Food for Tots

Review
Contains an amazing number of very practical suggestions to help parents encourage healthy eating behaviors in their young children. -- Kim Lampson Reiff, PhD, Eating Disorders Therapist

Great resource for parents. Information about nutrion, behavioral aspects of feeding children, and fun recipes to engage toddlers. -- Danette Glassy, MD, President of Washington Chapter of Academy of Pediatrics

Packed with helpful tips on first foods, finger foods, and family meals,and creative ways to involve the little ones. -- —Carol Fenster, Ph.D., author, Special Diet Solutions and other cookbooks for food allergies and celiac disease

Provides a wealth of kid-pleasing recipes, medical insight and good old fashioned mom-sense to help promote nutritious eating. -- C.APPEL• 11/01 Fearless Reviews

Ways to deliver nutritious foods to little people who appear to their parents to live on air and apple juice. -- Meredith Hughes, The Food Museum

“I love the format, it’s very friendly and would calm a nervous mom." -- —Debra A. Indorato, RD, CPFT, Approach Nutrition and Fitness, Allentown, PA

“This is a wonderfully yummy book, my favorite chapter is Food for Play. Enjoy!” -- —Diane Morgan – Editor, New Book Reviews

“a wealth of kid-pleasing recipes, medical insight and good old fashioned mom-sense. Food for Tots should find a healthy audience.” -- — C.Appel 11/01 Fearless Reviews


Product Description
Food for Tots is written for “parents, teachers, grandparents, and other caregivers of those children who will put anything but food into their mouths.” Food for Tots, the complete guide to feeding preschoolers, is a comprehensive cookbook and nutrition guide. It is a great resource for parents, grandparents, day care providers and other caregivers of young children. The book includes tips for raising healthy eaters, from first foods to finger foods to family meals. There are more than 100 kid-tested recipes that will please even the pickiest eaters. Young children love to help cook. Woolley and Pugmire provide plenty of creative ways to involve the little ones in cooking. There are great recipes for playdough, bubbles, and other fun kitchen crafts. The book also contains four chapters of essential information about food allergies, food safety, nutrition, and how to encourage healthy eating behaviors. It addresses the common concerns that parents of young children! have. The format is lively, and easy to use.

From the Publisher
Increasing numbers of children in the United States are obese. On the other hand, children’s diets are often lacking in important nutrients. Why is this? Simply put, children are eating too much of the wrong foods and too little of the healthy ones! For example, a survey of the diets of more than 3,000 children found that only 1 percent met all of the national recommendations for daily food group intake.

Good eating habits need to begin early in life but preschool children, on average, do not eat enough vegetables and fruits. Their diets are low in fiber, vitamin A, and vitamin C but too high in fat. The vegetable most eaten by U.S. children is¯you guessed it¯french fries!

Part of the problem is that preschoolers are notoriously “picky eaters.” They like routine and predictability and usually don’t take easily to new foods. In order to develop a taste for a new food a child has to taste the food. It may take 8, 10 or more exposures to a new food before a young child is ready to try it. So what happens? Too often parents give up and stick with “kid foods” such as macaroni and cheese, hotdogs, fast foods, etc. These are high fat, low nutrition foods. Sadly, a pattern of lifelong poor eating can be established at a tender age. What can parents do to change this trend?

Having a battle at the dinner table is not the answer. Fortunately, there is a better way. According to Janice Woolley, M.D. and Jennifer Pugmire, B.S., authors of Food for Tots, there are some basic rules for helping children develop good eating habits. One of their Seven Rules for Encouraging Healthy Eating is to resist power struggles. They say, “Don’t try to force a child to eat. That is a battle you can’t win. Children who are pressured to eat actually end up eating less than those who are allowed to decide how much they want.” They provide the know-how and the healthy recipes to achieve the goal of healthy eating for the whole family.

About the Author
This mother and daughter coauthor team speaks from experience. Dr. Janice Woolley is a pediatrician with more than twenty five years of experience practicing pediatrics. Over the years she has helped numerous parents with their concerns about providing healthy food for their preschool children. She is also a mother and grandmother.

Jennifer Pugmire is a stay-at-home mom with three young children. She has taught in a coop preschool, provided home daycare, and been leader of a church-operated program for toddlers. She knows from experience how challenging it can be to get toddlers to eat nutritious foods.