Nutrition at Child Care Centres

Menu checklist for child care centres

 Child care centres should:

• Serve meals and snacks at the same time each day
• Include four food groups from Canada’s Food Guide at meals
• Include two food groups from Canada’s Food Guide at snacks
• Serve a variety of coloured vegetables and fruits.
• Provide whole grains every day.
• Offer protein-rich food at meals such as meat, poultry, fish, eggs or legumes.
• Minimize the use of processed foods such as hot dogs, frozen pizza, breaded meat, boxed macaroni and cheese and bologna.
• Provide water and milk as drinks.
• Serve fruit more often than juice.
• Avoid distractions during meal times such as TV or toys.
• Sit and eat with the children.
• Introduce new foods along with familiar foods.
• Allow children to eat as much or as little as they want.
• Prepare foods to reduce choking such as quartering grapes or grating carrots.
• Offer foods that respect culture and religion.

Read about menu planning at child care centres (PDF, 1 MB).

Nutrition information for families

We can provide short nutrition articles with simple and clear information on nutrition topics that affect families with children from birth to six years of age for you to put in a newsletter or post on a bulletin board.  If you wish to receive these articles six times per year, call Health Connections at 905-546-3550 or email publichealth@hamilton.ca.