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      Start young and set reasonable expectations. The average toddler consumes about 1,000 to 1,300 calories daily. He might eat a lot one day and next to nothing the next. That’s normal. Don’t freak out if your kid doesn’t eat much for a day, but do make sure he stays hydrated. Focus on how well he eats over the course of a week. Here are some tips for encouraging your toddler to eat a healthy diet:

      ✔ Offer a nibble tray with a variety of different healthy foods in different, shapes, colors, and sizes. Use an ice tray or muffin tin or something similar and place in each compartment some avocados, banana, carrots, broccoli, egg, and apples. A child may need to be exposed to a new food 10 to 15 times before she tries it.

      ✔ Allow your child to dip foods into cottage cheese, guacamole, organic nut butters, Greek yogurt, or pureed veggies and fruits.

      ✔ Plant a garden. Involve your child in planting the seeds, watering the plants, and harvesting the crop.

      ✔ Mix veggies in with other foods (casseroles are great for hiding chopped vegetables) and instead of serving raw veggies, steam the veggies and use organic butter or organic coconut oil to flavor them.

      ✔ Don’t make your child eat something he doesn’t like or doesn’t want to try. Doing so may set the stage for anxiety around mealtime. Likewise, don’t bribe your child with dessert or anything else to encourage her to eat a particular food item or to eat more of something. And don’t become a short order cook, because this encourages children to become picky eaters.

      ✔ Choose only foods that are nutrient dense; avoid processed foods that are empty calories – void of or low in nutritional value. In particular, avoid fruit juices, because most contain a high amount of sugar.

      ✔ Minimize distractions at mealtime (for example, turn off the TV) and set a good example by eating a variety of healthy foods yourself.

       Fruits and vegetables

      Plant-based foods are chock-full of vitamins, antioxidants, and phytonutrients that keep your body strong and help fight infection and disease:

      ✔ Fruits: All fruits are healthy, but eat mostly those fruits that are relatively low on the glycemic index, including berries of all kinds, apples, cherries, coconuts, oranges, peaches, pears, and plums. Avoid dried fruits, because they contain much higher levels of sugar.

      ✔ Vegetables: When shopping for vegetables, choose different colors (green, red, orange, yellow, and purple) and rotate your selections. You can eat any and all vegetables raw, juiced, steamed, sautéed, or baked, but keep in mind that heating vegetables destroys some of their nutrients. Raw and juiced veggies are best.

      

Eat organic as much as possible, especially berries, apples, celery, and peaches, which are typically the most highly contaminated produce. Not only are organic foods pesticide-free, but they’re also grown using farming methods, such as crop rotation, that produce more nutrient-rich foods.

       Beans

      Beans, both dried and canned, are a healthy staple to keep in your pantry. The only exception is soy beans, which you should eliminate from your diet; almost all soy products in the U.S. are genetically modified. Beans include foods actually called “beans” (lima beans, kidney beans, and so on), lentils (brown, green, and red), and split peas.

       Grains: Breads, cereals, and pastas

      When stocking up on grains, exclude wheat and other grains that contain gluten: wheat (spelt, khorasan, farro, durum, bulgur, semolina), barley, rye, and triticale. Instead, choose these grains, which are gluten-free: amaranth, buckwheat, millet, oats, quinoa, brown rice, white rice, wild rice, and teff. Limit your consumption of nongluten grains to no more than one serving daily.

      

Oats are commonly contaminated with wheat. So when you’re shopping for oats, read the label carefully and buy oats that are labeled “gluten-free” and are manufactured in a plant where wheat products are not processed or stored.

      You typically consume grains in the form of cereals, pastas, and baked goods, including bread:

      ✔ Cereals and pastas: Too much carbohydrate spikes your glucose and insulin levels and triggers inflammation. For that reason, I don’t advocate eating cereals and pasta routinely, but when you do have them, look for non-wheat varieties with a relatively high protein-to-carbohydrate ratio. Here’s a list of acceptable cereals and pastas: Cream of Rice, oats (labeled “gluten-free” and processed in a wheat-free factory), puffed rice, puffed millet, quinoa flakes, rice pasta, 100 percent buckwheat noodles, and rice crackers.

      ✔ Breads: Even whole-grain, wheat-free, gluten-free breads are high in simple carbohydrates that spike blood glucose and insulin levels and have the potential to trigger inflammation. If you must eat bread, go gluten-free and look for breads stored in the freezer at the health food store or in the health food section of your grocery store, because these loaves are less likely to contain preservatives.

      ✔ Flour: If you do any baking, the good news is that you have plenty of options when it comes to choosing wheat-free, gluten-free flour, including amaranth, arrowroot, brown rice, chick pea (garbanzo bean), millet, potato, quinoa, sorghum, tapioca, teff, and white rice.

      

Grains are simple carbohydrates that spike your blood sugar and insulin and cause inflammation. If you have a health challenge, particularly an autoimmune disorder, then removing all grains from your diet may significantly improve your health. Many people do better on a totally grain-free diet. See the earlier section “Eliminating the foods that ail you” for details.

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