Children’s nutrition is a fundamental aspect of their care, since their energy, growth and good health depend on it. When they are breastfed babies, it is relatively easy to know the amount of milk they should drink, either breast milk or formula. In the first, his crying and his gestures will let you know if he is hungry or stuffed. In the second, we can also take the rations recommended by the manufacturer as a reference.
When we make the move to complementary feeding, at least until the baby is one year old, milk will continue to be his primary sustenance. So that the foods that we offer him, both solid and pureed or porridge, respond more to the desire to introduce him little by little to food and to familiarize himself with the different foods.
However, their nutritional needs are complicated when we switch to giving them exclusively food. How much do you need based on your age? How should the types of food and nutrients be distributed on a plate to make it healthy and balanced? It is difficult to answer these questions exactly, since they depend considerably on the particularities of each child. Their age, size, lifestyle, appetite… All of this will influence and the parent’s instinct is usually right to know when the child has to eat more or less. However, there are general recommendations that can be taken as a reference.
The article “Preschool and school food”, written by the pediatrician and president of the Spanish Association of Pediatrics in the Canary Islands, Luis Peña Quintana, includes the approximate caloric requirements of children according to their age, although he points out that it always depends on the physical activity of the child. child, among other factors.
One-year-old children require approximately 800 to 1,000 kilocalories per day. At three years, this amount increases to between 1,300 and 1,500 kcal. For children from 4 to 6 years old, he recommends about 1,800 kcal per day, or 90 kcal of food per kilo of weight. Between 7 and 12 years of age, the adequate intake would be 2,000 kilocalories per day, or 70 kcal per kilo of weight.
Regarding the content of that ration of food for children, you can take as a reference the healthy eating plate prepared by nutrition experts from the Harvard School of Public Health (United States). According to this technique, half of the plate should be made up of vegetables and fruits. The more variety, the better.
A quarter of the plate should correspond to complex carbohydrates (wheat, rice, oats, pasta, bread…) and the other quarter is reserved for protein (either animal such as meat, eggs, heavy; or vegetable such as legumes or tofu ). Finally, we must add a small percentage of healthy fats, such as extra virgin olive oil, avocado or nuts.
