I was worried about my toddlers and their eating – specifically how much they were eating. When we first adopted them, they would just eat and eat and eat. I think they had hollow legs or something, because I don’t know where they put all the food. After a while they started slowing down in their eating habits. I was a bit worried – I wanted to make sure they were getting all the nutrition they needed. One day I was at the store and I bought them some Gerber Graduate meals in a tray. When I opened them up and looked at the size of the meal I realized just how much the boys had been eating and that I was expecting them to eat more than what a proper serving size would be.

So what is the right serving size for foods for toddlers? The experts will tell you that a serving is about 1 tablespoon for every year of age, so a serving of vegetables for a 2 year old would be 2 tablespoons. For a two year old child, some examples of the serving sizes of foods would be:

• ½ egg
• ¼ cup cooked or cold cereal
• ¼ cup pasta
• ½ cup milk
• ½ slice bread
• 1 ounce of cooked meat

For children over two years old the Food Pyramid suggests the following amounts of food be consumed on a daily basis:

• 6 ounces grains
• 2 ½ cups vegetables
• 1 ½ cups fruit
• 3 cups dairy products (over age 8 – for children under age 8 it is 2 cups)
• 5 ounces meat or beans

You can check out the USDA web site for more information on the food pyramid.