Fussy eating is incredibly common, particularly during the toddler and preschool years.
One week your child loves broccoli. The next, apparently, broccoli has become their greatest enemy.
For most children, this is a normal developmental stage. But there is a difference between occasionally refusing vegetables and eating an extremely limited diet for months at a time.
A child who gets plenty of calories from foods such as pasta, toast, crackers and yoghurt may still be consuming relatively little of certain micronutrients.
Some nutrients worth paying particular attention to include iron, vitamin D, zinc, iodine and vitamin B12.
Iron supports normal cognitive development in children and normal red blood cell formation. Foods such as meat, beans, lentils and fortified cereals are important dietary sources.
Vitamin D supports normal bone growth and immune function. UK guidance recommends vitamin D supplementation for young children, alongside vitamin A at specific ages.
Zinc is found in foods including meat, dairy, eggs, beans and seeds, while iodine is particularly associated with dairy products, fish and eggs.
The important thing is not to panic over an individual meal — or even an individual day.
Look at your child's diet over the course of a week.
Are they eating from several food groups? Are they growing normally? Is their list of accepted foods gradually expanding rather than shrinking?
Food should always remain the foundation of children's nutrition.
For children with particularly limited diets, however, an age-appropriate supplement may provide additional nutritional reassurance while parents continue working on food variety.
That's exactly how we think about The Little One Daily: not as a replacement for food, but as a nutritional safety net designed with selective eaters in mind.
If your child is losing weight, struggling to grow, has fewer and fewer accepted foods, experiences choking or pain when eating, or you're concerned about a nutritional deficiency, speak to your GP, health visitor or paediatric dietitian.
The goal isn't a perfect plate. It's gradually building a varied diet while making sure little bodies have the nutritional foundations they need to grow.