It is important to give mothers good advice on feeding their young children. Part of this advice should be about how much of each food to offer to their children. Very little information is available about this.

ALSPAC has collected diet diary information at 18 and 43 months which could be used to inform us about the amount of food that children are likely to eat on each meal occasion at these ages. We will use this data to give a mean, median and inter-quartile range for each food eaten on more than five occasions by the children. This data would not be linked to other ALSPAC variables .

We would like to use this analysis of portion sizes as a backup resource to support a web-based educational tool for health care professionals, carers and parents to access. The aim of this tool is to give guidance on suitable portion sizes to offer and reassurance that the amounts being eaten are appropriate. Part of the reason for this is that excessive portion sizes are likely to be contributing to the increases in obesity in children. This will be part of the Infant and Toddler Forum educational initiative website which Pauline has contributed to in the past. It is funded by an educational grant from Danone but is totally independent scientifically. http://www.infantandtoddlerforum.org/.