Feeding a fussy toddler

Until around a year old, most babies tend to be fairly obliging eaters. Then, sometime before their second birthday, eating habits can mysteriously change. Out of nowhere, the biddable baby who once loved everything from broccoli to bananas will suddenly eat nothing but junk food, but don't panic, we've got a healthy-eating trick or two to tempt her.

Playing power games

At around the age of two, toddlers start to experiment with throwing their weight around. After all, most toddlers learn to shake their heads and say no before they say yes.

”Food can be such a flashpoint for mums,” says dietician Nigel Denby. Who can blame us when we've spent half an hour frantically cooking only to have the fruits of our labours flung on the floor?

But, you see, a wily toddler will sense our stress and play up to it. ”Toddlers often refuse certain foods to get a reaction,” says Nigel. ”It's all about showing their independence, which is a natural part of their development.”

So, the best response is actually not to respond at all.

”If your toddler sees you're irritated when she refuses something, it gives her power,” says Nigel. Your baby is much more likely to adopt healthy eating habits if you have a laid-back attitude to food.

If you do find yourself getting into a stew, ask someone else to take over for a bit, if you can. It's an utterly galling fact of parental life that children will often clear the plate for Granny or Dad where you struggled to get them to swallow a single pea.

Making food fun

Another way to persuade even the most hard-to-please toddler to tuck in is to work on your meal-presentation skills: arrange food into interesting shapes or serve it on different coloured plates.

”Remember, children fall for the visual appeal of cheese strings and squeezy tubes of fromage frais. So we need to be a little inventive in how we present our healthy food, too,” says Annabel Karmel, who has written several books about how to make foods more tempting for tots. “Mini meals, such as cottage pies in ramekin dishes, look far more appealing than a dollop of food on a plate,” she says.

When they're old enough, children can help prepare meals, too. Making a fruit salad together, choosing the ingredients and breaking them up in their chubby fingers, is a messy but fun way to win round a fruit phobic.

Disguising food

When she can't abide it, hide it. ”If your child won't eat up her vegetables, create recipes that blend them in, such as a tomato and vegetable sauce for pasta, or grated carrot and courgette in a chicken burger,” says Annabel. ”What children can't see, they can't then pick out.”

She should know. She may be the Jamie Oliver of the under-threes but she's had her fair share of standoffs with a fusspot toddler. ”I would never have written my first book had I not had to deal with the world's worst eater: my son Nicholas,” she says. ”He wouldn't eat chicken, for example. But because I knew he loved apples, I made him chicken and apple balls, which he loved.”