By the end of the 1st year infants, who are nearing the second year of their lives, should enjoy a diet which includes a wide range of foodstuffs. Milk is still a major food, but solids are now also a major part of the child’s diet.

At the end of the year children should start eating entire, soft-boiled eggs. They should also eat beef, chicken and fish. Rice Cereal can be used as an ingredient in vegetable and meat soups.

Afternoon pureed meals can be made using the entire range of Jotis children’s foods such as Vanilla or Rice Cereal Powdered Baby Food, Farine Lactee, Maize Cereal Powdered Baby Food, Fruit Cream Powdered Baby Food, Biscuit Cream Powdered Baby Food and Cereal Cream Powdered Baby Food.

Children can enjoy all fruit as juices or in fruit purees with Jotis Rice Cereal.

Mothers should give their children an increasing amount of food which needs to be chewed. Children of this age are able to chew properly and mothers should no longer only give them food that has been blended in a mixer. As children get used to eating foods that need to be chewed, they can start to try bread and cheese. This is how these two foods become part of children’s diet. Feta is the best cheese to give, but it should not be salty.

Also, you may have noticed a change in your infant’s habits. From the 7th month to near the end of the 1st year, your child might seem to want to eat five times a day. He/She wakes up at 7 and falls asleep before his/her final meal time.

Your child is getting bigger, he/she is growing more rapidly and his/her habits are changing. Mothers should slowly alter the feeding schedule to 3 main meals and 2 smaller meals in between the 3 main meals. The infant will learn to eat larger quantities of a wide variety of food, less often.

An example feeding schedule with three main meals is given below:

1st morning meal Fruit (juice, fruit puree), bread, egg, milk

2nd morning meal Fruit juice, bread and cheese

Noon Meat or fish, cheese, fruit, milk

Afternoon Puree

Evening Fruit juice, food, milk

By this age, infants should be eating a variety of foods, each one of which helps them to grow and develop. Each one has a specific function in our bodies and no food is so good that it can be a substitute for any other food. This means that from when they are infants, children and adults, should eat all types of food. For this reason, foodstuffs are organsied into four groups depending on what they offer us.

1st group Milk, cheese, yoghurt

2nd group Fruit and greens

3rd group Cereals, bread, pasta

4th group Meat, fish, eggs

Each of the three meals should include foodstuffs from 2 or 3 of the groups, as in the table above. This also applies to children who still eat 5 meals a day when they are more than a year old. In this case, you apply the following schedule:

1st meal Fruit juice, milk

2nd meal Egg, fruit puree

3rd meal Soup, cheese, fruit, milk

4th meal Fruit juice, powdered baby food

5th meal Milk

By the end of the first year, mothers should give infants the opportunity to take some of the initiative. When the infant can pick up things and move them from one hand to the other by himself/herself, let him/her hold the spoon with the food or the training cup with fruit juice or water. You can be sure that the contents of the cup will end up in a puddle round him/her, but it is the only way he/she will learn to drink on his/her own.

And with the spoon in his/her hand and the plate with the food in front of him/her, he/she will spread the food all round him/her instead of eating. But, in this way, at some point he/she will learn to feed himself/herself. It is more like a fun game than an actual attempt to eat.