What My Plant-Based Pescatarian Toddler Eats in a Day

Even before my son was born, we considered feeding him a vegan diet. But we are not vegans ourselves, nor are we interested in being vegan. After a lot of discussion, we decided to feed him a plant-based, pescatarian diet. This is the diet that we mostly follow so it was easy for me in the meal preparation department.

When it comes to ensuring our toddler gets all the nutrients he needs, I use this ‘formula’ when creating his meals: Protein + Produce + Starch/Grain + Fat. Some food items will cover a couple of these, which is a plus. But the goal is to try and cover all four of these with each meal. If I don’t cover all in the meal, I try to add a snack later that will meet that need.

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Here’s some of the foods and drinks that my son most often eats for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

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What My Toddler Eats for Breakfast

To start the morning, my son drinks 8 ounces of Silk Protein Milk. This plant-based non-dairy milk was the closest we could find with the fat and protein content of whole dairy milk; it has the same amounts of each which is what our pediatrician recommended.

During the week, he eats breakfast at daycare. His breakfast there is hot or cold cereal like oatmeal, and we provide her with our plant-based milk to use with his breakfast. They also may have fruit, toast, and eggs as well.

On the weekends, I will also make oatmeal topped with fruit and local honey, and scrambled eggs. Another typical breakfast are meatless breakfast sausage patties; he likes the maple flavored ones by Morningstar. Sometimes I’ll make a tofu scramble as an egg alternative, with diced potatoes, onions, peppers, and spinach or some other green veggies that’s on hand. He also loves toast topped with plant-based butter or jam.

What My Toddler Eats for Lunch

For lunch, my son usually eats a sandwich and a small entree with a grain or veggie on the side. The sandwich options he loves are grilled cheese using non-dairy cheese slices, nut butter (peanut or almond) and jelly, cheeseburger using non-dairy cheese and a meatless burger, or tuna salad sandwich.

With that, he’ll have some meatless meatballs, pasta with a little marinara, and veggies like broccoli or peas and diced carrots. He also loves my beans and coconut rice, so he will have that along with a veggie.

My son also loves tacos, or the ingredients in tacos because he’s still struggling to keep everything the taco. I’ll cut up a whole wheat tortilla, along with meatless grounds, lettuce, tomato, corn salsa, and non-dairy shredded cheese.

Sometimes the meat substitutes have a lot of sodium, so for extra protein I use pasta that’s either partly make with chickpeas or completely chickpea-based. I’ll make vegan Mac n Cheese, or serve it with marinara sauce. When all else fails, he eats leftovers for lunch.

What My Toddler Eats for Dinner

His dinner options are usually the same as lunch minus the sandwich. If he had something for lunch, I’ll just serve something else for dinner. Or he will eat what I’m having. Some type of seafood, either shrimp, scallop, or salmon, along with veggies or fruit and brown rice or quinoa.

Typically every week we have tacos, burgers and pasta with red sauce as staples. We use Beyond Meat plant-based ground beef or meatless crumbles for all those dishes.

What My Toddler Eats for Snacks

I try to keep sodium at minimum, so for his snacks I pick low sodium crackers. He really likes wheat thin crackers, graham crackers, and peanut butter sandwich crackers. Sometimes I give him hummus or guacamole with tortilla chips or a tortilla wrap cut into pieces. Before bed, he usually has another cup of plant-based milk as a snack as well.

He loves fruit – strawberries, blueberries, grapes, apples, peaches, clementines, watermelon. Unsweetened applesauce is also one of his favorites, along with avocados and cherry tomatoes. He likes cherrios and granola cereal and granola bars, cashews, and freeze-dried fruit.

If you’re looking for more plant-based meal ideas that are toddler-friendly, check out this video that I shared on YouTube. These recipe ideas were done by my doula Tiffany, who is also a certified holistic nutritionist.

If you’d like to feed your toddler a plant-based diet and are struggling with meal ideas, I hope you found this post helpful. If you have some meal ideas to share, I’d love to know so please share in the comments!