The 'give drink' and 'give food' options are greyed out if you don't have a high chair. Maybe some people have mods for this, but in a vanilla game, this is what I see. As others point out, you can have an older Sim use the 'have a quick meal' option to get those foods, but you have to cancel the action to stop them eating or drinking the food or drink, and by that time, they've already eaten half of it. I don't know whether the juice becomes a sippy cup when the toddler grabs for it (or whether the toddler can grab the drink at all from a counter).
I did have a mother autonomously give her toddler a sippy cup from the 'check toddler' action once. (The 'check toddler' action will still come up, even if autonomy is turned off.) That's the only time I've seen the sippy cup without the high chair in the game, and I normally don't play with the high chair.
In any case, I agree with the OP - I wish the 'give drink' and 'give food' were available without the high chair.
