I have a question for you. How do you make decisions on what food to buy for your children? Walking round the supermarket is mesmerising these days, there are so many different options to choose from. With such a vast variety of food on offer and enticing marketing strategies, it can often feel like a minefield. Do you ever find yourself weighing up two different brands of a food, trying to decipher the food label to work out which one is healthiest…. but end up feeling a bit lost? As parents, we want to provide our children with the most healthy foods possible. However, working this out can s ..read more

Meal times with a fussy eater can be exhausting.  You’re probably making the same meals on repeat, half are getting thrown in the bin and you’re in an endless cycle of giving in to requests, just so you know that your little one isn’t hungry. I get it.  But I bet you’re wondering how to make things better?  Did you know that often the words or phrases you use around food and mealtimes have the power to heal or harm?  I want to share with you some little known tips that come from being a feeding therapist and parent of two fussy eaters and that you won’t find on google. Word ..read more

Meal times with a fussy eater can be exhausting.  You’re probably making the same meals on repeat, half are getting thrown in the bin and you’re in an endless cycle of giving in to requests, just so you know that your little one isn’t hungry. I get it.  But I bet you’re wondering how to make things better?  Did you know that often the words or phrases you use around food and mealtimes have the power to heal or harm?  I want to share with you some little known tips that come from being a feeding therapist and parent of two fussy eaters and that you won’t find on google. Word ..read more

If you’ve tried everything and your child still won’t eat, it may be that their picky eating is more than the common toddler food refusal phase.  Some children have difficulty eating because they’ve missed an important developmental window during weaning, others have a sensory processing issue which prevents them from trying new food.  For others it's behavioural but did you know that for most children with picky eating, the behaviour was just a normal part of their development but how we responded as parents during this extremely frustrating phase has likely made this worse. In thi ..read more

We all know vegetables are nutritious foods. They contain so many vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that protect our little ones from becoming unwell and yet they are probably the most rejected food by toddlers! So many of us hide veggies in our children's food, is this OK or are we just being dishonest… Here’s what you need to know... Vegetables can be divided into 2 types  I like to think of vegetables in two categories: Sweet vegetables such as butternut squash, carrots, parsnips, peas, swede, sweetcorn, and sweet potato. Bitter veggies such as asparagus, aubergine, avocado ..read more

The Division of Responsibility in feeding is a technique developed by a US based Registered Dietitian by the name of Ellyn Satter. How you feed your child is just as important as what you feed your child. When you feed your child using the techniques described in the Division of Responsibility, research has shown that your child will develop a balanced, healthy relationship with food.  Whether they are a picky eater, carrying a bit of extra weight or you are simply looking for ways to enjoy meals as a family, the division of responsibility is the ideal way for all healthy children to lear ..read more

Feeding toddlers can be stressful at the best of times: refusal to come to the table, throwing food on the floor, refusing today what they loved last week! And at some point, they may go through a frustrating picky or fussy phase, and up to 50%  of children may be described as picky eaters during childhood (1).  A feeding aversion, however, is a bit more serious. These are children who have developed an extreme version of picky eating. This blog aims to take you through how to identify if your child has a feeding aversion and how best to support them, including when more expert advic ..read more

Over the last 22 years or so of working with families (and learning from my own two children), there are recurring themes that crop up over and over that make for happier mealtimes. In this blog, I’m revealing to you my 5 best kept secrets to creating the foundations for happy mealtimes for you and your family.  When to implement these 5 secrets? You can start as soon as your little one joins in with eating family foods, it’s never really too early but I imagine you are here because mealtimes are a battleground and you are looking for help. So start now. Take it step-by-step if you can’t ..read more

I was interviewed by a journalist for the Guardian  who asked me for my 5 top tips to help kids eat veggies and my suggestions came as a bit of a surprise to her. She said she’d expected me to talk about making sauces packed full of blitzed up veggies, hiding veggies in mashed potato or making toddler muffins, but that's not my style, I’m all for visible vegetables and I will explain why. Why do little ones dislike veggies? Before I dive into how to encourage children to eat vegetables, I think it can be helpful for you to understand why vegetables are disliked so much by toddlers and you ..read more

35 healthy snacks for toddlers that they will love  Snacks get bad press, but actually they are a great opportunity for getting extra nutrition into toddlers. By their nature, toddlers often don't eat well at mealtimes; it's part of their development. Their appetites are variable, their stomach capacity is relatively small, and they think ‘dinner foods’ are boring.  Nevertheless, they are growing rapidly and so need quite a bit of nutrition. Relative to their size, they actually need more than you and I, and so this is where snacking, done correctly, can play a really important role ..read more