Episode Summary
In this episode, we sit down with Kerry Lett, a registered dietitian and certified lactation counselor who specializes in pediatric nutrition, picky eating, food allergies, and maternal health. Kerry offers a wealth of insight on feeding children, from the early stages of introducing solids to navigating picky eating in toddlers and adolescence. They dive into the important differences between feeding neurotypical and neurodivergent children, bust common myths surrounding picky eating, and discuss effective, research-backed strategies for making mealtime a less stressful experience for both parents and kids. Whether you’re a parent with a picky eater or someone interested in child feeding strategies, this episode is packed with practical advice and fresh perspectives
Episode Highlights
- Kerry’s Journey into Pediatric Nutrition
- Carrie shares her path from wanting to be a pediatrician to becoming a registered dietitian specializing in pediatric and maternal nutrition. She discusses the importance of preventing health issues before they arise, rather than just treating them once they occur, and how she focuses on supporting families through every stage of life.
- The Challenges of Feeding Kids Today
- The conversation shifts to the common challenges parents face when it comes to feeding their children, especially with the overwhelming amount of conflicting information available online. Kerry explains how parents often feel lost or confused when it comes to starting solids and managing picky eating.
- Picky Eating: Is It Becoming More Prevalent?
- Kerry discusses the growing trend of picky eating, pointing out that sensory issues and neurodivergence may be contributing factors. She shares insights into why picky eating seems more common today and how societal and environmental changes may be influencing this shift.
- Division of Responsibility in Feeding
- Kerry explores the “division of responsibility” model popularized by Ellen Satter, where parents are responsible for providing healthy meals, and children are responsible for deciding whether or not to eat. She explains how this framework can be adapted for picky eaters and provides tips on balancing autonomy with structure during mealtime.
- The Role of Sensory Exploration in Feeding
- Sensory exploration is a key part of Kerry’s approach. She emphasizes the importance of letting kids explore food in a non-threatening way, from touching and smelling to playing with food before even thinking about eating it. This helps build familiarity and reduces fear around new foods.
- How to Transition from Purees to Solids
- Kerry offers advice on introducing solids to babies, explaining that combining purees with baby-led weaning can be a successful approach. She discusses the benefits of both methods and how they can be used together to teach children to enjoy a variety of textures and flavors.
- Handling Picky Eating in Adolescents
- The conversation wraps up with a look at picky eating in adolescence, a less commonly discussed topic. Kerry talks about the importance of setting boundaries, offering healthy snack options, and guiding teens toward more balanced food choices without controlling their autonomy.
Resources Mentioned
- Kerry Lett’s Practice:
- Kerry is the founder of Milestones Pediatric and Maternal Nutrition, where she and her team offer personalized nutrition counseling and lactation consulting to help families thrive.
- Website: Milestones Pediatric and Maternal Nutrition
- Instagram: @milestonesnutrition
- Books & Approaches Referenced:
- Ellen Satter’s Division of Responsibility: Kerry references Ellen Satter’s model of feeding where parents provide the “what, when, and where” of feeding, while kids decide if and how much to eat.
- The SOS Approach to Feeding by Dr. Kay Toomey: This multidisciplinary approach is crucial for children with sensory needs, developmental issues, or fear and aversions around food.
- “From Yuck to Yum” Framework: Kerry shares her personalized approach to feeding based on evidence-based strategies, blending concepts from Satter’s and Toomey’s work.
- Free Resources:
- Free E-books on Pediatric Feeding, helpful blogs, and more on Kerry’s website for parents looking for support on picky eating, child nutrition, and feeding strategies.
Connect with Us
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- Follow us on social media for updates and health tips.
- Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review!
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Hey there, Erin here and welcome back to the Empowered Nutrition Podcast. I’m thrilled to introduce this episode with Carrie Let, who’s a registered dietician specialized in pediatric feeding, specifically around picky eaters and food allergies, also known as the episode in which I reveal all the old school mean things that I do to my children and debunk all the myths that I hold. But in all seriousness, Carrie is leading edge in terms of her knowledge of this space and we had a really interesting conversation around differences between picky eating and child feeding for neurotypical children versus neurodivergent children. A lot of the myth, we did a lot of myth busting and talks about what’s the appropriate approach in both situations, some specific tactics and resources that are available if you’re interested in child feeding and picky eating across really childhood. At the end we talk a little bit about adolescence, which I think is a rare conversation and an interesting one as well.
So let me introduce her. Carrie is a registered dietician and certified lactation counselor specializing in pediatric and maternal nutrition with a master’s degree in public health and additional training and food allergies, feeding difficulties, gut health, hormonal imbalances, and maternal nutrition. Carrie is dedicated to supporting families through every stage of life. She’s the founder of Milestones Pediatric and Maternal Nutrition, where she and her team offer personalized nutrition counseling and lactation consulting to help families thrive. Carrie is located about an hour from us here in North Carolina in case you’re local and looking for local help. She is right up the way. So of course, as always, we’ll link her details in the show notes and enjoy the episode of Take Care.
Hi Carrie, welcome to the Empower Nutrition Podcast. How are you?
I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.
Oh my gosh, yeah. Thank you for being here and I’m so excited to talk about this topic with you. You’re clearly an expert and I feel like I could use a refresh and not get, not to get too far ahead, but I think the topic of child feeding and picky eating is the right word for it, but maybe there’s, it’s, it’s charged. Is that the right word for that? So,
I mean I definitely think there’s lots of opinions and lots of different ways to do it and I think we all were raised with a different way of feeding us and so we might have some things that we’re carrying into feeding our own kids that
Absolutely.
To just refresh and see if there’s a better way to approach the situation
Completely. There’s so much to talk about on this. But first let me just ask you, you are a dietician. You are the founder and the owner of Milestone Nutrition. You, you specialize, especially it looks like in picky eating and food allergies and child feeding. Can you share a little bit about what got you into that specific niche as a dietician?
So it’s been a long journey and it’s not necessarily fully related. I wanted to be a pediatrician growing up and then in college I was taking all of my pre-med classes and my aunt who was like my mother got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she ended up passing, but that whole time I just said, why am I treating diseases when I could help people prevent them in the first place so we don’t have to lose our loved ones? Yeah. And that just made me kind of rethink my medical path. And so I had the opportunity to take a nutrition class with a wonderful professor and she changed my whole mindset and I didn’t know what I was gonna do with that. I didn’t even know dieticians even existed. But years later at UNC where I did my master’s, I’ve learned about maternal and pediatric health and so I got to kind of keep my passion for pediatrics and help them with everything that they’re struggling with so they can grow and thrive. But learning about the maternal disparities in this country,
Yeah,
I felt like we couldn’t keep neglecting mom. If we’re not caring for mom then she’s not gonna be able to care for babies. So to me it just made sense to combine both together and after I graduated, no one in the area other than WIC who yeah, loved them, but they’re little bit behind on the research, right. Is really doing this. So I just thought it was a perfect opportunity to step in and do something that I’m passionate about and hopefully help the community in the process.
Thanks for sharing. And that’s, it’s so powerful what you said. We have similar backgrounds in the sense of, I also was pre-med and then just kind of hit me of like, wow, most of what you’re able to do as a physician is, is so downstream in sick care. And not that it’s not valuable, but I also kind of, I realized that I’d like to be more upstream of that nutrition certainly is. And then within nutrition, I think prenatal nutrition is even further upstream ’cause you start to wrap in epigenetics and the impact of like prenatal nutrition even on like the genetic expression of the offspring and then the generation after that. So it’s like the, the ultimate like power play of like upstream healthcare I feel like.
Yes. Yeah. It’s really nice to be able to be with families through the whole journey and to see the impact of your work of helping women get pregnant and have a healthy pregnancy and be cared for and loved on in the postpartum period and be able to help their kids thrive as they grow too. Yeah.
It’s really rewarding. Yeah, love that. And what, you know, I think there’s a lot to talk about in this space, but we’ve actually done a couple podcasts episodes recently on prenatal nutrition and I love how there’s more emphasis now on, you know, it, it starts with the eggs get, you know, get, start getting healthy at least three months, ideally 12 months before you get pregnant. I think that’s all powerful. But I think what you said is really true that okay then like let’s say you hyperfocus on your nutrition and your health while before you’re pregnant during your pregnancy and then you have this baby and it’s kind of clear what what should happen immediately after in the sense of breastfeeding. But I, my sense you’re the expert on this, but my sense is that parents, there’s just a big cliff that they end up like not hitting that they didn’t see coming of like, okay, well now it’s time to start solids and like there’s just not a lot of support or education or knowledge or if you, if you find, if you go online to look for information, it seems like there’s just all kinds of perspectives and like different advice.
It’s like all over the place. So I’m curious to hear what you think about that space in terms of like child feeding of like do you feel like, do you feel like you’re seeing your, your clients come in with like a lot of clarity of how that should look or is there a lot of confusion?
I think there’s definitely a lot of confusion. Yeah. I think that entering parenthood is a, a wild time here recovering from what might have been a traumatic birth. Yeah. Or even if it wasn’t quote unquote traumatic, it was still a big experience. You may have been, you’ve got a lot going on and then you’re given this little baby that doesn’t come with a manual. I mean any of your other thing that we get has a manual. Babies don’t have a manual so that’s a lot to navigate. You’re having hormonal changes, you’re recovering from something potentially traumatic from a surgery you’re having to care for yourself and recover. But then you also have this new baby that demands a lot. So I think it is definitely like you said, like jumping off a cliff. Yeah. And a lot of the parents that come to me are definitely a little lost, sometimes a little frustrated with how things have been going. Sometimes they are overwhelmed. I feel like I could put a lot of different adjectives in there with how they describe that they feel depending how long they’ve been on the journey Yeah. And how it’s been going. But typically it’s not people coming to me ’cause they have it all figured out or else they wouldn’t hear me. Sure.
Why would they come? They’re busy. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that picky eating is becoming more prevalent and more problematic or do you think that it’s it’s about the same or better than it used to be?
I think, I think a lot of things are getting worse, which sounds very negative.
Well I agree. But
I think there’s a lot changing in our environment. I think that we are seeing an increase of a lot of things and I think pinky eating is no exception. I think more and more kids are having sensory issues and sensory to higher sensory needs, which I think stems way back to even when they’re like in utero with things changing in our environment. Yeah. That are making them more likely to have those needs. But I definitely think pick eating is increasing and we’re seeing it more and more families are struggling with it.
Yeah, I agree. And I’m not sure where the, I, I think a, it is a lot of what you’re talking about. Like we had just done an episode on autism and the statistics are really alarming in terms of what I think is mostly a true increase in the incidents of autism. Like sure there’s probably more sur there is more surveillance and I’m sure cases were getting missed. But I think it’s pretty clear from the research that there truly is more autism and it it and it’s a pretty rapid increase and that’s obviously gonna manifest in more picky eating. And then you also have, you have maybe not an autistic but you have like a for example where you have like other like neurodivergent beha like feelings and development around eating and food. And then do you think there’s also any element of this, I don’t know but in terms of like the picky eaters, do you think there’s also any like sort of like social cultural things that could be driving it in some situations where it’s like okay this child is absolutely neurotypical or neurotypical child but there’s picky eating related to maybe like the way that this child is like being fed from you know, starting at the beginning?
Yeah, I definitely think that that definitely plays a part. I mean our fed, like you said it, there’s so many ways that kids can qualify for that diagnosis. It could be that they’ve had a traumatic experience. I’ve seen in my practice cases of that where yeah
Like the child
They choked or maybe we told the parent that they weren’t gaining enough and now they’re like force feeding their child. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of things that can lead to a child developing quote unquote like picky eating.
Yeah. Okay. Let’s talk about like those two worlds separately then. So like let’s maybe first set aside people who have a child who does have a medical condition that relates to their picky eating. And let’s just talk about a neurotypical child. What do you have like a framework that you teach around feeding? And what I’m referring to is like, so for example, like a lot of dieticians follow Ellen Solder’s approach, it’s like the division of responsibility, the appearance responsible for preparing and making available a healthy meal. And if the child’s responsibility to decide whether or not they eat it, there’s no like second meal is, is that the framework that you typically recommend? And if so, like could you flush that out or or do you recommend a typically or a totally different approach?
I think I’ve kind of combined a lot of different approaches and a lot of different research into my approach.
Yeah.
I call mine from yuck to yum but it really is a combination of like you said, the division responsibility. I’ve slightly modified it based off of things that I don’t feel like were initially taken into account. So I don’t, I always want there to be one accepted food on the plate. We talk about what that food looks like. I agree with Ellen Satter in the fact that I don’t want there to be any pressure. I wanted to be the child leading. I also think that we need to get feeding opportunities outside of the table for a lot of kids. The table is, I don’t wanna say unsafe, but it can be a scary place when you are a picky eater. Especially if there has been past issues with pressure. If you’ve been told that you have to eat something, sometimes they don’t feel as comfortable at the table. So sometimes it’s better to kind of pull the food experiences away from the table.
Yeah.
I also use a lot of the SOS approach to feeding with Dr. Kay Tumi using her approach, which is a multidisciplinary approach. So making sure that we’re kind of looking at the child as a whole, looking at their sensory needs, looking at their development, looking at other things going on that could be potentially leading to their picky eating and really pulling in other teams. So I can kind of stepping back and saying why is this happening in the first place so that we can develop a more personalized plan for that child and say okay, you know they are having some oral motor issues, we need to pull in our SLP ot. We, they are having some fear and aversion more kind of typical of an R fed case. Maybe we need to pull in a therapist. So making sure that they’re fully supported from all the different disciplines.
Yeah, it’s so good. I mean I think that’s huge that we do the same. It’s like a lot of times that ot, that speech therapist, that mental health therapists are really critical and so we need to think about, it’s like these are multifaceted problems for a lot of children.
Walk me through again, again just I don’t need to get, keep me back to it but I think just for like the everyday parent, walk me through like the first day we introduce solids. I don’t know if this, this is like too big of a question, if not just change it to whatever you wanna say but like Okay, the first question there is like, okay, do we do purees or do we do baby led weaning? And like how does that look? And then, and then from there maybe what are some, how does, how do you continue to play it out in terms of like transitioning to just being a healthy mature eater and what are some of the common mistakes that you see parents making?
I’m a big believer in combination feeding. I think there’s a benefit to both purees and to the traditional baby led weaning style. You could do
Both.
You can do both well things
For the indecisive parent you can do both and it’s really gonna be okay. I think that there’s benefits to kids learning from different textures. I think that learning to eat a puree is different than learning to eat something more solid. It’s a different motor skill. Yeah. And so I think, and I think there’s also just a convenience factor. I know that everything comes in a pouch these days and sometimes you’re on the go and you just wanna like do a quick pouch and that’s totally fine. Yeah. So I would say don’t feel like you have to limit yourself into one path or one lane. You definitely can if you feel really passionate about it. But I think it’s okay and probably even beneficial to do combination fee.
Yeah.
And then in terms of things to look out for, just to kind of implement, I think starting from that kind of more division of responsibility mindset from the beginning of letting your baby lead, I know it’s hard to trust that a little baby knows how much to eat but trying not to make it a pressuring situation where we’re force feeding them really looking for their feeding cues. Yeah. And if they are turning away or giving the signs that they’re not hungry honoring that, I think it can be hard for parents, especially if they have growth concerns. Your pediatricians like they need to gain weight, which is why people typically come to me ’cause they’re like, wait, how do I make them gain weight? So I think honoring your baby and giving them plenty of opportunities to feed of course. But when they are eating, making sure that we’re honoring that too.
Okay. Yeah. I love that. That’s interesting. This is going get divergent but like I remember seeing childcare workers that my children had being extremely forceful with like spoonfeeding and I mean these workers came from cultures that don’t really have an obesity problem. Not that obesity is the only, the only risk of like ignoring your baby’s hunger cues. But it kind of makes me think that like I’m mostly talking about like these are people that come from like Asian cultures. I think I’ve seen quite not to stereotype, I’ve seen a lot of them be like very forceful with feeding. I wonder why it is that they don’t seem to have these like downstream metabolic consequences like on a, on a population level despite that. You know what I mean?
Yeah. I think that’s one of the parts that makes it both kind of exciting but also difficult as a provider. I’m sure you feel this way too, that everyone comes with their own culture and comes with their own history of eating. Yeah. And so it’s kind of navigating that of saying, okay, well here’s my approach as a professional that’s backed in my knowledge of working with other patients and research and my studies. But then you also have to meet families where they are. So I think a lot of people have different ways of feeding their kids and themselves. Yeah. And so it’s working together to find a balance that’s best for their family but still is not doing anything harmful.
Yeah. Which is so is I think harder than it sounds like for example. Okay. So like the old school feeding we I think we both agree is not good where you’re just, you know, you start by forcing your baby to eat more puree than they want and then it gets into like older children, you’re gonna finish that whole plate or you’re getting a span or whatever kind of extreme like old school feeding scenario you wanna imagine. I do. Again, this is our gets a little bit maybe controversial but I’ll just tell you how I feel like the, but you’re the expert. I wanna hear what you think. I do feel like the pendulum swung a little too far in terms of like some things I’ve seen dieticians even do that it is like, okay we can’t be so harsh. Let’s be like more gentle and like put the child in charge.
Totally valid. But like I, for example, like I had a while ago I had a dietician in her family over for dinner and she had two boys similar in age to my two boys that I had the time and now three. But we had a healthy dinner and there were, and there were cookies. So what her approach was is okay, I played up this whole healthy dinner and I put your dessert on the dinner at the same time and you get to decide what you’re gonna do about that. That way we’re not setting up some kind of construct where like dessert is vilified or that you’re shamed around it or that it’s a retreat or a reward or there’s some kind of like bargaining. But what happened is their kids just ate the cookies and then they ran off to play and they didn’t eat any of the, any of the dinner and, and she was fine with that. I’m not, I’m not fine with that.
Maybe if it happens once at a party or something that’s different. But my impression was that’s just like the routine way that eating goes down in their house. ’cause she prioritizes the top thing that no food is vilified and the children get choice. So I guess the question is like do you, do you think there is, there is like an opposite extreme of being too forceful that is also problematic? Or do you think that, do you think it is true that we really just need to take that type of approach to food that like all foods fit, everything’s fine, everything’s available all the time and you’re in charge?
I think that there’s harm in most things of being the extremes. Sure. We don’t wanna be too harsh, but we also don’t wanna be too lenient. We want kids if, if you let me as a child, I had the biggest sweet tooth. I would eat cake for breakfast, I would eat breakfast, lunch. Like I would eat all the sweets and that’s all I would eat. ’cause that was just what I loved. Yeah. And I totally get that as an adult. Chocolate cake is still my favorite thing but I now as an adult know that I need the other things too and so I’m gonna prioritize that. Whereas kids may not fully understand that. So I do think it is important as a parent that you are being in charge of what is being served. I have heard the approach that you mentioned that your friend is implementing of putting the dessert on the tray.
I think that kind of stems a little bit from intuitive eating. Yeah. And I do believe in intuitive eating, but I think a key part of intuitive eating that isn’t often thought about is that we wanna make sure that when we’re implementing intuitive eating that we’re not letting kids fully be in charge and get whatever they want. That’s not the point of intuitive eating. Yeah. Yeah. It’s making sure that when we get to a part that we can listen to our body and we can honor our body and we also can factor in the nutrition. Then we can have more control and have like the free access to the pantry once we’ve shown that we can do both of those parts, that we can listen to our body. So we’re honoring that we’re not gonna overeat, we’re gonna truly honor that. And then also, yes, we might take into account like, oh you know what, I really want an m and m but I’m not gonna eat only m and I’m gonna also make sure that I’m picking other things that are important. Yeah. From a health and nutrition perspective,
I agree. I, I think intuitive eating is, is real. I see it all the time in my chickens that only get chicken feed and my fish that only get fish food and my dog that only gets dog food. But the problem with humans is that we’re not only exposed to natural human foods. We’re exposed to all these hyper palatable, hyper processed sort of like manmade foods that I don’t believe are possible to eat intuitively in the sense of like you retain your natural appetite and satiety regulation when you eat those foods. I don’t think that that’s, that’s the way that human physiology works. And so yeah, I think it’s a mistake to say expect a child to be able to intuitively eat hyper palatable processed foods. I just don’t think that’s how the human body works. So yeah, I I totally agree with what you’re saying. Yeah. But it’s tricky because it sets up, go ahead. But like it sets up this kind of situation where like you don’t wanna shame children, you don’t wanna bargain with children or reward children with sugar, but yet it’s not safe to freely offer it. So what do you think about that?
Yeah, I definitely think it takes a lot of time to get there. Again, I talked about me as a child being the person that would have eat all the, the kid that would’ve eaten. Yeah. Anything. I mean I don’t think that I was the full extreme that I would’ve eaten until like I got sick. But I definitely would’ve eaten it if I saw it. But I think it, I feel like as an adult I have gotten to a place that I can truly implement intuitive being I can have an Eminem and then have the rest of my food. But I do think it takes time to get there. Yeah. And for most kids I think it takes a little bit longer and I wouldn’t expect like a 4-year-old to be there, but maybe like by the time they’re 7, 8, 9, maybe at that point they aren’t able to implement that, but they’re gonna take some time.
So what’s the conversation that you like typically help parents have with their children around this? Is it that like, I think you kind of already started talking about it, but maybe frame it a little bit more of like how do I, let’s talk about my 7-year-old and he wants to, I mean he already knows better, but let’s imagine he doesn’t and he comes home and he is like, look, I wanna have a cookie right now. I’m hungry. What, what, what do I say to him?
I would say it’s taking some time to maybe sit down as a family and have like a family discussion about food of saying like, it’s okay. Like again as the adult you get to decide what comes into your house. So if there’s something that you really don’t like that your kids are eating, then of course you don’t have to bring it into the house. But if we are gonna bring, let’s say like the cookies like you mentioned into the house again, that’s totally fine. I think that is again,
To be clear, we eat cookies in our house. We’re not antico in my
Kitchen right now. I’d be lying for dinner.
But after afterschool snack, right before dinner is not cookie time. Yeah. Yeah.
So I would say it would be again, sitting as a family reminding that like, okay, parents are in charge of what is available. Again, if we’re kind of going back to the vision responsibility that we talked about earlier, parents in terms of the what, the where, the when. So saying, okay, you know, here’s snacks I totally get after school. You’re hungry again, it depends when your family has dinner as to maybe how big you want that snack to be. And, but parents get to decide what is available for those snacks. So if you want cookies to be available, great. I would say maybe if we can pair it with a protein so at least we’re not getting a blood sugar rush and we’re maybe grabbing too many cookies. But again, if we don’t want it available, then maybe we work together to find out other options.
Yeah. So we
Can say, okay, we want it to be a fruit and we want it to be a protein, we want it. And maybe even create a little chart that I’m big on handouts in my practice. So we have little, we have little charts for everything. So like maybe creating a little plan together as a family so we all can hold each other accountable. But especially again if we’re seven, we probably want a little bit of autonomy to be able to go and grab some things and have some say.
Yeah. So tell me if I got this right. It sounds like I’m probably bringing my own thing to this, so tell me if I got it wrong. ’cause for me like it’s like almost like you need an out from this like kind of quagmire. And for me the out is like we do need to nourish ourselves. So there’s a displacement that happens when you eat something that’s not nourishing. And so it sounds like you’re kind of alluding to that of like, oh, you’re hungry, you’d like to have a snack. Let’s look at maybe this chart we have of like what are the nourishing foods so that we can be healthy and make sure that we have what we need in our, to make our bodies like function well and like be where we feel good.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think that, again, sitting down as a family I think helps so that it’s not a reaction. It’s not they went and grabbed a cookie and now it’s like a, a battle we’re fighting over the cookie. Like let’s take a moment as a family to sit down and kind of figure out what we want the meals and snacks to look like. So we have a plan and kids feel like they contributed. ’cause we’re again sitting down with them again. Ultimately it’s the parent’s decision, but we’re letting them in on the conversation.
Right.
And talk about, like you said, why we’re doing this. We want to nourish ourselves. We know dinner’s gonna be in an hour, so we don’t want a big snack. So it’s having those kind of conversations, letting you in and understand why things are being chosen. Sure. But again, ideally we would have a, a balancing snack that is gonna nourish us.
Yeah. Tell me, I know you, I saw you have a free picky eating ebook on your website. Tell me a little bit about that. Like what does it go into or what, what’s, what’s sort of the overview of that?
Yeah, so the, the ebook is going into the first five steps that I use when I work with clients. So it talks through the divisional responsibility. It talks about how we can start rethinking our environment around food, making sure that we are timing meals and snacks appropriately. One of the biggest things that I see, especially with my younger picky eaters is that we might be snacking too often and that might be why we’re not very hungry when it comes to meals. Yeah. So it helps them think through what that routine should look like. It also talks about coming up with food rules as a family, like I said, of kind of sitting down and talking about, okay, well food rules,
You just said that.
Yeah.
I love it.
Cool.
I’m down with the food rules.
Yeah. So thinking through, like again as a family, what do we want the food rules to be? It could be something fun like maybe Friday is a special themed dinner. It could be kids help pick dinner once a week. Maybe they help clean up maybe like again whenever you want it to be, no phones at the table. So think through like the full food environment, how we’re serving the food, when we’re serving it and what that looks like. Yeah. Right. And then starting to think through what foods we can introduce to our kids. So it’s starting through kind of the first part of our process. And so my hope is that it helps parents kind of rethink how they’re offering food to their families so that hopefully that helps them have a couple of little wins and start to make progress again.
Yeah. I noticed that it sounds like you subscribe to the idea of like, okay, there’s like this food bridging kind of situation where it’s like you wanna, you’re gonna have this plate of food, there’s gonna be like familiar, comfortable, like desired foods and then you try to have more of like a challenge food there. And somehow by doing those two things together you’ll be more successful with introducing this challenge food. Is that kind of what it is?
Yeah. So I do think that it’s important to get kids comfortable with new foods. I think a lot of times we get, kids get stuck because they get so comfortable with the things that are always the same. Like a cracker, if I served it every single time, it’s gonna be the same. Whereas a blueberry one time it might be sour one time it might be sweet one time it might be squishy, one time it might be firm. Right. So I, I believe in making sure that we’re offering new foods that we’re not getting kids stuck in their foods. ’cause I think when we get stuck in our foods, it gets to a scary place that if I was eating the same thing every single day, I know I would drop my foods really quickly and be like, I don’t wanna eat. But when we get down to so little foods, so many things feel foreign. So if we can get them comfortable with even new foods, just being in their vicinity and then eventually getting to point that we’re exploring those foods using our census.
Yeah.
And then hopefully eventually trying And also I would say erecting foods, which isn’t something I go into in the ebook, but something that I talk about with my clients of seeing how we can make slight changes to our favorite food. So it’s not the same every single time.
Okay. Like you crumble it up or you squish it or something like that.
Yeah. Like maybe it’s our, like if we take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, maybe we’re using a different bread, maybe we’re using a different jelly, maybe we’re slicing it in a different way. Wow. Then even those things might seem to us as adults very similar. I look like I’m still having a peanut butter jelly. But to kids that might seem so foreign, especially to kids that are very sensitive to, sensitive to the different changes and are, are a little bit more restrictive on the physicality when they’re getting like brand specific.
Absolutely. Yeah. I used to be more shy about talking about this, but now they have three like kind of elementary age children and it’s played out really well. They’re really great eaters. I’m more just like shameless about saying this, but I’m curious what your take is. ’cause it might be horrible. But I remember, I think it was because I’m a second career dietician. I think it was when I was in school to be a dietician. I remember reading a research study, oh no, it was after that. I was writing for a magazine and was doing research reviews for them. But anyway, I remember reading this study that like kind of changed my life around this. And basically what it showed was like on average a pooled population of children, the average number of times that they needed to taste a food was 11 times in order to like just freely accept it.
And almost basically like it, at that time it was very strong in terms of like the pendulum was very strong in the way of like, don’t pressure a child to take a bite of anything ever that is going to absolutely ruin them. But that study to me really was in conflict of that of like, okay, if you want say, let’s say it’s broccoli, just pick a random food that kids can love but usually don’t automatically love if you put broccoli in front of that child a thousand times and they never taste it, they’re never getting close closer to their 11 tastes.
And it seems to be that these 11 taste is, is on average what’s needed. So we, we started our family doing where like there’s gonna be a healthy dinner every night. It’s gonna have all the components of a healthy meal. And again, this is like so controversial, but they’re required to take a bite of everything. Now keep in mind our, our children are neurotypical. So I, I think there’s definitely situations where that would be absolutely inappropriate. But for neurotypical children, I mean call old school but it’s worked out great. They’ll eat anything and they don’t seem to have any issues around like some kind of like as far as I can tell, some kind of like trauma from this. But they’re just great eaters and they’re, they’ll just eat their food now. So tell me, haven’t ruined my children. Is this a horrible thing? Should I delete this episode right now? Like tell me what you think.
I don’t think you’ve ruined your children. I think wait food is very different for every family. Yeah. And what works for one kid might not work for another, but vice versa. The research, like you said, says that it does take a lot of exposures to food. It typically takes 10 to 15 times of exposing a food child, child before they’re willing to try it and an additional 10 to 15 times before they learn to like it. So that’s for neuro typical children. Yeah. I like to tell remind my yes neurodivergent children, it can sometimes be double that. Yeah. So it’s the long road. So all of that to say that anyone
Yeah. It’s not normal happens up
On it for sure.
Yeah. If if tasting of food is like making them vomit or if it’s giving them a panic attack or an anxiety that’s not typical, like that’s not the intent. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think the key word with the research is that it’s food exposures and there’s so many different ways that we can expose our child to food. So if putting it on the plate, I know we know we talked about, that’s something I typically try to work up to for kids of can we have a new food, small amount like size of a blueberry on our plate. But if we’re not there yet, if that’s really overwhelming and anxiety we’re producing, maybe we leave the table at the side of new foods. If that’s not where we are, that’s okay. There’s still there ways we can expose our children into new foods. Maybe it’s going to the farmer’s market, maybe it’s going to the grocery store, maybe it’s helping in the kitchen. Maybe it’s even reading about a book I hear so many times like Bluey will do an episode on a certain food and then all of a sudden all the kids are into this food. Now I’m like thank yeah. For helping me out.
Yeah. Yes thanks. Keep it up. Keep finding good fight blue.
But there’s so many ways to expose kids to food that it doesn’t have to be at the table. And like I mentioned earlier, I do think it is important to give the opportunity for kids to be exposed to foods outside of mealtime.
Yeah.
We do a lot of sensory exploration. We have at our practice what I like to call food explorer groups where we’re like playing with foods or we have like a kids’ garden in the back, we cook so they’re being exposed to new foods in a low pressure way. And I tend to have a lot of really great success with that. And so do families when they implement those strategies at home too.
Okay. So the low pressure like exposures, do you, do you feel like that will typically just organically evolve into eating it? Or do you feel like there has to kind of be this moment where the adults are like, okay now you take a bite? Like how does that go? I
Don’t think, I don’t think we have to tell them to take a bite. They’ll just eat it. So I’m not gonna say that every single time they’re and eat it in general. Once moms commenting me like that didn’t work for me again, it’s 10. Jill sometimes takes the 10 to 15 times of exposing it for they’re willing to try it and the end official times 10 15
Willing to try it. Does that mean that the adult is suggesting that they try it or are you saying that the kid will just try it?
Yeah, so as an example, one of our recent groups that we did, we did turning dehydrated veggies into Play-Doh.
Okay.
And this group that I’m talking about is for kids three to seven and I had a couple of kids that have afin in this group. Hmm. So we’re starting with our veggie. My goal is to teach kids how to get comfortable with new foods. And so we follow the SOS approach to feeding for that. So we start with, okay, can we see it? Can we visually assess it and describe it? Can we talk about it? Can we touch it? Can we start bringing it to our face to smell if it makes a sound, hear it. And then start getting to the point that we can put in our mouth. So during these groups I am leading, I am kind of encouraging like, oh what does it smell like? It smells kind of funny and, but I never tell a child that they have to do it.
Most of the time they just start mirroring me or one kid will start being like, that smells weird. And then all the kids have to smell it. So I don’t think we have to tell them to take the bite. I think if we get them interacting with it and comfortable exploring it with their senses, that makes a huge difference in this class. Again, one of my AFI kiddos actually started eating the dehydrated veggies and they never Oh yeah. Would have eaten them and that was their first time being exposed to them. So again, you do definitely have some wins. That’s definitely one of our wins. Yeah. But again, even if they are getting more comfortable with the new food, again, again counts as an exposure. So we’re on the journey and that’s still a win too of if this kid wasn’t okay with new foods even being on his plate, if he’s now interacting with the new food, that’s definitely a went too.
Okay. So I know you’ve had this I’m sure many, many more times than me, but I’ve even had it a lot where it’s like the story is okay every day we’re putting the vegetable on the dinner plate every day. The vegetables getting ignored, it’s going in the trash for months and years on end. There’s no progress. It sounds like the play there, not the play, but like the right approach is not to say that’s it today you start eating that vegetable or else it’s finding more creative ways to increase maybe the exposure like that sitting on the plate is not the level of exposure you’re talking about. You’re talking about touching it, you’re talking about smelling it, you’re talking about describing it. Talking about it even I think is an, an exposure in a pretty powerful way. So is that kind of what you would typically do about that situation?
Yeah, I think that’s great that we’re putting the food on the plate. I definitely think that’s the first step. And for some kids that will work. Yeah. If we’re just putting the foods on their plate. But for many kids, like you said the story is that okay, it’s there, we didn’t touch it. Okay. It goes in the trash.
It’s like wallpaper.
Yeah. So if we can start elevating that, okay, now we’re okay with it being in our vicinity, can we see if we can get them to interact with it again in a low pressure way? They don’t have to do it. Maybe let’s, it’s green beans for example. And we’re seeing like who can stack them the highest. So it can be something so simple, but again, or it could be like turning our green bean into a mustache Again in that approach we’re getting it really close to their face. So they’re already gonna be smelling it. And I think if you lead it as an adult, a lot of times kids will follow. So if you just start being silly, I think kids learn best through play. Yeah. And so that will get them now interacting with it. So now again, we’ve taken the next step. So I think if you’re any parents listening that are in that situation, I would see how we can encourage again the next step. Even if it’s just touching it, maybe it is doing something silly with it, but see if we can get to the next step and get them to explore it further. ’cause they’ve visually assessed it probably 15 to 20 times at that point. Right. But we need to
Temper level too.
Yes. Yes. Next step of the sensory ladder.
I think it’s really interesting the way you brought up seeing the adults eat it. That was just kinda like a random part of what you said. But actually I, tell me again, I’m, you’re the expert, I just want you to like debunk all my thoughts. But I really do feel like part of, part of it, not at all all it, but especially when it comes to like neurotypical children with picky eating, I feel like there’s a big difference now in terms of like just the American lifestyle and in terms of like how we are with food in the home and frankly what adults even eat. And there are certainly families that don’t fall into this, but on average to me it’s like a lot of times there’s a, there’s a child that’s a picky eater. The child doesn’t see the parents eat at all until the evening. But then in the evening there’s like sports and, and they’re, they’re not gonna sit down and cook a meal and like eat at the dinner table. They’re gonna gonna like maybe do the drive-through on the way to baseball practice. And that’s, there’s never any opportunity for the child to see the parent eat these foods.
Do you think that that is something that’s actually contributing to picky eating? Again, not in every single home, they’re obviously exceptions, but maybe like on average, do you feel like just maybe the way our society has gone in terms of like our lifestyle contributes to this?
I definitely think it can. I think modeling is a big part. It’s definitely something that’s mentioned in the divisional responsibility that we all again wanna eat the same foods because we want kids to learn how to eat the family meal. And even if a kid’s not comfortable eating something, they are being able to watch the parent or the sibling or the friend if it’s at school.
Yeah.
Eat that food and learn from that process. I think kids are really great at watching and observing. So I do think having the opportunity to eat together as a family, it’s huge. But I know that for many families that’s not possible. Maybe it’s families working different jobs or maybe we’re really busy and I know that single parents,
Yeah, single parents, it makes it really hard. So I would say for anyone in that situation, remember that it doesn’t have to be dinner. I think a lot of people default to being dinner, but it could be breakfast, it could even be a snack. And again, if a meal or snack timing doesn’t work out, maybe it’s like just on the weekend when we have more time or maybe it’s we’re just offering other food exposures at other times, maybe we’re taking a time to like explore and play a new food. Or maybe we went to the farmer’s market and we let our child pick out a new food. We’re gonna try to get there. It doesn’t have to be the formal dinner time. I think as long as we’re having an opportunity to expose new foods in a new way and do that together, I think that makes a huge difference.
Yeah, that’s, I love that because it is extreme, it’s kind of like a despairing thing if you for families that it it, if you put them in front of like, okay, here’s what the research says. It says that family mealtime is extremely powerful in terms of like the child’s nutritional status or like long-term health outcomes. It’s, I feel like, tell me if you disagree, but I feel like it’s like irrefutable in at this point on the research in that. But that that could be a very upsetting thing for someone to hear when, like you said, many people just are not in a position to be able to have a sit down family dinner every night or even often. So I like how you’re just saying like look that it’s maybe not that we have a traditional sit-down dinner every night. It’s it’s, it’s more of just modeling and other times and other meals and finding some time when you can do that.
Yeah. And I think to, like you were saying with the research, it also shows just the connection as a family grows if we’re able to sit down together. So I think as long as we’re taking the opportunity to do that again if it is dinner, I think that’s great. I definitely agree with you that that is the best scenario. But if it doesn’t end up being dinner for your family, then that’s okay. Again, as long as we’re finding the opportunity to connect, to be together to have some kind of meal snack opportunity again, even if it’s not every night, that’s still much better than never doing it at all.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I’m not sure if I’m ready to say it’s the same just based off of what’s published. I mean I’m sure clinically you’ve been able to see a lot of like qual one examples of like how well that plays out. But I do think it’s potentially problematic that as a society we’ve kind of gone to where like it feels like this, the evening meal is like almost valueless. Like there’s, there’s no like need. I’m not sure that I’m there with that necessarily playing out the same as as if you do have it. But like I totally agree with you that you know, many people can’t have it. There’s no shame in that. But certainly doing what you can in other realms is always gonna be better than just not modeling at all at any time.
Yeah. Yeah. I definitely, I definitely agree again, if we, we don’t really have the research on having the family opportunities at other times and what that looks like. Yeah. And how that impacts kids. So I think doing our best to sit together as a family is definitely important. And again, if we can do it at other times as well, especially I think for younger kids, a lot of little kids tend to front load their calories. I mean they tend to eat more in the beginning of the day than the end of the day. So it, I would be curious, I don’t think there’s any research supporting this, but I’d be curious to see the impact of having like a family breakfast for little kids versus having a family dinner. If there is maybe even greater benefits for little kids knowing that that’s when they’re eating better. I like to say if you have a littler kid that is struggling with picky eating, a lot of times it’s better to introduce the new foods and breakfast because that’s when they are hungrier.
Yeah. So smart.
But I definitely think if we can make it a priority to be together again, if it’s on every day, that’s okay. Making it as do as we can. And again, if we can’t do dinner then maybe it’s another time.
Absolutely. Yeah. I love that. It’s so good. Yeah, I mean there’s so much here. I mean I’m, the leading edge for me is now my oldest is, is like about 13 years old next week and I thought we had the child feeding thing closed out with him. But I feel like it’s, it, it kind of comes back even then because they’re starting to want more autonomy. They’re starting to have more rebellion. I he, they’re allowed to, you know, have dessert. And I walked in the kitchen last night and oh my gosh the bowl of ice cream was outrageous. And so I totally did the wrong thing. I said, that’s way too much ice cream. And he kind of looked at me like angry slash embarrassed. I’m like, I can’t believe this. This is horrible. Like what am I doing? I’m, it’s like I completely forgot all my training. Like I shouldn’t be shaming him around how much ice cream he got. But it’s, it’s like, it’s interesting how the whole thing is it evolve I think for parents it’s, it’s one of the challenges is it’s, it’s a constantly evolving thing because your child is changing every year. They’re like a different person. So you’ve gotta kind of always be evolving your tactics a little bit, you know? Yeah,
Yeah. Once you figure it out then they’re gonna change you. They’re
Gonna change. Yeah. He’s totally different than he was a year ago. Like I have no idea what to do about the 13-year-old that gets too much ice cream. I mean it really was too much like
Sha
Me if you’ll, but I’m like there is the too much, I’m sorry like,
But I don’t know, I don’t wanna, I shouldn’t have said that to him, you know, I don’t know because you got, they’re starting to become their own, you know, they’re on the short final to being an adult. You gotta let them evolve into a more mature relationship with food and more autonomy. You know, they’re definitely outside the realm of I think where you can, you should never be like maybe patrolling or you should never be shaming him for sure. So it kind of caught me off guard that I said that, but it was kind of shocking what he did. ’cause again, he is on this like rapid changing thing. So yeah, I need your support group for like apparently parents of teenagers that eat.
Yeah.
Too much ice. I don’t know.
Teenagers are hard because like you said, they, they are changing, they do have more control. Especially once they start driving than Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Then it’s a whole nother ball game than they really can do kind of what they want. So I think it’s, if you have a child that has feeding difficulties or you feel like you don’t have a good relationship with food or they don’t have a good relationship with food, then I do think it is better to start earlier rather than later. ’cause like you said, it’s always gonna change. Yeah. And the older they get the harder it is. ’cause again, they are growing up Yeah.
In a different way. But yeah.
So
You feel like it’s less like you have to kind of retract as much of your own input a little bit. Like that’s maybe not a good way of saying it, but it’s, it’s hard, it’s easier to have a, a conversation with ’em that’s on a, on a logical like plane. But it’s harder to harder know where the boundary lies. Maybe that’s, maybe it, it’s like the boundaries can be more clear with younger children, but less so when they’re teenagers I think.
Yeah, they definitely, once they become teens again, especially for boys, I mean their calories are through the roof. They need all food. I know
They’re so hungry.
So I don’t know, maybe in that situation it’s making sure that we are feeling satisfied after dinner. I dunno. But
I know yes, you do know, but you’re like at this point lady, I’m gonna have to invoice you. Like I can’t, A little too specific.
Carrie, you’re so amazing and I just love everything you have to say and your website is amazing the way you’re clearly helping so many people and so I’m sure a lot of people wanna connect with you if they’re, so you’re in Cary, which is about an hour north of us here in North Carolina. So I’m sure a lot of people, if they’re local, would love to hear more about your groups. And also I know they can work with you or I see you have a lactation consultant. Anybody can obviously get your free ebook. Maybe tell people a little bit more about like the best ways to connect you with you and like some resources that you have.
Yeah, if you’re interested in working with our website is milestones nutrition.com. Myself and Natalie, who’s our lactation consultant, both do free discovery calls. So if you are just wondering whether or not this is something we can help with or if we take your insurance, all of those lovely questions, you can schedule those. Again, it’s completely free 15 minutes so that we can figure out the best step for your canal or yourself if you are in the maternal space. We also have lots of free resources. We’ve got blogs, we’ve got eBooks, we try to do social media, so you can always get free information there as well.
Yeah, I felt like your Instagram was really, there was a lot on there. Just i, I can’t believe it’s free. So much good information.
Well, thank you. We try.
It looks great. Well thanks Carrie, and we really appreciate you sharing your insights today on the podcast and we’ll definitely put everything in the show notes for how people can connect with you. So thank you.
Thank you for having me.
All right. Take care.
Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the Empower Nutrition podcast. We love offering insight to help you optimize your wellness. If you enjoy this episode, feel free to leave us a rating on whichever platform you’ve streamed from and consider subscribing. Also, you can learn more about our practice at www dot Empower nutrition Health and that link is also in your show notes. Take care and Talk to you soon.