Dear Lupi,

As your son's intake of table food increases, his formula intake decreases. Actually, you will want to encourage table food by cutting back on his formula. By now you can begin to substitute milk in a cup at mealtimes for the formula. If you overdo it on the formula you will be filling him up so that he is not hungry or motivated to eat other solids that provide important nutrition and developmental stimulation.

Begin establishing a three meal a day schedule with snacks in between. Save the formula for snack time. After the first year a baby's food intake decreases, as does their milk intake. This is normal, so do not get concerned if you see it happen. As long as he is growing well he is getting enough to eat.

Let me give you some guidelines so you can know how much of the different critical nutrients your son needs, and then how that translates into food intake.

1. Protein: Minimum of 16 grams on a daily basis. 16 oz. of milk plus 1 oz. of meat = ample protein for the toddler.
2. Fat: At least 30% of a toddler's calories should come from fat. Too little fat can result in "failure to thrive" where children do not get enough food to supply their energy and growth needs.
3. Calories: 40 calories/day/inch of height = 1000 to 1300 calories/day
   calorie distribution is apt to look like this:

   16 grams protein = 64 calories
   44 grams fat = 396 calories
   210 grams carbohydrate = 840 calories
   Total = 1300 calories
4. Sodium 325-1000mg/day
5. Vitamin C 40 mg/day
6. Vitamin A 2500 IU/day
7. Calcium 800mg/day
8. Iron 10mg/day
9. Zinc 10mg/day
10. Folate 50ug/day

The last four nutrients I listed are the nutrients showing up as the most frequent nutritional inadequacies in toddlers.

The specific nutritional needs translate into the following guidelines for feeding a toddler:

• 2 to 3 cups of milk (remember...this milk can take many forms such as yogurt, cheese, pudding, etc.)
• 4 servings of fruits or vegetables (1 tablespoon/year is the guideline for serving size.) One serving should be high in vitamin C and one should be high in vitamin A
• 4 servings of bread and cereal: Kids may eat a disproportionately large amount from this group but this is fine so long as minimum requirements from other groups are being met. An iron fortified infant cereal should be included daily.
• 2 servings of meat, beans, eggs, or peanut butter. A good serving of protein should be fed at every meal. A meal should provide protein, bread or cereal, fruit or vegetable or both and milk.

Remember, you will be gradually getting to this kind of eating pattern. It will take time to get there. Add the new foods gradually so as not to overwhelm your son with too much new at once. If he has already eaten a lot of these foods in the form of baby food puree than you do not need to be as slow or deliberate as you were in his infancy in the quest to detect any potential allergies. Also, be flexible and remember these are only guidelines. Over the course of a few days, he may not come close to eating everything on the list. Just keep track over a weeks period of time and see if things balance out. If they don't you can make the necessary adjustments the next week. It may help to keep a little notebook in the kitchen to jot down what he eats for a while, until you get an intuitive sense that he is eating as he should.

You can be creative in serving any of these item, for example, you said that you son only readily eats bread, and Cheerios. You can try serving him some pumpkin bread as a way to increase his intake of a vegetable high in vitamin A. Add a little dry powdered milk to the recipe and you can increase his protein and calcium intake. You can add pureed or shredded vegetables to hamburgers or meatloaf. Fruit can be drunk in the form of a 'smoothie' which is vanilla yogurt mixed in the blender with any combination of fruit that sounds yummy. An excellent combo is banana, vanilla yogurt and orange juice.

I hope you find this information and guidelines helpful. Thanks for writing.