Healthy Meals & Snacks To Feed Your Toddler (Plus Supplements)
Toddlers can be amongst the pickiest eaters out there and meal time at this age can cause a bit of stress, tantrums, and sometimes downright food fights.
However, what we feed our children in these early developmental years is the stuff their organs, glands, brain and blood is forming on so the effort is well worth it to safeguard their health in their adult life by giving them a great foundation now.
My son Austin is 2.5 years old and, like all kids, he likes sweets. We have them, but in a smarter way and he also eats a wide array of healthy foods.
It’s important to note that a baby’s taste buds develop around 15 weeks in utero and by 20 weeks, the nerves from the taste buds begin to connect to the brain, sending signals for sweet, sour, and bitter, but the strongest fetal imprinting for taste is in the third trimester of pregnancy.
Studies show that your child will be more likely to eat the foods you ate during pregnancy all the way up until they are 8 years old.
I ate lots of greens, broth, salmon and other high-quality protein, coconut oil, nuts and seeds, and a ton of fruit during my pregnancy and now Austin loves all of these foods, minus the leafy greens which I sneak into his ice pops and smoothies.
If you didn’t eat as healthy as you would have liked during pregnancy, please don’t berate yourself. You can start now by offering your child healthier foods in creative ways.
If I label something as “special”, my son’s eyes light up and he views whatever I give him as a treat.
Here’s a day in the eating and supplement life of my healthy, thriving toddler.
Upon waking: He asks for milk, as soon as he wakes up. I give him organic raw goat’s milk whenever I can find it, and organic goat’s milk when raw is not available. He, like most kids, appears to do better on goat’s milk which more closely mirrors human breast milk and digests within 20-30 minutes vs. cow’s milk that can take several hours to fully digest.
However, I sometimes mix it up with Organic Pastures 100% grass fed raw milk because it contains all the enzymes needed for better digestion and assimilation.
It’s important to note than when he is not drinking raw milk (you must trust the source implicitly. I know where our raw milk comes from and that they test the microbial count of their animals bi-weekly), I add a pinch of Toddler Probiotics to it so that he has living organisms in his milk.
I give him ½ teaspoon of probiotics in his milk regardless twice a week to keep his good gut bacteria healthy and his immune system thriving. Moderation is key with probiotics as you do not to unnecessarily drive and rev their little immune systems with too much.
If you didn’t eat as healthy as you would’ve liked during pregnancy or if your child has not been eating many healthy foods, you can increase this to three times a week for several months and then go down to twice a week.
Good gut bacteria will help them to extract more nutrients out of the food they eat, as well as contribute to good gut and immune health and the shifting of taste buds to healthier fare.
TYPICAL BREAKFASTS TO FEED YOUR TODDLER
As my grandmother always said, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
It will help them ground into better energy, focus, and even better sleep that evening if you start them off eating breakfast within 30 minutes of waking and make sure to include high-quality protein, whole food carbs, and healthy fat.
Along with his 6oz of milk, Austin will eat any combination of the following for breakfast:
Breakfast Option #1
Pasture-raised egg (or sometimes two eggs), ¼ avocado, and either organic strawberries, blueberries, or ½ banana. As toddlers can be finicky, sometimes he boycotts eggs and that’s when I let him make them himself.
He either flips an over easy egg or scrambles it in the pan and then his sense of pride of what he made allows him to eat the egg much easier.
Breakfast Option #2
2 or sometimes 3 Applegate Chicken and Herb Sausages with fruit and cucumber slices with either pink salt or Hawaiian black salt on them. He feels the black salt is special and if he puts it on the “cuckies” himself, he’ll eat them all.

Breakfast Option #3
Full fat sheep or goat’s milk yogurt with 1 Tablespoon almond butter mixed in, 1 scoop pasture-raised collagen for added protein, ¼ teaspoon of Ceylon Cinnamon and Purely Elizabeth’s, organic gluten free (or grain-free) granola. The combination of fruit with grain is a tough one for their little bellies to digest and can cause gas so I try my best to separate out these foods – it’s not always possible with a toddler, but it helps. If he gets a grain-free granola, then I’ll give him fruit with this combo.
Breakfast Option #4
Good Culture Cottage Cheese, 1 sausage, and fruit of his choice. It’s important to not over do it on citrus and strawberries in the toddler phase because the vitamin C and acid overload can cause diaper rash due to harsher bowel movements and a little red rash on the face indicating that it’s too much acid and C for their little bodies to process. I limit him to 1 cutie (mini-orange) and 5 strawberries a day or even every other day. Then, I mix it up with peaches, pears, apples, bananas, raspberries, and blueberries.
Note that the rule of thumb on melon is “Eat it alone or leave it alone.” It’s summertime as I write this, so he’s eating watermelon as long as he eats it alone because of its quick fermentation and digestion. Eating it alone prevents gas and putrification in the belly while the other foods eaten with it digest first.
Breakfast Option #5
Sprouted Oatmeal. I’ll mix his goat milk into his oatmeal and then skip the bottle while also adding in 1 teaspoon of grass-fed ghee or coconut oil for his healthy fat, Ceylon cinnamon to stabilize his blood sugar, a touch of pink salt for minerals, and one scoop of collagen so he can get 9 grams of protein with breakfast. I also let him pour his own raw honey on top (limiting it to 1 tablespoon) and that’s his “special topping” that gets him to eat it.
Breakfast Option #6
Homemade paleo waffle done with almond flour, tapioca, and collagen topped with almond or cashew butter and ghee mixed and a tablespoon of organic maple syrup.
And like most kids, there are days where he just doesn’t want to eat so on those days, I attempt to bribe him with his “gum gums” which are his multivitamin (see below) and I wait to give them to him until after he eats.
If that doesn’t work, I give him his milk, let him watch a show to distract him and give him a teaspoon of ghee and coconut oil and a teaspoon of honey to stabilize him with healthy fats and carbs along with the protein in milk.
Someone once said to me, “as long as you get one good, healthy meal into a toddler daily, you’re winning” and it helped to take the pressure off and aim for that on the tougher eating days.
Toddler Supplements
Several times a week at breakfast, I give Austin 1 teaspoon of Nordic Naturals Children’s DHA for his healthy brain development. Children need DHA during this time of extreme maturation of the brain cells as it helps their language skills and all of their brain development.
If Austin has eaten a lot of wild salmon that week (3 times or so), I’ll skip it. There’s also a bit of healthy omegas in his multivitamin.
Smarty Pants Toddler Formula Multivitamin: This is a great toddler multivitamin that is organic, has methylated folate and B12 (open-source, food based, usable types of vitamins), and all the nutrients needed to help their little thyroid, adrenals, and nervous system develop as healthy as can be. I also love the choline and inositol for brain development and zinc for the immune system. Zinc is an especially important mineral for the prevention and healing from COVID and since most kids aren’t eating a lot of shellfish, it’s important for a toddler to have an appropriate amount of it in their multi.
Snack Time
Around 10 or 10:30am comes snack time and then again around 3 or 4pm.
Here are Austin’s favorite snacks:
- Mamma Chia Packet and Seaweed Snacks. Make sure to get sea snacks done in olive or rice bran oil and not with canola or sunflower or safflower oil.

- FitJoy Grain-Free Pretzels with either Cashews or Organic Cheese
- Sprouted raw pumpkin seeds with goji berries and mulberries and sometimes a square of Hu Kitchen chocolate because he’s kind of obsessed with chocolate at the moment
- Organic Grapes with almond slices or pistachios (he’s got a thing for salt like his mama)
- Homemade Ice Pops. This is where I aim to get foods in him that he otherwise wouldn’t eat like kale and spinach, sweet potato, butternut squash, carrots, and pumpkin. I’ll usually buy the organic baby food packets that have these mixed with fruit and freeze them.
If I don’t have these on hand, I’ll make a smoothie with mixed berries, banana, spinach, kale, collagen, Fit 365 Protein Powder, and coconut water and freeze those. This is our special thing where mommy and Austin make ice pops together and so that makes him love them even more!
- Paleovalley Grass-Fed Beef or Turkey Sticks: God bless these healthy beef sticks. Kids love them and it’s an easy way to stabilize them with protein. I always notice Austin is whinier when he doesn’t have enough protein. When he has enough protein, his moods are much more stable. I’ll either add fruit or Simple Mills Almond Flour crackers to this snack.
- A few times a week, I let him have a package of Smart Sweets Gummy Bears (they are sweetened with stevia) as a special treat as well as a few gluten free cookies made with almond and coconut flour and coconut sugar.
Other crunchy snacks include:
Lesser Evil Organic Popcorn or Paleo Puffs, Jackson’s Honest Purple Heirloom Potato Chips, or Siete Tortilla Chips. I try to get him to use a dip with these like hummus or guacamole that has some collagen in it. “Try” being the operative word here. 😉
TYPICAL LUNCHES & DINNERS FOR A TODDLER

- Applegate organic turkey slices, a peeled pear (super easy to digest), asparagus, and fermented pickles
- Beef stick, fruit, cucumbers, and peas
- Shredded or ground chicken sautéed in avocado or coconut oil with a veggie and a fruit
- Steamed or sautéed salmon or mahi mahi with fruit and asparagus or green beans done in coconut oil or peas with ghee or raw butter
- Gluten-free mac and cheese with added collagen for protein and a vegetable
- On occasion, we have gluten free pizza with a side of cucumbers
- Applegate hot dog with organic corn and broccoli
- A high-quality protein, olives, and quinoa or brown rice if I feel like cleaning up off the floor because this gets messy
If he wants another cup of milk before bed, I give it to him along with a snack of his choice. And if he hasn’t pooped that day, I give him one CALM gummy that has magnesium citrate and that usually takes care of any constipation. I also sometimes add magnesium drops to his water.
That brings us to bed time. If he’s having a hard time winding down, I give him a few drops of Rescue Remedy for his nervous system while he takes a bath with lavender soap and that does the trick. He also has two stuffed animals that are stuffed with lavender for its calming effect.
I hope you enjoyed a day in Austin’s eating life and that it helps you with your little(s). I’d love to hear what you are doing with your toddler – what’s working and what’s not as we can all benefit by learning from one another.
I’ll leave you a few of my favorite eating videos of Austin and all the good wishes for your growing child to be as healthy as they can possibly be!
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Great post! What about a daily Vit D supplement?
We don’t have local raw goat’s milk. Is it still worth it to give pasteurized goat’s milk weekly?
With our family history of autoimmune disease I really plan to keep my toddler dairy-free, though there is raw cow’s milk available near us.
I read the book: Super nutrition for babies. It really emphasized importance of raw milk into toddler’s diet. So torn what to do. Could alternate between the pasteurized goat’s milk and raw cow’s A2A2 milk??
Great post! Thanks for posting this. I found myself returning to this page a few times to get ideas! More posts like this please!
We’re so glad you found it helpful!
Great article with so many useful tips, thank you! You mention collagen often – how much and how often do you give it to him? What about beef vs. marine? Is this collagen the same benefit as a bone broth?
My son is 14 months. Do you think collagen helps eczema? I’ve been researching and found claims eczema is gut related. Any tips on that would be helpful. Since becoming a new mom I’m shocked at the lack of knowledge from the pediatricians on this. I would love to know if you think it is. Thanks again 😊
Hi Steph,
I give him collagen about once a day (one scoop = 9g protein) and I use the beef one. I do believe at 14 months, broth is the best form of collagen and for Austin, I used to put 2-4 ounces of it in with his milk as babies are born with a leaky gut and it’s up to us to seal it, especially as they start eating solids so broth is magic for that. It would be so amazing if pediatricians also got integrative nutrition training!
I love this! Thank you so much for some new ideas and also including brand names….I would love an article about what direction to go if you suspect your child has a not so great microbiome.. I found you after I had my girls and I suspect they have my former (before I did gut thrive) messed up gut bacteria as they seem to do best eating grain free…❤️
Hi Heather – you can talk to Jack about this and/or put them on a modified Gut Thrive plan. He can help with supplement dosages etc for the little ones or suggest homeopathics.
Does your little guy occasionally eat organic gluten-containing grains?
Hi Sabrina, yes but not on purpose. I believe his dad gives him some gluten or sometimes he sneaks his friend’s snacks so I like to keep him gluten-free at home as much as possible.
Beeeeraaauuuuutifuuuul videos! Thanks for sharing all your wonderful toddler meal plans and stories to boot! You’re an amazing woman and mother. God bless you, Christa Orecchio.
Thank you so much, Amy!
Hi Christa! Loved seeing this little snapshot of your lives. Austin is getting so big. Quick question….the girls and I are still going through the Recode, however, keeping in mind that my seven year old has always eaten a diet very similar to the Recode, would you say I could slowly start introducing things like (organic) goat’s milk, corn and oatmeal in forms such as you mentioned?
Hi Richelle,
Sure you can slowly start introducing these foods and they should be fine for them. Their body’s response (temp/pulse) will let you know how they’re working for her.
Lovely and heart warming!
Thanks for sharing your little man and so much valuable information with the community.
A question though:
Many years ago I learned not to combine raw fruit with other foods, e.g. eggs or sausages which you are giving your son.
Would you mind commenting on that, please? – Thank you. 🙂
Thank you, Margaret!
Austin digests fruit just fine as long as it is not combined with grain. Since both fruit and eggs are highly metabolic foods (easy to digest) and their digestion rate differs so much, the fruit can digest first, and then the egg for no problem whatsoever. When I give him sausage, I like to give him something with collagen as well to help the digestive process.
Thank you for sharing this information and for the cute pictures and videos!
Would you be share where you got his stuffed animals with the lavender from?
Also, how do you usually give him the rescue remedy? Do you put the drops straight into his mouth or do you do something else? Thank you!
Awwwwww thank you so much for sharing your son with us! I really enjoyed reading and watching the videos you included.
MORE PEAS, PEASE!!!!
He is so cute and clearly healthy and thriving! 🙂 Thank you!
LOL “More peas, please!” is a mantra around our house. 🙂
Thanks for your kind words. We are blessed that he is healthy and thriving! xx
Love the lavender stuffed animals idea!! How do you do that? Would love to learn more about your vax approach. Will send a msg. Thanks so much for sharing all this, Mama C!
Great details! Question- where did you find the divided plates? I’ve been looking for those.
One more question! Do you add a teaspoon of healthy fat at each meal (total 3 times per day)? Thanks 🙂
Awww…he has your beautiful eyes! What a sweetheart. Good job mama. Hope to pass these ideas along to the mama of the 10-month old I babysit.
Aww thank you, Cheryl!!! I hope you can pass them on to the 10-month old you babysit. xx
Thankyou so much, I have learned a lot from this video. Your son is absolutely adorable, he loves his food and has such a good appetite! Good job Mom! I just learned about sprouted oats and just ordered them for myself as I have such a hard time digesting regular oats.
I’m so glad it was helpful, Diane! Thank you for your kind words about Austin. He is a little Italian boy for sure and loves his food. 🙂
I hope you love the sprouted oats! xx
Okayyyyyyy, I have been waiting for this day! Thank you for sharing these precious videos and giving me a window into your world with your son!
I love how he scoops the food into his hand and then eats!
💔
So welcome, Kristen!! Totally, the food scoop is my fav ❤️
Beautiful boy, great post, thank you. Love the videos and his little spoon 🙂
Thanks Joanna! Glad you enjoyed little mister’s eating vids. 🙂
Thank you for great meal ideas.
I was wondering if you’d consider doing a post on vaccinations for children. I’m hesitant to have my little one vaccinated for certain vaccines, particularly MMR.
Hi Natalie. Yes I will eventually do a blog post about vaccines. Please do feel free to write into my team with your questions and make sure to include your email and I can write you back that way with my thoughts until I get that blog post written. If you do give your child MMR, it’s best to also treat him/her homeopathically with the MMR vaccine, to mud pack the site, use Thuja and Ledum homeopathics the day of vaccination. I LOVE this book about natural immune education. https://www.amazon.com/Solution-Homeoprophylaxis-Vaccine-Alternative/dp/1480001910/ref=sxts_sxwds-bia-wc-nc-drs1_0?cv_ct_cx=the+solution&dchild=1&keywords=the+solution&pd_rd_i=1480001910&pd_rd_r=93e731c3-7582-401c-a9d0-427d32845bb2&pd_rd_w=1QCul&pd_rd_wg=1Yrfs&pf_rd_p=43f4b3f0-0b04-46ba-8a08-2e851d035e17&pf_rd_r=TRNXMK6S32DH1SBKWMAW&psc=1&qid=1595361664&sr=1-1-f3947b35-9c59-4d7a-9603-b751e6eed25b
Hi Christa! I saw Nathalie’s request and wanted to say I would also love to read your blog post about vaccines. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on which ones you felt strongly about vaccinating for etc. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us 🙂
Will do. Thanks, Sabrina
Oh, he is so precious! I’m so glad you have the videos, so you can look back at this age years from now. Love seeing him so into his food…at least at that moment. 🙂 Good job, Christa! You are doing a great job!
Thank you, Mary!! 🙂 Yes, these videos melt my heart. Soooo into his food like a good Italian boy. 😉 xoxo
Thank you so much for providing this information. My twenty-one month old has gone from eating everything healthy to a very picky eater. These ideas are much needed and appreciated.
I am curious how Austin takes his DHA. My daughter spits it out.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us!
You’re so welcome, Danika. Eating can be a challenge during toddlerhood so go easy on yourself. Austin 90% of the time just downs it because I get the strawberry flavor and he likes the taste.
Great read, I love to hear what you are doing with your toddler!
Two questions for you:
1) If there is a reason you prefer goats milk over sheep milk for toddlers?
2) At what age did you stop night feeds of milk with your little one?
Thanks!
Hi Sabrina! There isn’t a particular reason, as both digest quite well. Goat’s milk is easier for Christa to find. Austin was a big kid so she stopped night feeding somewhere around 6 months and he started sleeping 12 hours. Christa loved the book Baby Sleep Solution that helps you night wean.
Thank you!
So adorable. Thank you for all this valuable information.
So welcome, T. Hope all is well with the Ginn Bin! xoxo