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I *hate* wasting food with a passion. I think I do give them appropriate serving sizes for their appetite. But it's so hard to predict what they will love one day to the next. I almost always wrap up leftovers or eat it myself unless one of them is sick.

My BIL gives his girls adult sized portions, like more than me and I have a very healthy appetite. They almost never finish it and he always throws out leftovers. It drives us crazy. I've taken to putting their plates together and putting a more appropriate sized portion down and letting them know if they finish it I will get them more. I also think it's daunting to give a kid a regular sized dinner plate and filling it to the max with food!

If they're toddlers it can help to use a measuring tablespoon as a serving utensil. It's a nice physical reminder of the smaller portions needed.

My son varies so much in how much he eats and how he feels about a certain food on any given day, that some waste is just inevitable. I just set rough nutritional goals for myself and try to focus on that.

I don't stress about carbs too much at meals because he gets crackers, puffs, cereal, and popcorn during the day for snacks and he loves fruit (it just depends on what KIND of fruit he feels like on a given day). I mostly try to focus on protein, milk, and veggies. I shoot for 8-12oz of milk a day and 3-4 tablespoons of veggies a day. He's 16 months.

Currently, he's not SUPER into vegetables, but will reliably eat soft cooked carrots, so I try to keep those on hand and then finely mince other veggies into his other foods (like with fried rice). I think each lunch and dinner I give him 2 tablespoons of some kind of vegetable matter and hope he eats it. I also shoot for about 3oz of meat a day. A turkey sausage at breakfast, 2 meatballs cut up at lunch, a scrambled egg at dinner, etc.

If he eats only about half of a portion of something, I bag it up and save it for another meal. If its less than that, I throw it away, but its really like 4 tidbits of carrot or something like that.