What to Eat – Australian Dietary Guidelines for Children

Written by Christine Sorbello, Dietitian/Nutritionist

Good nutrition is essential for the normal growth and development of children. Childhood is also an important time to establish healthy eating patterns that can be maintained into adult life.

However, with the wide variety of food, food products and food information currently available to us, choosing what to eat can sometimes be overwhelming! The Australian Dietary Guidelines have been developed by the National Health & Medical Research Council to help guide us. They are based on a wide body of evidence and are suitable for all healthy Australians.

Ref: National Health & Medical Research Council (2011). Draft Australian Dietary Guidelines.

So now we know the overall guidelines what does this mean for day to day eating? Here are some basic tips to ensure your family is eating a healthy diet:

• Make sure you include foods from all 5 food groups everyday (vegetables, fruit, grains/cereals, meat or alternative, dairy)
• Grain foods will usually be a part of each meal as these are what give kids their energy.
• Include vegies in at least 2 meals a day
• Choose healthy snacks (fruit, vegie sticks, yoghurt, whole grain cereals)
• Include regular meals and snacks throughout the day – this will help kids maintain energy throughout the day and also help to ensure good variety from across the food groups
• Healthy foods are healthy for the whole family – you don’t need to make different meals for your toddler or children (although they may eat smaller amounts depending on their age). Eating together the same foods as a family will encourage kids to try new foods and establish healthy mealtimes.
• Cultural and personal preferences will impact the types of food you choose in each food group. That’s fine as long as you are not excluding whole food groups.  Encourage kids to try new foods and even previously disliked foods though to continue to expand their food variety

• If your  family doesn’t eat meat or dairy foods be sure to include alternatives from these groups e.g. legumes or tofu for meat and calcium fortified soy/rice milk for dairy
• Water and milk are the best drinks for children
• Can you easily place the food into one of the 5 food groups? If so, it’s likely to be a fresh, healthy food. If not, you might like to reconsider; it may be heavily processed and more likely to be an extra or occasional food.
• Being familiar with portions isn’t a bad idea so over a week or two choose different foods, measure a serve, tip it onto a plate/bowl and get an idea of what it looks like for reference later on (see tables below)
• Variety, variety, variety –  try to choose a range of different foods from each food group every day

A basic day might look like this…

For those who’d like to be a bit more precise who can also refer to the below tables which look at the recommended daily number of serves and serving sizes for each food group. Simply match your child’s age and gender with the appropriate line in the table. Remember you do not have to give a full serve of a food a once e.g. you might give 3 or 4 half servings of dairy across the day for a toddler.

Recommended average daily number of serves from each food group