Please note: I am not a nutritionist, dietitian or medical professional. My thoughts on toddler mealtimes are based on my knowledge and experience of toddler development. For specific concerns about your child's diet or nutrition, please consult the appropriate medical professional.

The short answer

Forbidden foods become fascinating foods. Treat chocolate, chips and lollies as neutral parts of the family menu: no whispering, no rewards, no "bad food" labels. Hold simple boundaries ("that's not on the menu for breakfast"), relax completely at parties, and never use dessert as a prize for eating vegetables.

Let me start with a confession: I have actual chocolate and real lollies in my house. My kids know they're there. And I am not embarrassed about that at all.

The conversation around treats and junk food with toddlers is one of the most loaded areas of parenting, right up there with screen time and sleep. Everyone has an opinion, the internet is full of conflicting advice, and most parents are quietly doing their best while carrying a background hum of guilt about how many biscuits their toddler had yesterday.

So let me offer you a different way of thinking about this, one that is rooted in both child development and what dietitians and nutritionists who work with children are increasingly saying about how we approach food early in life.

The problem with treating treats as forbidden

Here is something that dietitian Dr Kyla Nicholson and others in the feeding space have been saying clearly for years: when we place certain foods completely off limits, label them as "bad" or "sometimes foods" with a hushed voice and a look of concern, or make a big deal out of whether a child can or can't have them, we do something unintended. We make those foods more appealing, more exciting and more loaded with emotion than they would ever be otherwise.

Children, toddlers especially, are exquisitely attuned to what their parents place value and weight on. If chocolate is the food that is whispered about, hidden on a high shelf, rationed carefully and only offered as a special reward, your child learns that chocolate is the most special and desirable food in the entire universe. And when they finally get access to it, often in a context where you're not watching, they eat as much of it as they possibly can because who knows when the next opportunity will come.

This is sometimes called the scarcity effect, and it is one of the primary ways that well-meaning restriction around treat foods backfires and creates complicated relationships with food that follow children into adulthood.

What a healthier approach looks like

Enter the "no forbidden foods" philosophy. This doesn't mean your toddler eats chocolate for every meal. It means that treat foods are included in the family's eating landscape in a calm, neutral and matter-of-fact way, without drama in either direction.

In practice, this looks like including a treat in your toddler's lunchbox alongside the rest of their food. Serving a few chips on their dinner plate alongside the main meal. Offering ice cream as a second course without making it contingent on finishing the vegetables. The food is just food. Some food is more nutritious than others, and that's fine, but no food is so dangerous or so precious that it needs to be treated as a category apart.

When treats are normalised in this way, children lose the frantic urgency around them. They stop needing to beg for them, sneak them or eat them until they feel sick. They learn to eat them with the same relatively regulated approach they bring to everything else. There's become such a massive focus on optimising our children's nutrition that parents feel shamed for letting their child enjoy some actual sugar or normal brownies that weren't made with black beans and sweet potato. I think what needs to happen is that there is balance and less pressure (on parents and kids) when it comes to nutrition. Some refined sugar in your child's diet won't do much harm, but restricting your children and creating negative associations with "junk food" (I hate that term!) will.

From a toddler development perspective

I want to add a layer here from my own area of expertise, which is toddler behaviour and development, because the junk food conversation cannot be separated from the autonomy and control dynamics that drive so much of what toddlers do at mealtimes.

Toddlers are in the business of finding and exercising control wherever they can. Food is one of their most powerful arenas for this, precisely because parents care so much about it. If a toddler learns that asking for chocolate creates a significant reaction, draws attention, triggers negotiation, and involves all the most interesting mealtime theatre, they will absolutely use chocolate as a power play. Not because they are manipulative, but because they are toddlers doing exactly what toddlers are developmentally programmed to do.

The less charged the conversation around treat foods, the less your toddler has to gain from making them the centre of a battle.

How to handle the "can I have chocolate for breakfast?" request

This is one of the most common mealtime scenarios I hear from parents, and it is a genuinely tricky one because it lands at that intersection of wanting to say yes to everything and knowing that you can't.

My approach is to hold the boundary warmly and simply, without a lecture. The phrase I find most effective is: "That's not on the menu for breakfast." Not "chocolate isn't a breakfast food" or "that's not healthy," just a simple statement that this particular thing is not what's on offer right now.

Then follow it with something concrete and true: "On the menu for breakfast is weetbix or toast. If you want chocolate, let's put it on the menu for later today, maybe we can have some on your snack plate." And then actually follow through on that. Because part of what makes this work is that your toddler learns that "not right now" means exactly that, not "never," and that you are someone who keeps your word around food.

Accept the tantrum that might follow. A toddler who is disappointed about not getting chocolate for breakfast is a toddler who is learning that disappointment is survivable, which is genuinely valuable. Your consistency over time is what teaches them that the boundary is real, and they will stop pushing it as hard once they trust that it holds.

At special events, let it go

Something I feel strongly about is that at parties, holidays and special occasions, the rules around food can afford to be much more relaxed. When your toddler is at a birthday party and only wants to eat the cake and the lollies, this is not the moment to enforce the vegetable quota. Let them enjoy it. Lower your expectations around food at these events completely. As long as their overall diet is reasonably varied and balanced most of the time, one afternoon of cake and lollies has no meaningful impact on their health or their relationship with food. Hand your toddler a plate and let them choose what they want to eat from the food table.

I often hear parents say "If you eat too many cookies you'll get a sore tummy." A more helpful approach would be to encourage them to start with one cookie, and if they still want more afterwards they can get more. This helps them slow down and be more in tune with their appetite and how their body feels. If they do end up eating too many cookies and their tummy does hurt (I'm not sure how many cookies would be needed to give me a sore tummy!) then it's a natural consequence that might guide their decision next time.

Also remember that research shows that for the majority of children, sugar does not equal bad behaviour and a sugar high. Sugary foods are usually consumed at events that inspire hyperactive behaviour and overstimulation, which is what's actually causing the "sugar high", not the sugar itself. Plus the research shows that parents often perceive their children's behaviour to be worse after they've had sugar due to their bias, not because of the child's actual behaviour.

In fact, letting them eat freely and joyfully at celebrations is one of the ways you reinforce that food is connected to pleasure, community and good times, which is exactly the relationship with food you want them to carry into adulthood.

Don't use treats as rewards

One last thing that is worth saying clearly: resist the urge to use treat foods as rewards for eating other foods. "Eat your vegetables and you can have dessert" is deeply ingrained in parenting culture, but what it actually does is tell your child that vegetables are so unpleasant that they require a prize at the end, and that dessert is so superior that it's earned rather than simply eaten.

Both of these messages complicate your toddler's relationship with both foods. It elevates the treat to an almost mythical status while simultaneously confirming that the vegetables are the enemy. Instead, serve dessert as a consistent, neutral part of the meal. It is just food. It comes after the main food, not because it was earned, but because that is the order of things at your table. Or try a few M&Ms on your toddler's lunch plate and you'll be surprised to see your child eat the M&Ms and their main meal without any coercion.

Be aware of not demonising any food groups

Even the fact that it is called "junk food" shows how society has deemed sugary treats to be of no value. And while I completely agree that there is very little nutritional value to a jelly bean, the joy we feel when we eat lollies, chocolate and chips is something of significant value. Food is of course important for nutrition, but it is also tradition, community, culture, nostalgia, enjoyment and relaxation. And all of these cannot be taken for granted for the sake of nutrition. So instead of telling your toddler "meat makes you strong, and vegetables keep you healthy, but chocolates are bad for you", you can tell them that "chocolates don't do anything to help our body grow but they do make us feel happy when we eat them". Food is just food, even chocolates and chips.

The long game, again

Everything we do around food with our toddlers is building the foundation of how they will eat and feel about food for the rest of their lives. The goal is not a child who ate no sugar this week. The goal is an adult who can sit at a table, eat a slice of birthday cake, genuinely enjoy it, and stop when they've had enough, without guilt, without urgency, and without it meaning anything more than that.

That relationship with food starts now, in how calm and matter-of-fact your household is about all food, treats included.

For more mealtime help, browse my mealtime guides or book a 1:1 consult.