Feeding toddlers with allergies and through illness

In my experience a lot of fussy eating journeys begin after an illness. A gastro bug or an illness that involved high fevers. For some reason when us adults are sick, we do not force ourselves to eat, we may go a few days with just water and minimal food until we start to feel better again. Then when we start eating again, we often have different food preferences to previous and then slowly we return to our normal repertoire. If we ate sushi the night before we started a gastro bug, it will be a long time before we eat sushi again as the association between sushi and how we felt the next morning will be too coincidental. 

Similarly, during illness our kids also lose their appetite, yet what is fascinating is that as parents we panic when they stop eating. So, we force feed and push food constantly at the sick child out of fear that during the illness duration they will starve. This is highly unlikely and during illness the most important nutrient is water and liquids. The focus should be on maintaining hydration during the early stage of their illness and then as they start recovering and before full appetite has returned offering a milky nutritional supplement will continue to maintain hydration as well as keep them healthy and replenish lost nutrients.

Once recovered you need to let them guide you as to what they will eat and crave post illness and be open to a shift in food preferences. Often when not pressurised, after an illness a child will increase intake quite dramatically and then even out. The more you can go with the flow the better the outcome will be.