Learning to Like: Muffins
In this article, we will review some of the basics about exposing your child to muffins, why it can help you meet your meal planning demands while also helping them meet their nutritional needs, and what are some of the best ways to both help your child learn to like muffins and add variety in your family’s diet with muffins.
You can jump to any of these sections using the outline below.
Can kids have muffins?
If the word “muffin” automatically makes you think of the mammoth muffins from a coffee shop, then it is understandable why a healthy muffin might feel a bit like the oxymoron of foods like “jumbo shrimp.” With refined flours and amounts of added sugar comparable to that of a cupcake, muffins can be overlooked as dessert for breakfast or as a sugary side to an afternoon pick me up.
However, as a dietitian mom of three, I have found that muffins can be a healthy and convenient option for young kids and busy moms alike. As I share here, muffins can be that one-handed fuel for moms postpartum or that quick and easy snack for families on the go. So let’s take a look at what kinds of muffins make the cut when it comes to “healthy.”
What makes muffins healthy for kids?
If you are making homemade muffins or buying ones where you can read through the ingredients list, be sure to check:
The first (main) ingredient
In healthy muffins, we want the first ingredient to be a whole grain (like oats or whole wheat flour). This means that the primary ingredient (or that which makes up the most of the end product) is a whole grain and will add fiber and other beneficial nutrition to the end product. The only exception to this would be if you are wanting or needing a grain-free alternative, in which case I would encourage the first ingredient to be almond flour or another nutritious grain-alternative.
For protein, fat, and/or fiber
If you have a muffin with a nutrition facts label, look to see: How much protein, fat, or fiber is in it? If the muffin is low in all of these, chances are it will not be as filling as a snack or meal because it doesn’t have the protein, fat, and/or fiber to help keep you or your child full. You can review if the homemade muffins you make are healthier options with the staying power of added protein, fat, or fiber by checking the ingredients for healthy swaps like these:
Kid-friendly muffins with more protein: Greek yogurt, beans, lentils, milk, eggs, nutritional yeast, nut butter, seeds (like chia, hemp, flax, or pumpkin)
Kid-friendly muffins with more fat: oils, coconut, nut butters, whole fat yogurt or milk, chopped nuts, seeds (like chia, hemp, flax, or pumpkin)
Kid-friendly muffins with more fiber: whole grain flours, rolled oats, canned pumpkin, applesauce, seeds (like chia, hemp, flax, or pumpkin), dried fruit
Added sugars
Whether homemade or store bought muffins, look at how many types of added sugars appear. Oftentimes, more than one type of sweetener is used, which may mean the recipe calls for multiple types of added sugar or that an ingredient list on a package indicates different kinds that are in the product. With a packaged muffin, you can look at the nutrition facts label to see how much added sugar a product has.
If you are making muffins, you can calculate the amount of added sugars using a calculation similar to the following:
There are: 3 teaspoons in 1 Tablespoon and 4 Tablespoons (12 teaspoons) in ¼ cup.
So if a recipe calls for ¼ cup of sugar, it has 12 teaspoons of added sugar.
If a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, it has 48 teaspoons of sugar.
Divided by the number of muffins a recipe makes, you can find out how many teaspoons of added sugar are in each muffin.
There are: 4 grams of sugar for every 1 teaspoon of sugar.
So if a recipe that makes a dozen muffins calls for ¼ cup of sugar, it has a total of 12 teaspoons of added sugar or 1 teaspoon per muffin (4 grams added sugar per muffin).
If a recipe that makes a dozen muffins calls for 1 cup of sugar, it has 48 teaspoons of sugar or 4 teaspoons of per muffin (16 grams added sugar per muffin).
If a product is high in sugar, consider this more like a cupcake than a “healthy muffin” and offer it more sparingly as part of your overall dessert policy. If a muffin has minimal protein, fat, or fiber and more added sugar, expect it to impact a child’s blood sugar more similarly to a cupcake than a more balanced offering. However, if the product is lower in added sugar or can be made with less sugar, you may find muffins to be a healthy alternative to offerings like a bowl of oatmeal on days you need something a bit quicker and easier to eat.
Added salt
If you are wanting to offer muffins to an infant or young toddler, compare products with lower sodium amounts and/or omit when making homemade. This will help lower the amount of sodium for small children with more strict sodium requirements.
What are the best kinds of muffins to buy?
Premade muffins or muffin mixes often come at a trade off. You can spend more for higher quality ingredients (and thus more nutritional density), or you can spend less but compromise the nutritional density of the end product. In order to save money on high-quality ingredients and optimize the nutrition in muffins for kids, I most often encourage making your own muffins. When that isn’t an option, here are some other options.
Healthy store bought muffins
Fair warning: it can be hard to find a “healthy” muffin mix or “healthy” ready-made muffins in stores. Many go against some of the nutritional or ingredient-based guidelines I shared above and instead serve as a cupcake alternative for kids. To ensure that these muffins are saving you from meal time stress AND promoting your child’s feeding success, consider the following. Each will be sweeter alternatives than what you could likely make homemade, however if your child is already used to packaged muffins with added sugar, these can help make the transition to less-sweet options a bit easier and offer some nutritional advantages to others on the market.
How many muffins can kids eat in a day?
If you look at the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, children one year and older are consuming an average of 266 calories per day from added sugar. This exceeds the recommended amount of added sugar in the diet for children. What might be most surprising to parents, however, is that less than 10% of these added sugars are coming from the obvious sources of candy and sugars. Instead, we see that the breakdown of breakfast cereals, bars, and pastry-like snacks all add up to contribute even more added sugar to a child’s diet than candy alone.
Part of the reason for this is because as parents, most of us tend to have a general sense that candy is high in sugar so we may limit offering it to kids one and older as often. However, foods that have more hidden sources of added sugar (like yogurt, cereal, bars, and breakfast pastries) seem to carry more of a healthy halo. So although it is our goal to raise intuitive eaters who feel free to enjoy all foods as part of an overall healthy diet, it is our job as parents to also serve as the nutritional gatekeepers. This includes considering the types of foods we bring into or make in our homes as well as those we allow our kids to enjoy outside the home (at school, birthdays, gatherings, outings, etc.).
As nutritional gatekeepers, we need to remember that we are training our kids' taste buds early on to have a preference for the foods they are being offered. Regularly offering hyper-sweet muffins, particularly to young kids, may be preparing their taste buds to prefer the coffee shop cupcake instead of a more nutrient-dense alternative. Since small children have little room to spare in their diets, we want the majority of the muffins our kids learn to like to be those that are nutrient-DENSE.
If muffins are something you regularly make or purchase, begin to emphasize more nutrient dense options for these or to limit the frequency that less nutrient-dense muffins are offered. This allows kids to acquire a taste for less-sweet muffins and/or to recognize the increased sweetness of some muffins that act as more of a dessert-like offering rather than an everyday staple. To help you transition your family to healthier muffins for kids, sign up for my upcoming Muffin Club! It is free and a fun way to try out healthy, dietitian-mom approved muffin recipes - emailed once weekly.
What is the portion size of muffins for kids?
According to The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, kids ages 2-8 years old need 3-6 ounce equivalents of grains per day. With half of these to be from whole grains, a healthy whole grain muffin can play into a child meeting their nutritional needs. A child may eat more or less at a given meal or feeding age or stage (and this is okay!). Your job is to decide what, when, and where food is offered and then to support your child in their job of deciding if/whether and how much they eat (from what has been offered).
If you feel concerned that your child is eating too much, remember that you as the parent can adjust how frequently a certain food is offered to offset dependence in the diet of any one food. It is better to shift the frequency of how often an item is offered than to unnecessarily restrict them of such food at a given eating opportunity.
Is it okay for my kids to eat muffins everyday?
If your child tends to enjoy muffins, it can be easy to want to offer them as an easy, everyday option. However, as with any food, we want to emphasize variety - even if/when it’s “healthy.” To do this, you may freeze a few muffins from each batch so you can quickly have a day or two’s worth of muffins to offer when needed/wanted. That amount isn’t enough to say, offer every day as a default at breakfast or snack, but it allows you to rotate muffins with other nourishing breakfast and snack ideas. This also helps you to offer a variety of muffins rather than getting stuck on offering the same kind every time.
What if my kid doesn’t like muffins?
First of all, as a dietitian, traditional muffins are not necessarily a food I think your kids “need” to learn to like. However, as a mom of three, I have found muffins to be one of my most favorite forms of food with my family. Muffins are a convenient, combined food that is easy to prep ahead and simple to offer or self-serve. For these reasons, in addition to the general desire for our kids to learn to like a wide range of foods, I find healthy muffins to be a great option for kids to learn to like and families to enjoy together (as my husband and I often eat them too!).
If your child is still learning to like muffins, consider a few options for exposing them:
Let your child help make them! Muffins are among the more resilient of all baked goods that your (even young!) kids could help you make. Consider picking a recipe with an ingredient or flavor you know your child prefers (like applesauce/apple muffins) and then find ways to boost the nutrition (using some of the suggestions above for added fat, protein, and fiber). Let them help in the process from shopping for the ingredients to adding them to the bowl. Getting them involved in the process is an important part of their learning to like muffins.
Offer small amounts (hence the mini muffin!). Prepared mini muffins in the store don’t always equate to any less sugar, sodium, or other less-desirable ingredients for kids than their full-sized counterparts. However, when baking some of my favorite muffin recipes, consider making mini muffins for a fun-sized offering. You can skewer these on a kabob stick with love it and like it foods, or serve alongside other preferred options at breakfast or snack.
Do a taste test. Trying to get your kids to branch out with what kinds of muffins they enjoy? Have your child help make the muffins into mini muffins (tips one and two above), then do a family taste test of the end product. Rate it on a variety of factors and color in the stars. Keep a running list of new favorites for your family to continue to make or retest with future changes! This is often how I find a muffin can be made less and less sweet by cutting down the initial sugar amount, taste testing, then cutting it back as far as we can go while still enjoying the end product.
What kinds of muffins are best for babies and toddlers?
When can I introduce muffins to my baby?
Muffins can be a way to expose your baby to different allergens like wheat, eggs, and dairy in infancy (regardless of whether or not you use a baby led weaning approach). However, because infants have such little room in their diet for added sugars, sodium, or foods of little nutritional value, I would consider it a limited list of muffins that are appropriate for infants. Instead, infants need to be exposed to options that maximize nutrition, minimize the risk of developing food allergies, and avoid shaping their taste preferences early on for overly sweet foods.
Even “healthy muffins” can be higher in sodium or use small amounts of honey as a natural sweetener. Both added sodium and honey should be avoided in infancy. Instead, opt for these muffins shared by a fellow dietitian mom, Min. They are sweetened with fruit only and appropriate for infants and young kids alike.
Can toddlers eat muffins?
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest that children younger than two years of age should avoid foods and beverages with added sugars. After age two, families should aim for no more than 10% of their total calories coming from sugar. Consistent with how the guidelines share a variety of suggestions for how families can make healthy shifts to empower toddlers to eat nutrient-dense foods, families may begin experimenting with sweetening muffins by adding baby food purees (from a jar or pouch), dates, or mashed fruit as toddlers begin to be exposed to more range in the diet (including sweet or salty foods). Similar to muffins made in infancy, toddlerhood is a great stage of life to offer such naturally sweet options or experiment with lower sugar alternatives to adapt family recipes to less-sweet varieties of muffins.
If your toddler or young child has already developed a taste for muffins that are higher in sugar or sodium, or lacking in nutritional density, consider how you can modify their preferred muffins to promote more nutrition. Muffin Club can help!
What are the healthiest kinds of muffins for kids?
Kid-friendly muffins to prevent picky eating
Kid-friendly muffins to promote nutrition
Can kids with allergies eat muffins?
Many recipe bloggers will denote allergens in recipes as well as tried-and-true allergen-friendly alternatives. This way, whether it is a wheat or gluten allergy, or one to eggs, nuts, or dairy, families can find safe and nourishing ingredients for their child to enjoy with muffins. Sometimes, this may alter the taste or texture of the final product, so whenever possible - read recipe notes or the comments on a post that speak specifically to allergens and safe substitutions.
More Healthy Muffin Ideas for Kids
Looking for more healthy muffin ideas? Join my upcoming Fall Muffin Club! You will receive six weeks of dietitian-mom-approved muffin recipes emailed to you - for free! These are ones that I have collected and adapted so that my family can enjoy seasonal flavors (like pumpkin and apple cinnamon!) with more nourishing ingredients than a standard PSL pairing would offer.
