meal like the recipe I have for you below... an assortment of veggies and fruit mixed with a grain such as millet, amaranth, quinoa. For snacks he eats seeds (mainly large seeds like pumpkin), homebaked scones/bread, fruit. So, despite not wanting to eat meals he ordinarily likes such as curry or bolognese, he still gets a good variety of nutrition even with these simple foods he prefers at the moment.
I think the main reason this lunch is easily accepted is that it tastes YUMMY! The combination of veggies and fruit is no different to a delicious smoothie that we'd make for ourselves. The only difference is that instead of adding water to make it into a smoothie, we add grain to make it into a thick meal that an infant can easily eat with a spoon. I vary the kinds of veggies & fruit I put into this daily, but try to put complimentary flavours together. Bananas and berries are always a good option because they help balance an otherwise savoury meal with some sweetness, thus appealing much more to the tastes of many infants. You can also get other good stuff in there such as this wheatgrass powder I put in today. So, little person happy, and big person happy. Everybody wins, hooray!
Ingredients:
1 ripe banana
1/2 avocado
Handful blueberries
Handful spinach leaves
Handful sweetcorn (cooked)
Handful peas (cooked)
1 tsp wheatgrass powder
200g quinoa (lasts for several meals; refrigerate for up to 3 days)
Directions:
Cook the quinoa (2 parts water to 1 part quinoa, simmer for about 12 mins). Puree the fruits and veggies in a blender, or using a hand-blender. Stir in the wheatgrass powder. Mix in enough cooked quinoa to satisfy your child's appetite... you know how much they will eat, and there is no right or wrong amount. Serve in your child's favourite bowl and enjoy watching them gobble down this nutritious meal!
A variation of his favorite lunch, this time with millet.
Cooked quinoa, millet, or other grains can be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days.
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("5 Cs" shared with kind permission from @kiwideb)