Recommended Daily Intake for Boys Aged 4-8 Years Old

Monitoring exactly what your kids eat once they reach school age can be challenging, as children aged 4-8 years consume up to 40% of their calories away from you. Sure you might be the one to pack their lunch box, but there’s no real guarantee that your boy will eat everything that’s in there. Ask any teacher and they’ll tell you that boys have a habit of choosing play over food.

As a guide, most boys aged 4-8 years need around 1300-1600 calories a day. This is based on a sedentary lifestyle, so if you have a particularly active boy, they may require a little more. A very physically active boy should be aiming for around 1800 calories per day.

Diet should be varied and balanced, and snack portions kept on the small side. Up until now, food has been about small meals at regular intervals, but from around five years old, three main meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus two small snacks should be the focus. If your child is complaining they are constantly hungry, consider that it might be an ‘emotional eating’ response. Emotional eating comes out of boredom or anxiety, so if you suspect your child isn’t really hungry, try to distract him with another activity. You may want to consider using a ‘hunger scale’ to rate levels of hunger from 0-10.

Dietary Guidelines

The Australian Dietary Guidelines use the best available scientific evidence to provide information on the types and amounts of foods, food groups and dietary patterns that aim to promote health and wellbeing. According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines, children need a wide variety of healthy foods from each of the five food groups:

Fruits: Fruit provides vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and many phytonutrients that help the body stay healthy. Aim for 1½ serves per day.

Fruit serves include:

• 1 medium-sized piece of fruit, such as apple or pear.
• 2 small pieces of fruit, such as apricots.
• 1 cup canned or chopped fruit.
• 1½ tbs dried fruit.
• 8 grapes.
• 1 cup apple sauce – preferably with no added sugar.
• 6 large strawberries.
• 10 blueberries.
• 1 small wedge watermelon.

125ml of 100% fruit juice (not from concentrate and with no added sugar) can be considered a fruit serve, but as whole fruit holds the most diverse and intact collection of nutrients, whole fruits should be your first choice of offering.

Vegetables, legumes and beans: Vegetables should make up a large part of your child’s diet and should be offered at every meal (including snack times). They too provide vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and phytonutrients that keep the body healthy. Aim for 4½ serves per day.

Vegetable serves include:

• ½ cup leafy greens, such as spinach or brussels sprouts.
• ½ cup cooked dried beans or lentils.
• ½ cup peas.
• ½ cup green beans, zucchini or eggplant.
• 1 medium potato.
• 1 cup salad vegetables, such as tomatoes, capsicum.
• 2 celery sticks.
• 3 broccolini or asparagus spears.
• 2 medium carrots.

Grains: Grain or cereal foods should be kept in wholegrain form whenever possible and breads, cereals, rice, pasta and noodles should offer plenty of fibre. Be careful of refined grain foods, which can be high in sugar. Aim for 4 serves per day.

Grain serves include:

• 1 whole wheat bagel or English muffin.
• 1 slice whole wheat bread.
• ½ cup cooked cracked wheat.
• 5 whole wheat crackers.
• ½ cup cooked oatmeal.
• 2 small buckwheat pancakes.
• ½ cup cooked brown rice.
• ½ cup cooked whole wheat pasta.
• 1 small flour tortilla.

Leans meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds: Protein is essential to staying healthy, building, maintaining and repairing the tissues in your child’s body. Muscles and organs are made of protein, and protein makes specialised chemicals such as haemoglobin and adrenalin. Aim for 1½ serves per day.

Protein serves include:

• 30g cooked lean beef.
• 30g skinless chicken.
• 1 slice sandwich turkey.
• 40g cooked fish or shellfish.
• 1 egg.
• 12 almonds.
• 24 pistachios.
• 15g pumpkin or sunflower seeds.
• 1 tbsp peanut butter.
• ¼ cup cooked kidney beans.
• ¼ cup cooked chickpeas.
• 60g tofu.
• 1 falafel.
• 2 tbsp hummus.

Dairy: Dairy foods are an excellent source of calcium, needed for strong and healthy bones. While other foods provide small amounts of calcium, dairy foods are by far the greatest source of calcium. Aim for 2 serves per day.

Dairy serves include:

• 1 cup low-fat milk.
• 1 cup low-fat yoghurt.
• 45g hard cheese, such as cheddar.
• ⅓ cup shredded cheese.
• ½ cup ricotta cheese.
• 2 cups cottage cheese.
• 1 cup frozen yoghurt.
• 1½ cups low fat ice cream.

On top of this, your child should try to aim for 1.5 litres of water each day, as well as 7-10g unsaturated fats from spreads, oils, nuts or seeds.

Your role as a parent

Your role as a parent is to support your child’s healthy eating habits by offering nutritious food choices at meals and snack times. Quite often, children of this age happily eat the same foods time and time again, and while they may appear healthy enough, it’s important that you encourage the trying of new foods. Essentially, you decide the what, where, and when of eating, while your child chooses how much or even whether to eat.

Allowing children to eat as little or as much as they like can be hard for parents, but this approach helps to encourage your child to trust his internal hunger gauge. You can take further steps to encourage healthy eating by:

• Eating together as a family as often as possible.
• Making mealtimes fun and enjoyable.
• Not applying too much pressure to eat everything on the plate.
• Sticking to the same meal and snack times each day.
• Offering only water between snack and meal times.
• Avoiding distractions such as television when eating.
• Making physical activity a part of your family’s daily life.

You can also work alongside your children to create healthy eating plans. Children will love being given the responsibility of of creating a varied and balanced diet and they’ll be far more likely to make good food choices when faced with both health foods and sweet treats. Having children involved with meal planning and shopping not only teaches good habits, but gives them part ownership of mealtimes.

Three easy ways to get kids involved include:

1. Make a list of favourite foods
   Making a list of your family’s favourite foods will make shopping easier and will give everyone the feeling of being valued. Many kids are happy to try new things if they know they can eat their favourite food the next night, so make your meal plans using the list as a resource.
2. Let them keep score
   Having made a meal plan for the week, let your children tick off the foods from the necessary food groups. This way you’ll be closer on target to the recommended daily requirements and if you’re missing a couple of serves, your kids will enjoy the challenge of adding new foods to meet their needs.
3. Let them shop
   Give your kids the shopping list and work with them to find everything on the list. Your kids will be so caught up in checking off the list that they won’t concern themselves with finding chips, lollies and other snacks to add to the trolley.

Sample meal plan

The sample meal plan outlined below provides the nutritional and energy requirements for a child aged 4-8 years based on average height, healthy weight and light activity.

Breakfast: 1 Weetbix, ½ cup reduced fat milk, 100g low-fat yoghurt.

Morning break: 1 medium banana, 2 crispbreads, 1 tbsp peanut butter.

Lunch: 2 slices wholemeal bread, 1 boiled egg, 1 slice reduced fat cheese, 1 cup mixed salad.

Afternoon break: 2 celery sticks with hummus, 3 cherry tomatoes, 5 whole wheat crackers, 250ml reduced fat milk.

Dinner: 65g lean meat, 1 small boiled potato, ½ cup cooked carrot, ½ cup cooked beans.

Evening snack: 1 cup mixed fruit, 100g low-fat yoghurt,1 water throughout the day

Remember, creating enjoyable mealtimes and snacks help young children learn healthy eating habits and develop positive attitudes towards food. Show enthusiasm for healthy foods and keep mealtimes fun and your boy is much more likely to accept the foods you wish them to eat.

This information has been provided as general advice only. If you are at all concerned about your child’s dietary intake, please speak with your paediatrician, GP, or registered medical health professional. 

Sources:

• http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/australian-dietary-guidelines-recommended-daily-intakes
• http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/Dietary-Recommendations-for-Healthy-Children_UCM_303886_Article.jsp#.ViSiahArJ0s
• http://thecarousel.com/living/parenting/surviving-school-holidays-abcs-kids-nutrition/
• http://cenovis.com.au/vitamin-rdis-kids/
• http://blog.togethercounts.com/5-simple-ways-to-involve-kids-in-meal-planning/

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