The antics of a fussy toddler has made mealtimes a battleground. Our nutrition expert Vardit Kohn offers practical advice to a mum on the frontline.

Raisingkids member's problem
My daughter who is 2 yrs and 7 months has a bad diet. I breastfed her for just over two years and she switched to semi skimmed milk from bottles four months ago. I started off fine making my own meals from scratch but since she turned 18 months she won't eat things like spaghetti bolognese, lasagne etc.

Now she eats often nothing for breakfast, a bit of red pepper and cucumber for dinner and perhaps a smiley face and some carrots for tea. I always try to give her some fish and meat but she rarely eats it (both salmon or fishfingers, pieces of chicken and chicken nuggets).

She will occasionally eat some hot dog sausage but usually refuses it. She will also eat pasta and grated cheese sometimes or a yoghurt. She refuses anything new like smoothies, soup and prefers things she can feed herself. Somedays she eats nothing and she has a bottle of milk before bed, one in the night and one in the morning.

She had sores at the side of her mouth a month or so ago so I started her on liquid multivitamins and they have healed. I feel guilty she has a bad diet. I know that I am the adult but I have a stubborn toddler and I need to change her diet for her own good but I don't know where to start. I am 5 months pregnant and want to sort things out before the new baby comes along.

Nutrition expert's advice
It's never too late to train a toddler to eat healthily. I specifically use the word 'train', because the principles that apply to toilet training apply to healthy eating, too. You need plenty of patience, resolve and perseverance. For some it goes easily, for others less so, and we don't always know why. But just as you'd like to see your child out of nappies at a reasonable age, so you'd like to see her thriving and well nourished. In both cases, your toddler depends entirely on you for direction and instruction.

Your daughter's diet reads like a textbook list of the Western convenience diet: smiley face, fish fingers, chicken nuggets, hotdogs, ham, pasta, cheese, biscuits and chocolate with only the occasional veg to inject some much needed nutrients (such as B vitamins, the lack of which causes cracks and sores at the side of the mouth). This is a nutritionally poor diet based on fatty, salty and sugary processed foods. The sooner you move away from this track, the better.

Where to start? First, wean her off at least one daily bottle. A child with a small appetite can get very full on 2 bottles of milk a day and have little incentive to chew hard food - it's so much easier to drink milk! Get her to be hungry - she'll be less choosy then.

If big meals and formal meal times are a problem, offer her healthy snacks during the day - any type of fruit or vegetable (and only them) will do; small pieces or mini sizes are often a favourite. See if she'd like (home-made) soup or smoothie from a large holed bottle - perhaps it was the spoon feeding she resisted. Keep easy solutions (biscuits, chocs, fruity yoghurts) out of the house, so you are not tempted by easy solutions, and teach yourself to be deaf to false 'hunger' cries - when hunger equals a treat and nothing else.

Since you're home with your daughter, make simple yet nourishing home food, skipping the items in the above list. A child, especially a toddler, may reject a certain food one day only to embrace it wholeheartedly the next.

When on outings, take food with you so you don't have to rely on cafeteria food to feed your daughter (and your pregnant self): pack some dried fruit, cut vegetables and fruit and chopped nuts or seeds. And if all this seems too much and you'd still like to use at least some convenience food, get it from a top health store, where you will find a variety of, for example, crackers, breads and snacks based on different grains and seeds, as well as many other useful products. Most importantly, however, persevere! Toddlers are masters at sensing weaknesses and manipulating them to their benefit. Be firm in your conviction, go one step at a time and stick to it. Good luck