EP 27: Top 5 Foods for Your 1-Year-Old

Could a few simple foods help close common nutrition gaps in your one-year-old’s diet? In this episode, Dr. Liz Daniels shares the five foods she wishes every family knew about as babies grow from breast milk or formula into toddlerhood. She explains why the first 1,000 days matter so much for brain growth, immune support, and long-term development, while reminding parents that perfection is not the goal. You’ll learn why fatty fish, seeds, eggs, beans, and whole milk can make a big difference, especially for nutrients like iron, DHA, vitamin E, choline, fiber, and vitamin D. With practical, budget-friendly tips, this episode helps parents feel more confident feeding their toddler well, one small step at a time.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why nutrition gaps can happen as babies become toddlers
• Why the first 1,000 days are so important for brain growth
• Which nutrients do one-year-olds often need more of
• The top five foods Dr. Liz recommends for one-year-olds
• Simple ways to add these foods without pressure or perfection

Episode highlights:
(0:00) Why nutrition gaps can happen around age one
(1:19) Why variety matters in toddler nutrition
(2:00) The first 1,000 days and brain development 
(5:00) Key nutrients: iron, DHA, vitamin E, choline, and vitamin D
(10:21) Food #1: Fatty fish for iron, DHA, and vitamin D
(13:49) Food #2: Seeds for omega-3s and vitamin E
(18:23) Food #3: Eggs for choline and brain support
(21:24) Food #4: Beans for fiber, choline, and iron
(22:45) Food #5: Whole milk for vitamin D and calcium
(25:36) How to serve these foods without pressure or perfection

NEW COURSE! "Read the Pattern: Feeding Your Baby 0–4 Months" — because a healthy relationship with food starts earlier than most people think. Course Link!

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only, not medical advice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Nutrition for the Earliers Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Liz Daniels, nutrition-focused pediatrician, here to support you in guilt-free guidance as you feed your family well. So, today I'm going to talk to you about the top five foods that I wish every family knew about how to feed their one-year-old well. You see, there's something that a lot of people don't understand, and that is that there are nutrition gaps, real, meaningful nutrition gaps that occur as your baby is starting to grow and transition from breastfeeding or transition off of formula into the world of becoming a toddler. And you know what? These are like quiet little gaps that can occur over time and they widen as your kid grows. And there are simple ways that we can address this with just a handful of foods. So today we're gonna dive into the top five foods I think every one-year-old should have in their diet. Welcome back to the Nutrition for the Earliers podcast with me, your host, Dr. Lewis Daniel. I'm a nutrition first kind of pediatrician, and this podcast is for the parent who's second-guessing their grocery cart, worrying if their kid is gonna end up with the same food struggles that they once had. I love getting into the weeds of what kids actually need and then putting it into context of where they're at in growth and development so you can let go of the shame and guilt and focus on what actually moves the needle together. Let's get into it. Okay, so there's like a lot of fun ways to be able to feed your kid. And I think that diversity is the key. So, really and truly, before I go into these five favorites, I want you to know that getting variety in our diet is ultimately hands down, all the literature in the adult and the kids will tell you that the best nutrition comes from a diverse diet, not from just eating the same five foods every day. Okay. So, right out the gate, important thing to clarify here. Now, that said, I bring this up because there are some really important nutrients that our kids and babies really, really need. And the reason is timing. Have you ever heard of the first thousand days? That's kind of where I'm going with this. So the first thousand days are like from while mom is pregnant all the way through the first couple of years of life. And those are critical days, days where you are laying down fundamental programming and fundamental neurons for brain development. And this is a critical window. Now, you'll probably recall things that interrupt that, right? So these are called teratogens or things that can damage development along the way. And these are really scary things. So on the like extreme side of this, this critical window is affected by infections or medications that mom, if she has during pregnancy, can actually terminate the pregnancy or cause, you know, sillbirth or impact parts of development that can impact the child long term. So these are really kind of scary things, things that you know of, like certain medications, some that have been used in the past, some that are even things like alcohol, right? And tobacco can do this too. So some of those are called teratogens, where there's something that does harm to the fetus. But think about the positives on the other side. Nutrition is huge for the first thousand days of life, because in the first thousand days, you are literally the only time ever able to maximize this opportunity for brain development, for neuronal enhancement, for all these like programming that will set your kid up forever. And I don't say this to say, you know, to doom and gloom you, but to highlight how incredible this opportunity is. And it actually can be done quite easily, but knowledge is the key here. And not everybody, even if you just take a prenatal vitamin, are really gonna get that, right? It's more than that. I think prenatal is key, but in our prenatal care and in the first, you know, two years of life, making sure the baby has access to these core nutrients are so important for development. There are more than just my top five. Okay, so that's there, there are lots out there. But inevitably, when you consume the foods that I'm talking about and have diversity, there's enough overlap that you'll get those other little teeny ones that are really, you know, less heard of and and but still important. So in the first thousand days of life, as your baby is growing in your belly all the way out to the first two years, the window doesn't fully, fully close after a thousand days of life. It just an opportunity you can't fully regain. So think about like Amazon Prime Day or um, you know, Black Friday. Something you have in mind that you're looking forward to and you know that there's gonna be a sale on it. So you kind of shop around and think about it. But the worst thing is when you buy it right before one of those days, and then you look back and realize, and oh, I saved 20%, but I could have saved 40% if I'd done it on this one particular day. Same kind of idea, just in the reverse. There's benefit with these nutrients as your kid gets bigger, but the best benefit is in the first thousand days. Okay, so what nutrients? All right. They are really key. Now, the ones that I highlight are really iron and DHA, vitamin E, choline, and actually there's some more. Vitamin A is also incredibly important, but the one that I'm gonna highlight actually is vitamin D. And there's reasons for this because that is actually based on data that we tend to lack this in the US more than anything else. But it's not so much that we that it plays the heaviest lift in critical development from a brain standpoint. I'm gonna delineate that as we go along. But iron and vitamin E, DHA, and choline, they are like this like little quartet that has to go together and benefit each other so beautifully for the brain. Okay. Now, they all have special roles and do different things. Iron is really important for a lot of things in the body. I'm sure you know this. It's important for making red blood cells, it's important for carrying oxygen and muscle tissue for myoglobin synthesis. It's really important in helping develop the immune system and signaling within the immune system. But one of the things that's key here is that it's actually really important in neuronal development as well. And not just the like core brainstem, but the front part of the brain. Our brains develop from the back all the way to the front, with the frontal lobe, your prefrontal cortex being the very last thing that develops. I'm sure you've heard that your brain doesn't stop developing until you're 25. And that's really the part of the brain that we're thinking about. But the critical window in the womb and in the first couple of years of life are really important. And if we don't have quite enough iron available for that, then it does limit that ability of cognitive development. In fact, there are lots of studies, long-term, this is not new, where you have babies that are deficient and their counterparts who have adequate stores of iron. And the cognitive difference can lead to real measurable IQ differences as the kid gets older. Even if you replace that iron later on, it doesn't fully recover that deficit from the iron deficiency. The tricky part here is that iron is complicated. And this doesn't just mean getting enough in your diet, it means absorbing it. And that adds another layer of complexity. I'm not going to spend an hour here talking about iron, metabolism, and absorption, although it very much needs its own podcast. Don't worry, plan to do that. But not everything we absorb reaches the blood-brain barrier. I'm saying this just to highlight that there are challenges, real challenges within our body. So sometimes even when you're getting it in your diet, it doesn't always end up there. And I want to make that clear because it's not just about consuming it. It's just knowing that sometimes those things are out of our control, right? But if you have it within your control to at least make sure that it's there, then you're doing your part. You can't always control your body. But often, if we're aware that it's something we need to get, then we can bring some attention to making sure that that happens, both for us when we're pregnant and for our babies. Now, one quick caveat: if you are a breastfeeding mama and you lost a lot of blood during pregnancy or delivery and you are iron deficient, that does not mean that your milk is iron deficient, okay? Part of the reason you're iron deficient is because your body is amazing at making sure the baby gets everything that it can. So it will pull from your stores in order to preferentially keep that iron status the same. The problem here is that breast milk just doesn't have much iron in it, regardless of your iron status. So as kids get bigger, once they reach about six months, their iron needs exponentially shoot up. We go from needing about a half of a milligram, a quarter to a half a milligram a day, all the way up to needing 11 milligrams a day. 11. You cannot get that without supplementation, like really. And that can be, I don't mean oral supplementation with like a new, like a supplement supplement. I mean like food. Now, I'm gonna get into the foods that I love for this in a little bit, but I just like to highlight that iron is so important because from month six through 11, your baby needs so much more. Okay, like so much more. And their body knows, so they tend to shift in their um absorption. Their bodies naturally will absorb a little bit more than in their diet, which is super cool. It's just our job as parents to know that they need it, okay? As they get older after a year, that can decrease in in need. So they go down to about seven milligrams a day, which is pretty handy. As they continue to grow, that deficit, if it was there, if there was a gap between what they were getting and what they needed when they were six to eleven months old. Sometimes we don't see it until they're quite a bit older. So it can be kind of old news, but we just haven't fully replenished that. So we need to. This is why your doctor, when they're nine months or a year, um, will check with a little toe prick their hemoglobin to make sure that their iron stores are okay. Bear in mind, that's not our best test. There are more precision there. Again, deeper conversation for another day, but we want to make sure that we're not missing kids who have iron deficiency anemia. Now, the foods that I love that have a lot of iron in them, well, actually, iron fortified cereal is a great one. That's pretty cool. So, my number one food, actually, that I'm gonna recommend are fatty fish. And the reason I like this, this can be in the form of, yes, um, salmon, but also mackerel and sardines. Those are fatty fish, right? Those are great examples because they have heme-based iron, a type of iron that is very bioavailable compared to the non-heme iron. And as your baby eats it, they don't have to eat a ton of it in order to be able to get the benefit. So heme-based iron is really key, and our um fatty fish have a lot of that heme-based iron that's bioavailable. So that's my number one. Okay, it's for the iron. But the other reason I love that food is for nutrient number two, DHA, or that part of omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fatty acids come in two varieties. There's the plant-based omega-3 fatty acid, ALA, that's, and then there's the um DHA, EPA. This is what is in fatty fish. Omega-3 fatty acids are really key. Omega-3s are kind of there's sort of, there's a couple of them that I want to kind of distinguish because the names get thrown around, but they don't all quite mean the same thing. Omega-3 fatty acids come in a plant form, and then our body has to convert that plant form over to DHA. Or we can get DHA from the animal sources of omega-3 fatty acids where it's already been converted and we just get the benefit. So this matters because there'll be different values. When we think about ALA or the plant-based omega-3 fatty acid, we have to get grams of this. Like this is like a lot in order to convert it. Still able to do, okay? Not a big deal. Our bodies can totally handle that. But you only need milligrams, about a hundred a day, for our DHA. That's from the animal source. Now, breast milk contains about quite a bit of DHA in it that varies based on mom's diet. But omega-3 fatty acids are really important because these are the type of fatty acids that are they're really important. They play in a lot of different roles in the baby and in the growing brain, but they are part of what makes the membrane on neurons and they help support that neuronal development. So you can't make something without all the Lego pieces, right? Like you want to build a Lego spaceship, but if you don't have any of the pieces or you don't have any of the parts to make a wing, you're probably not gonna be able to make it. And it's certainly not gonna be able to fly, right? So the idea is the same. If you have parts, but not all of the pieces to make those neurons, then you're gonna be limited. And with your DHA or omega-3 fatty acids, we really want to make sure that we get plenty there. And I highlight this because in American diets, generally, we have a pretty big deficit of DHA or omega-3 fatty acids. So it's very, very common to see kids who really are not getting enough in their diet at all. Now, formula is gonna have this fortified. So it's really when we're turning to a year, or if mom didn't have enough in her diet or breast milk, then as we wean and they are taking over more of that nutrition, we really want to make sure it's in their diet as they turn it year. Now, there are some amazing ways to do that. And guess what? I already told you fatty fish. It's one of the best ways to do that. And I love fatty fish for this reason. The other way that might surprise you, and this is from the plant source, but also really, really great, are seeds. So this is my food number two, which are seeds. Now, I say seeds in plural because they kind of have differences between them and they have different micronutrients. And again, what did I say in the very, very beginning? Diversity. If I had to pick my favorite, gosh, this is really hard. If I had to pick my favorite, I still go between hemp seeds and sunflower seeds. I struggle because they're both so amazing. So I'm gonna keep it at seeds, but you just I want you to know that hemp seeds are amazing because they contain a lot of that ALA, omega-3 fatty acid, that our body can convert over to DHA. And it is so easy to add a little bit that goes a long way in our baby's diets. This can be easily done if you're making it into baked goods. And one of the cool things about this is that unlike some other fatty sources or fatty nutrients, it's actually not heat sensitive. So you can actually bake with hemp seeds. You can use it pureed if you're gonna make a smoothie. This is my favorite way of making it for my kids. And I make protein balls with peanut butter and stuff like that with um with hemp seeds. And so this is actually how I get it in my kids' diets and have done since they were little bitty because it's such a helpful tool. Flaxseed, similar kind of idea. Now, chia seed has some too. It's just a different texture, and so not everybody is a huge fan of it, but I can usually incorporate without anybody knowing or giving a little care for flaxseed and um hemp seed in my kids' diets very easily. And I encourage it regularly for my patients. Now, the other reason I like this goes on to our nutrient number three, and that is vitamin E. You guys, this is a really important one because you know how I told you DHA is really key? Well, DHA has a buddy. We all have buddies in life, right? And sometimes you like, if you're a girl and you like to go to the restaurant, maybe you know, you're on a double date with somebody, you're gonna go to the restroom. That means Q, um, friend, you're coming with me because we're gonna talk. So you have this buddy, and without it, it's really important. So DHA is a very sensitive fatty acid. It wants to be in the membranes of our neurons, but it's very sensitive to oxidative damage. Well, vitamin E is an antioxidant that protects it from that oxidative damage. So you can have lots of DHA in your diet. And without vitamin E, it's maybe not going to make it to where it needs to go. It might get damaged in the process, or if it gets into the membrane, we have to repair those membranes. And vitamin E is that buddy that helps us. It's our protector and our friend. So vitamin E and DHA should always be coupled together. And this, my friends, is why I love food over our supplements so much because guess what's in our seeds? Along with DHA, vitamin E are in our sunflower seeds, our hemp seeds, our chia seeds. It's just naturally there. It's how it was designed. And it's so amazing because it really is powerful for our kids. So I love having vitamin E there. The other thing that vitamin E does that's really important is that it actually helps develop and signal in the immune system. It's very key as an antioxidant in helping teach your immune system which thing to fight, right? We have different parts of our immune system. We have parts of our immune system that will fight viruses, some that will fight bacteria, some that will help us with different methods and different pathways. Vitamin E is a crucial key in part of that. So, in part of our immune signaling and immune development, we need vitamin E. And guess what? Unfortunately, most kids and toddlers, especially once we hit a year, are not getting enough vitamin E. And like by a lot, like not even barely half of the kids in the US get get enough vitamin E. And it's really a big part of this, is because as you transition away from formula, which is so incredibly valuable, it comes down. And if we're not getting it in these seeds, it's really hard to get it. Vitamin E can be in grass-raised beef or in higher quantities, in some other things if it's been added to it, but it's pretty sensitive. And really and truly the best place to get it is there. Avocados have some too, but it varies a little bit depending on exactly what type of avocado and where it's from. But by and large, seeds are our favorite way to get it again, because our little ones don't eat very much. So when they have powerful nutrients that you can get the whole servings week or even the week's worth of the serving in just a few bites, that's a win. Okay. So my third friend I want to introduce you to, the third nutrient that I feel like is really important to spend some time at talking about is choline. And you may have heard about it. It's added to most prenatal vitamins, and it's really key, uh important nutrient because choline is part of uh what do we call phosphatidylcholine and acetylcholine. These are two different components that are really crucial in brain development. Phosphatitalcholine is part of the cell membrane. So again, in any cell that is rapidly dividing, you need a lot of that, right? You're gonna build a house, you need a lot of bricks. You maybe only need one washer, one dryer, but you need a whole lot of bricks. Without the bricks, you can't have a roof over your head, you can't do the other stuff. And choline is kind of like that, right? So you have to have that in order to make the membrane for those neurons. And in this situation, um, choline is also used for not only the outer part of the neuron, but also neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which we need for signaling and for brain development. Choline is, while it's added to a lot of prenatal vitamins, it's and it's in some foods, it actually, as kids get older, tends to be a gap that widens. It's often present even by the time our kids are turning a year, and that widens as they grow. Okay, so choline is super helpful, and you may already know this, but it's in eggs, which is my food number three. So eggs are so key for kids because while it's also an allergen that we want them to have exposure to and practice with from really about four months of life all the way through, eggs have really great benefit in their yolk. Now, I grew up eating the regular store-bought white eggs, but my grandpa had a farm, and I remember as a kid being able to go pick his um eggs out of the hen house, and they were just so bright and yellow. And I want to just mention really quick that um while I personally love fresh farm eggs, you can send me some anytime if you're listening, um, and I love having the color, the vibrancy, they just taste amazing. The key to understanding this actually is that so far, choline actually is not in higher quantities in our pasture-raised eggs, which is surprising. Now, vitamin A is, and some of the that's why the pigment changes, pigments a little bit different. I still think there's an incredible value in them, but this is something, this is just to say that you don't necessarily have to go in that direction if you're trying to optimize choline. The key is just having an egg in your diet. One egg is better than none. An egg a day can actually meet this need really readily. And, you know, the other part here is that it can be cooked. It's not heat sensitive. So it is stable there, even if it's been baked and it's in a baked good, like a banana bread or something else that you're making. Um, I think that eggs are a tremendous value add for babies. Now, the other part of this is that choline can be found in some of the other foods that I already mentioned. Guess what else? Are fatty fish. Now, you can also get a fair amount of choline in my final favorite food and my final nutrient that I want to mention, which are beans. So beans are really, really key because they're also a lot of variety, and they all have a little different kind of blend in terms of nutrient profile. But beans are really an incredible tool for fiber. There's two primary kinds of fiber there's insoluble fiber and soluble fiber. I kind of think of them like insoluble fiber is like bulks and creates motility. So it kind of pushes things through, like think a train going down the train tracks. And then soluble fiber incorporates water, so it sort of softens. The stool, they also feed gut bacteria and help promote a healthy microbiome. But, and there's other things that these types of fibers do. The purpose in sharing this is that beans have a little bit of both. And that's a really wonderful thing to add to your kids' diet. Especially in America, kids tend to lack fiber. So it's an important nutrient that we don't want to overlook. And that can be in mashed, it can be pureed, it can be regular beans, it can even be in like sauces or in my kids' favorite, hummus. So beans are an important key. They have choline, they also have non-heme iron that we already talked about, and they have a good amount of fiber diversity. Now, my last and final favorite nutrient and favorite food that I want to share with you, you probably are already doing, and that's amazing. It's whole milk. And the reason I think this is so valuable is vitamin D. Now, bear in mind that not all vitamin, not all milk is fortified. So it's important to make sure that yours is. If it's the regular red top stuff in the grocery store, it's fortified. Most of the products that are geared towards kids tend to be fortified. You just want to look on the back and make sure. I also want to mention that I'm talking about cow's milk because others, like plant-based milks, don't always have vitamin D added. When you look, I tend to prefer D3 over D2. So just know that. But at the end of the day, um, whole milk is a great way to close our vitamin D gap. Now, I'm gonna take a little bit of a pivot here and share with you that the other quartet that we already talked about are for primarily for brain development. Okay, so iron, DHA, vitamin E, choline. That's the quartet for brain development that I really, really want to hone in because it's a big gap in so many of our one-year-olds. Vitamin D is a huge gap too. In fact, 75% of kids in the US don't get enough vitamin D. And if you look globally, that's also it's still really large. Most kids are not really getting enough vitamin D. Now, I don't live in the equator. But my friends who do, and when my kids did, we actually didn't worry about that quite as much. But where we live, we just do not get enough exposure to sunlight and UVB rays. And when our kids are around the sun, what do we do? We put sunscreen on, because we should, by the way. So I want to mention that vitamin D milk serves this purpose, but we want to be careful. So if you've listened to some of my other content, you may have already heard me say this, but two cups of milk until you go to college is kind of what I tend to recommend everybody, including myself. So the value there is that it provides an adequate amount of vitamin D and calcium that our kids who are once they're weaning really, really need. Vitamin D is going to be in abundance in our formula. And we encourage in the first year of life, if moms are especially exclusively breastfeeding, vitamin D supplementation because there's not much in breast milk. The value here is that vitamin D is really important in immune regulation and development. It actually talks to different organisms in your microbiome, believe it or not. It's also really key for, of course, the skeletal muscle bone development and regulation of calcium and phosphorus in our body. We use it, it's more of a hormone and we use it in so many functions and like all of the tissues of the growing body. And our kids are growing rapidly. The amount of vitamin D that we need in that age group is about 400 IU and then bumps up a little bit after they get a year to about 600 IU. And most kids, on average, are getting about 150 because unfortunately, it's not in most foods. Really, it's in vitamin D fortified milk. And then there's one other food, which I said was my favorite in the beginning, fatty fish. So this is part of the reason why I once again go back to my top food, which is fatty fish for a one-year-old. So I hope that's been helpful. Just to summarize, my top five foods for one-year-old are going to be fatty fish, seeds, eggs, beans, and whole milk. Now, this can be done, by the way, if you're on WIC or even if you don't get to go shopping very often. And this doesn't necessarily have to be a huge lift. Now, this can be something that you, from a practical takeaway standpoint, you do and you rotate. So I recommend at least getting some of these things in your diet every day if you can, one of these top five, just to start building and practicing. It doesn't have to be this part of your diet every single day, but two servings of fatty fish for a one-year-old once a week meets that need. But guess what? If you have fatty fish once a week and then you have hemp seeds in there or sunflower seeds in there once a week, you're actually doing really, really well. Meaning that you don't have to get all of these every single day. It just means that you're regularly buying them at the grocery store and serving them to your kid. And that's really what our role is as parents. It's not to be perfect. But I like to highlight this for you because if you're trying to think about how do I get the biggest bang for our buck, close nutrient gaps, even if my kid is picky, even if my kid doesn't want to eat all the other things, these are the foods that I would really focus on. I wouldn't worry about trying to get them to eat octopus or worry about them trying to, you know, have grandma's favorite, you know, casserole. I don't really know that that matters. That wouldn't move the needle for me. If I had a picky kid and my kid was working on self-independence and trying to, you know, do their own things and live on leftover crackers and fruit, which they do, that might not be the worst thing in the world, but I would think about these five foods regularly being in their diet. Now, you might be thinking, gosh, those sound like really expensive things. And I just want to share that, you know, when my babies were little, it comes down to intentionality. And I want to be clear here, right? Like when my kids were little, my husband and I were super broke. And we really tried to do this. And I would say we we we definitely tried. Once they get about two or three, it gets a little bit harder, right? We can have another conversation about that too. But in that first, really focusing on that critical window, Wick provides a lot of these foods. In fact, all of them are available. However, the seeds, less so. Maybe we can make a push there and some advocacy. But if I could, by the way, replace peanut butter with some flower seed butter, I probably would. But anyway, point being that whole milk was offered. We totally capitalized on that. We ended up getting a lot of canned fish, which not all canned fish is created equal, but hey, it was canned fish and it was way cheaper than stuff that was fresh and frozen. And guess what? It was still better than none. So no regrets. And eggs, absolutely, beans, absolutely. So those were the things. The only thing that I had to kind of be thoughtful about were the seeds. And actually, you can get hemp seeds for reasonable prices. Places like Trader Joe's, Walmart, Target, all of them have smaller bags, and a little bit goes a long way. We're talking about like a tablespoon and a serving size for this, and that's more than enough for your little one. Okay, so I hope this has been helpful. And in summary, don't skip out on these amazing foods. They carry a huge lift in your little one's diet, and they really help support that critical brain development, critical window in the first thousand days of life. Now, that's a wrap. Please share this with your friends. Thanks so much for listening. See you guys next week.