Healthy Eating and Children

Canada's Food Guide

Use Canada's food guide to choose a variety of healthy foods and beverages each day.

Eating well together

Children learn eating habits early in life. It is important to give them a good start. Both parent/caregiver and child have a role to play.

At meal time you will decide:

• What foods to offer
• When to offer meals and snacks
• Where your child will eat

Your child will decide:

• Which foods to eat, if any
• How much to eat

Offer a variety of healthy foods

• Include a vegetable or fruit at each meal and snack
• Gradually introduce a variety of foods with different tastes, textures and colours
• Introduce a new food with foods you know your child likes
• Your child may need to see a new food many times before tasting it
• Serve small portions and let your child have more if they are still hungry
• Never withhold food as a punishment or offer food as a reward
• Never pressure or force your child to eat
• Choose and prepare food safely to prevent food poisoning and to lower the risk of choking.

Offer healthy drinks

• Offer water throughout the day when your child is thirsty

• Offer water or plain milk at mealtimes and snacks
  • Offer pasteurized, homogenized milk (3.25% MF) until 24 months of age
  • Lower fat milk and fortified soy beverage may be offered after 24 months 
  • Almond, rice, coconut and other plant-based beverages (other than soy) are not suitable as a young child's main milk source
• Offer fruit instead of juice or other sweetened drinks

Plan mealtimes and snacks

• Plan three meals and two or three snacks each day
• Provide healthy meals and snacks every two and a half to three hours, at about the same time each day
• Sit and eat with your child; children eat best sitting down at a table
• Turn off the TV and do not allow distractions at the table during a meal or snack
• Involve your child in planning, shopping and preparing food

Read Help your child become a healthy eater.

• Help your child become a healthy eater
• When your child does not eat vegetables
• When your child does not drink milk
• When your child does not eat meat

• Student Nutrition Program Nutrition Guidelines
• Nutrition for Learning
• WRDSB School Food and Beverage Policy
• WCDSB Elementary School Food and Nutrition Policy
• WCDSB Secondary School Food and Nutrition Policy

• Canada's Food Guide - children
• Choking prevention tips
• NutriSTEP - nutrition screening tool for toddlers and preschoolers
• The Food Bank of Waterloo Region — emergency and low-cost food 
• UnlockFood — information on nutrition and healthy eating