North America's way of eating, is it really good for us?

Great question. The problem is each person will (usually) give you a different answer (that is representative of their own culture). We all are a product of our own culture. Having lived in various countries with radically different foods, I've learnt to be cynical of 'advice' that you "have to" eat this or that food. For example, I lived in Japan and I know a lot of Asian mothers - they don't eat a lot of dairy and are often mystified by western peds advice that they must give dairy products when their kids usually won't drink milk. Yet in Japan they sprinkle sesame seeds on their rice, they give dried up fish to toddlers to chew on, they eat soft fish bones, they eat lots of types of vegetables - they get enough calcium and iron I'm sure.

I had a good laugh once when I lived in Denmark. I'm Australian and was talking to my friend there, another Australian mother - her Danish health visitor (for her baby) insisted my friend give the baby (~1 yo) dry teething rusks to chew on. My friend explained that her Australian baby health book recommended a lamb chop bone to chew on. I remember being given bones to chew on as a kid too Danish health visitor thought my friend was nuts - was horrified at giving a child bones, that alone lamb which was hideously expensive in Denmark. In fact a fave Danish baby food is mixing that heavy dark rye bread with sweet dark beer (it's non alcoholic). It's actually quite healthy but we found that rather odd. And in Australia, our fave Vit B source is Vegemite, which other countries find equally odd.

I don't know about the exact RDA amounts for vitamins/minerals in other countries - you'd probably need to look up each countries health department to find out.

I certainly like getting ideas for getting more of certain nutrients from other cultures when you have a toddler that refuses to eat a particular food group.

Your dietician is a bit behind the times. It hasn't been proven but refined grained cereals are starting to be linked to obesity, diabetes, and possible even food allergies. There aren't any set first foods. I always gave my kids whatever we were eating, unles it was very heavily seasoned. But we didn't start solids until our babies were asking and ready to try to eat themselves (which for DD2 was four months, little monkey shoved her fingers into my mashed potatos and crammed them into her mouth. She was quick!)Avocado and banana come to mind but there are plenty others.

As for the differences in diets, even my nutrition teacher who seems pretty mainstream openly admits most of the recs are very driven by industry, not health. In the Mediteranian food pyramid, beef is at the very top, to be limited to once a month. Oils like olive oil are more towards the middle. Heck even wine comes before beef. I'll see if I can find a copy of the pyramid online. It's pretty interesting to see how different it is from the US one.

Here's a link. I forgot that sweets actually come before meat too. Really goes to show how much America is really run by industry.

http://www.mamashealth.com/nutrition/medpyramid.asp

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I love this - thank you!