Nutrition in Growth & Development - Sample Menu with 3 Meals and Calories

Nursing Students Student Assist

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Dear Fellow Nursing Students I am looking for straightforward menu samples for Infant, Toddler, Preschooler, School Age and Adolescent.

These menus must contain:

3 Meals with Specific Portions of each food to be given and Specific Calories for Each.

For example give 2 spoons of mashed avocado at lunchtime to a 5 year old infant at an X amount of calories. I looked at choosemyplate.gov and numerous nutrition websites and could not find any specific. Any suggestions would be welcome and much much appreciated! Thank you in advance!!!!

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You are not likely to receive the answer you seek here. We are more than happy to help you with your homework, but will not do it for you. I suggest you type out what information you have found so far and what you think a good sample menu is for each age group and we can help you modify your meal plan to the best answer.

Good luck in your studies.

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Moved to Nursing Student Assistance

You need to search using terms "sample menus for + age group" will pull up several websites.

eg

Toddler Menus - Wholesome Toddler Food

Sample Daily Menu For A 1 Year Old Child | SuperKids ...

USDA's Searchable Nutrient Database - Enter in any food and find it's nutrient content

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Specializes in Pedi.

Infants don't eat 3 meals a day. They drink bottles or breast feed all day and night long. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends exclusive breast feeding for the first 6 months. Purees are typically introduced at around 6 months so a 5 month old (I'm assuming you meant 5 month old infant since a 5 year old is not an infant and would be eating way more than 2 spoons of mashed avocado) isn't usually eating lunch, he's taking bottles q 3-4 hours or breastfeeding.

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Thank you for all your responses. I actually did my homework before looking back on this forum, so what I did was I found the calories intake per age group and daily requirements for iron and protein and vitamins and I looked through sample menus on different websites. Then I used the calories counter website to figure out the actual calories consumed per meal. That was a lot of work by the way 3 meals and 2 snacks per day for each stage of development with calories. Whew! And Infants do eat solid foods, pureed of course, starting 6 months - 8 months of age, obviously they still drink formulas and/or breast milk but they are supposed to start on solid foods around that age and then increase their variety and what not. Thank you for all your responses.

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Thank you so much! I wish I found the USDA searchable nutrient database earlier! I will save it as it may come in useful later!

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And yes, obviously I meant a 5 month old infant, LOL, not A 5 YEAR old. Duh...

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Specializes in Neuro, Telemetry.
Thank you for all your responses. I actually did my homework before looking back on this forum, so what I did was I found the calories intake per age group and daily requirements for iron and protein and vitamins and I looked through sample menus on different websites. Then I used the calories counter website to figure out the actual calories consumed per meal. That was a lot of work by the way 3 meals and 2 snacks per day for each stage of development with calories. Whew! And Infants do eat solid foods, pureed of course, starting 6 months - 8 months of age, obviously they still drink formulas and/or breast milk but they are supposed to start on solid foods around that age and then increase their variety and what not. Thank you for all your responses.

Just a side bar. Infants are not "supposed to try" foods at 6 months. They can, but there is not anything the 6 month old requires that breast milk or formula cant provide for at least the first year of life. So solids are not a nutritional requirement for any infant. However, an infants GI system is usually matured enough for "solid" food around 6 months old. But any food given a child under 1 year old should be supplemental to the breast milk or formula and not the actual only meal. Just something to consider when you meal plan. Dont plan for 3 meals only for the infant. Those meals should be preceded by breast milk or formula, then the solid offered after. This is to teach the infant how to eat and to allow for the infant to learn new flavors for when the time to replace breast milk or formula with actual food comes.

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Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
And yes, obviously I meant a 5 month old infant, LOL, not A 5 YEAR old. Duh...

A 5mo infant - breastmilk PRN. Lather, rinse, repeat. There, that one was easy!

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

What type of meals and snacks did you come up with? Just curious.

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