How Much Should My Little One Be Eating?

This post is part confession and part (hopefully helpful) information.

Part of my quest to save money has lead me to menu planning - a concept completely foreign to me having grown up on frozen dinners, fast food and chili dogs (my mom's "specialty").  To be honest, I often feel like I don't know what I'm supposed to be eating, how much I'm supposed to be eating and don't get me started on how confused I am on what and how much to feed my toddler!

Before it was time to transition my baby to table foods, I dabbled in meal planning, which usually meant I'd flip through a cookbook and pick out a couple recipes I thought looked good, buy the stuff to make it and occasionally I'd actually get around to cooking it when I remembered where the heck that recipe was.

When it came time to get my little one off baby food, I knew I needed to make wiser choices when it came to what our family ate, but I felt more lost than ever. On top of all this, the economy combined with the expenses of a child re-prioritized my efforts at couponing, meal planning and saving money in general.  I've been much more organized and deliberate with my meal planning since late summer, but still feel very confused when it comes to balance and portion.

Today, I discovered a resource on the USDA's food guide pyramid website which allows you to build a food guide pyramid for your toddler.  It's not completely customized because you can only specify your child's age, gender and activity level, but it's a start.  I knew what the food guide pyramid was but this breaks it down into real life application.

Here are the things I'm finding most helpful.  I don't know much about portion sizes for myself let alone someone a third my size.  I used the toddler option and found the pyramid tells you, based on the information you enter how much of each category should be consumed in a day, ie: 3oz grains, 1 cup fruits, etc.  The pyramid page includes a link to two sample "meal and snack patterns" which explain how to break the totals from the pyramid page into portions for meals and snacks.  Each of the two "patterns" then link to sample meal plans based on the pattern.

If you're concerned about portion sizes for your toddler, or if you're lost like I was, I recommend visiting mypyramid.gov to get started.  When you get to the page, scroll down and look for the "Specific Audiences" section in the blue toolbar on the left.  You can then select whether you want to build a pyramid for yourself, your toddler, your older child, or one if you're pregnant/breastfeeding.

My next confession... Will I be packing babyfood for pre-school... to come.