Preschooler Healthy Eating Challenge

Posted: 02/23/07

Sweet and convenient, fruit is popular with many preschoolers making this week’s challenge one of the easiest! If your preschooler eats one piece of fruit and drinks a little fruit juice on a typical day, the challenge is met. To boost nutrition, offer a variety of fruit, choose fruits in season, and use fruit to create healthy snacks and meals.

According to the Food Guide Pyramid, preschoolers should be eating the equivalent of 1 to 1 ½ cups of fruits every day. Each of these preschooler-sized portions equals ½ cup toward that goal. Choosing 2-3 of these each day meets your preschooler’s fruit goal:

1/4 large apple or 1/2 small apple
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 large banana (8-9" long)
1/2 cup grapes (about 16 grapes)
1/2 medium pear
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup fruit juice

(For a complete listing of what counts as one cup of fruit, see this chart at MyPyramid.gov)

What to Work on This Week

1. Each day, offer the equivalent of 1 to 1 ½ cups fruit

2. Offer a variety of fruit and choose fruits in season

3. Use fruit juice only occasionally to help meet the fruit goal

Tips for Success

Fresh fruit is a great choice. Packaged fruit can be convenient and healthy but choose unsweetened versions such as 100% fruit juice, unsweetened applesauce, unsweetened frozen fruit, and canned fruit without added sugar (packed in water or juice).

Make fruit a part of most snacks. Sliced apples, grapes, bananas, strawberries, and unsweetened applesauce are easy choices.

Use fruit to make healthy, enjoyable snacks and mini-meals. For ideas, see Healthy Combinations - Add Fruit!

Many commercial products that feature fruit in the name or in label graphics contain little or no fruit. Fruit snacks, fruit punch, fruit cereals, and fruit yogurts may not provide any fruit nutrition for your preschooler. Read the full article, Where’s the Fruit

Fruit Activities from Preschool Science:

Preschool Science Experiment - Dried Fruit Taste Test
With fresh apricots, peaches, mangos and plums during the summer, it’s easy to get your preschooler to eat enough fruits. But what about during the winter? During the winter you can try giving your preschooler dried fruit (with no sugar added).  But does dried fruit taste different than fresh fruit? You and your preschooler can answer that question with this fun and easy preschool science experiment.

Preschool Science Experiment - How to Dry Fruits
Does your preschooler know that raisins are actually dried grapes? How about that prunes are actually dried plums? Have they tried banana or apple crisps? With this fun and easy preschool science experiment, you can learn how to dry fruit in the oven.

References:

The Food Guide Pyramid. http://www.mypyramid.gov/

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