Transcript for
Talking about family mealtimes, nutrition and food refusal in children

Narrator (00:02): 

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Families Podcast. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (00:05): 

Hi, I’m Nadia Rossi and you’re listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. We would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present, and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia. In today’s episode, we are speaking with Anna Ritan. Anna is an accredited pediatric dietitian nutritionist with over 12 years experience who specialises in pediatric and neonatal nutritional therapy and dietary education. I have followed Anna on her Instagram, Nourish Little Lives, since my first daughter was born many years ago. I’m personally very excited to have her as a guest today. At Emerging Minds Families, we talk a lot about mealtimes being a great place for building connection with our families, yet we hear from so many that mealtimes can be really challenging. Anna is here today to talk with us about how we can navigate mealtimes whilst also making informed decisions about our child’s nutrition and supporting the more fussy eaters in our household. Welcome, Anna. It is great to speak with you today. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (01:17): 

Thank you. Thank you for having me in. It’s great to be here. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (01:19):

At Emerging Minds Families, we acknowledge that families come in many different forms. And so I was wondering, Anna, if we started today’s conversation by you telling us a bit about who makes up your family. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (01:32): 

You’ve been following along. I’ve shared a lot of my family on Instagram, but there’s me, my husband, and then we have three children. We’ve got a ten-year-old, eight-year-old and just-turned-five-year-old. Then we’ve got a puppy. We’ve had her for about a year as well. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (01:45): 

Amazing. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (01:45): 

So busy. We’re just talking about how hectic it was to even get here today, just dropping kids off and running through breakfast and the hectic of getting ready for school and yes, sometimes you feel like you’ve run a marathon before your day’s even started. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (01:58): 

Absolutely. I feel that. Anna, as a mother of two young girls myself, I know firsthand how fraught mealtimes can be, even the busyness of breakfast, but at dinners when we’re all sitting down together and trying to have a meal together, the food that my kids loved one week is refused the next week. I’m wondering why are mealtimes such a difficult time for families? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (02:21): 

It’s a great question and mealtimes can be difficult for lots of different reasons. There’s so many things that can underpin eating, but if we talk about maybe a few examples, so children will eat like children. Sometimes it’s our expectations that we need to shift at the mealtime. A lot of what we see as difficult or challenging behaviours is in most cases developmentally appropriate. For example, you might have a toddler that doesn’t want to sit still at the mealtime and that’s very developmentally appropriate for a toddler. Or you might have a child who eats well at breakfast and then doesn’t eat well at dinner, so they might eat well at one meal and not sit great at another meal. Again, that could be seen as very developmentally appropriate for a child and typical childhood eating. A lot of what we see as challenging behaviours of parents are probably very developmentally appropriate behaviours for children. 

(03:08): 

Even food throwing, it’s frustrating for us, but it’s developmentally appropriate and peaks at certain ages. There’s something called food neophobia, which is a fear of new foods and that tends to peak in children between two to six year of age. We’ve got these different transitions with feeding that tend to happen. And as parents, it’s how we manage that and manage our expectations and manage the mealtimes to support the child while they’re still learning to eat that really helps. Mealtimes can feel difficult because of a lot of these behaviours. And sometimes it’s also a little bit of our parenting style. We know that authoritarian parenting styles tend to have more troublesome feeding behaviours long term. If you have a parent, and we will probably all raise this way where you have to finish your plate, finish everything on your plate before you get down from the table. 

(03:53): 

It’s very much where we are trying to control what the child eats. Then we end up butting heads at the dinner table because you’ve got two different people wanting two different things. Mealtimes can feel like a bit of a battlefield sometimes if we’re trying to control what the child eats or how much they eat off their plate or what they eat first. Sorry. Mealtimes can be difficult, plus especially if we’re looking at dinnertime, kids are tired at the end of the day. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (04:16): 

They’re tired at the end of the day. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (04:17): 

Yeah, we’re tired. There’s big emotions that tend to happen. Sometimes it’s not even about the food. They’ve just got to get emotions out. Saying no to something is a nice way to get some healthy emotion out at the end of the day if you’ve been bottling everything up. Lots of children can be overwhelmed at mealtimes with all the noise and sensory stuff that goes on at mealtimes. It would be common to feel that mealtimes are difficult, but oftentimes we can improve that by changing thoughts or attitudes around mealtimes as well. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (04:44): 

That is very comforting to hear trying to meet your child at their developmental stage and then also modify our expectations to them developmentally. What are some ways that parents can adapt their expectations to their child developmentally? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (05:00): 

First is probably having a really reasonable understanding of what’s appropriate in terms of childhood development and knowing that. I guess I like to reframe eating that eating is a skill that’s learnt. Just like learning how to write or learning how to read, think about the hours of time that we put into practising that skill before we truly master it. Eating is exactly the same thing. If we can reframe our mindset that we’re teaching a skill, number one, that automatically changes the mood because we’re not so much then worried about how much they’re eating or what they’re eating off their plate. We’re trying to teach the skill of eating. Just shifting that mindset initially is important. And then looking at a toddler for example. Say you have a toddler who is really struggling to sit down at mealtimes and they want to get up all the time and they don’t want to sit still and you feel like you’re taking food all around the house, you might be distracting them with an iPad to keep them still because you think that that might help them to eat better. 

(05:51): 

You might be following them around the house with food or leaving food out for them for hours just so they eat. That’s probably one of the common difficulties that we see with toddlers. It’s very age appropriate for a toddler to not want to sit at a mealtime. One of the strategies that we can do in that scenario is bring them to the table, we all eat together. Encourage your child to sit down and if they want to get down from the table they can, but the food stays at the table. If you want to get down, that’s okay, but food stays here and you just continue eating your meal and you enjoy your meal. And your toddler will eventually come back to the table. There has to be an end to the mealtime as well so we don’t leave food out for hours. After 20 minutes, that’s a reasonable timeframe to leave food out, then we take the food away. At least you’ve still enjoyed your meal, your toddler’s done what they need to do, which is move their body, probably have a few mouthfuls here, come back to the table, a few mouthfuls there, and that’s probably all they need. And then we just let go of any expectations around they didn’t finish their meal. It’s difficult to do when we worry, but it’s the most effective way where we don’t try and control how much our child eats. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (06:51): 

That is so, again, reassuring to hear. I feel like I definitely have that scenario and definitely had that scenario last night. I have two different eaters in our family, one that will sit and eat and even ask for seconds, and one as an example, last night who just refused. And I get an internal panic when my child refuses to eat. I’m wondering if you have any strategies to parents that do panic when their child refuses to eat. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (07:19): 

Food refusal is tricky ’cause obviously there’s different extents of how severe it could be, but in a normal, healthy, growing individual, food refusal is completely normal. One day you might have a child that will eat one meal and love it and the next day they won’t like it. Or one day a toddler might love a banana and the next day you give them a banana, they don’t want a banana. That is all very common behaviorally. In terms of strategies for how you can manage your expectations, what we use is something called the division of responsibility where we have clear roles for the parent at a mealtime and clear roles for the child at a mealtime. And this is generally for toddlers onwards. Your role as a parent is to decide when children eat, so what time, when, where children eat. At the table with the family, you get to decide what’s served. 

(08:08): 

Now you can be considerate to your child’s developmental needs. For example, if you’ve got a child who’s tricky with meat being a certain texture, you might cut it up or prepare it a certain way. You can be considerate. We are not necessarily specifically catering to your child’s request and then it’s a child’s job to eat. When we divide the roles, that helps us to panic less at a meal time because then you can go, I’ve done my job, I’ve served the meal, we’ve had a lovely feeding environment, we’ve sat down together, I’ve served the family food, I’ve been considerate. There’s something on their plate I know they will eat. And then we leave the eating part up to them, and that can help I think in most cases to remove some of the panic because you’ve done your job. And most children will meet their energy requirements over the day if they’re healthy and growing well. It is, again, very developmentally appropriate to have a child who will eat well at breakfast and not eat well at dinner. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (09:02): 

And that’s something that I do remind myself of as well. Well, she did eat lunch, she did eat breakfast, she’s not going to starve. It’s just this moment in time. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (09:12): 

Yeah, it’s just this one meal. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (09:13): 

[inaudible 00:09:13] one meal that she’s up and running around and just bring yourself down and take a deep breath. It’s just this particular time where she’s not interested, and we can start again tomorrow. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (09:24): 

Exactly. And one of the things too is look at intake over a week, not meal by meal. Over the week, are they eating reasonably well? Are they joining you at mealtimes? Rather than just focusing on that one meal. Think about it over a week, especially for toddlers and small children, they can be very unpredictable as well. The other strategy is, because sometimes if we look at dinner specifically, that tends to be where we’re doing the veggies, the meat, the protein. They’re more difficult challenging foods. It’s also at the end of the day when they’re tired. If you are a bit concerned about your child’s nutrition intake, it’s useful to make sure that all their meals have a spread of nutrients. We’re not just relying on the dinner time just to get your veggies in, serve veggies at afternoon tea, serve veggies at lunchtime, serve fruit and vegetables at morning tea, for example. We’re spreading that intake out over the day rather than just waiting till the end of the day to save your protein and your traditional type meal. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (10:11): 

That is some great advice. How can it support a child’s mental health and wellbeing when we have good routines around mealtimes and food? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (10:19): 

That’s a really good question because if we think about how children learn, they learn by modelling behaviour most of the time, especially young children. If we have a good routine of sitting down together as a family and sharing food, then we are modelling the behaviours that we want to see in our child. We’re modelling positive behaviour around food, so that’s really powerful to do that. If we don’t have routine, then we sometimes miss those opportunities. For example, if you didn’t have a routine of sitting down for breakfast together in the morning or there weren’t times where you could come together in the evening to share some food together, then we’re missing out on those opportunities for the modelling healthy eating around food. Now it can be difficult. It doesn’t have to be all the time because obviously some parents get home late and mealtimes, you might feed your kids at 5:00, you might eat dinner at 7:00. 

(11:04): 

That’s first typical scenario. That is also okay to do that. Sharing food together and food modelling doesn’t have to be just at dinner. It could be at breakfast, or you could find moments where you can share a meal together. And the other thing to consider too is that the evidence shows it doesn’t need to be every day. Just three times a week sharing food together is enough to build a positive relationship around food and mealtime. And the mealtime routine itself works well because it helps children to actually regulate and learn how to eat. Food isn’t available 24/7 all the time. We need to teach children how to eat well by giving them a routine. And children feel safe when there’s a routine. They know when the next meal is coming rather than being quite unpredictable. The other thing that’s useful is if you think about a toddler, if we wait to the point where they’re really hungry, if we’re waiting for them to display that they’re hungry, it’s usually you have a meltdown, right? 

(11:57): 

We’re trying to avoid that. If we have a regular routine of meals and snacks two to three hours apart, then we avoid those big meltdowns around food or getting over hungry and then it becomes really challenging to find something that they want to eat. We take control of when the food is served, knowing that children need to eat frequently, but not all the time. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (12:16): 

I love what you said about three times a week and just modelling those behaviours and that routine with your children, but taking the pressure off yourself as a parent to go, we must do this every single night- 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (12:29): 

Doesn’t have to be every- 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (12:29): 

And we have to do this every single meal. Three days a week if you can manage that and show and model in your behaviour and the routines, then that’s going to help in the long run. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (12:38): 

And there might be other moments where you can bring them into the kitchen and help and make it playful. Toddlers like a little bit of play and interaction at mealtimes. And I actually loved what you said about mealtimes being time for connection because they really are. If we can connect with our child at mealtimes and bring in some playfulness or discussions and don’t make the focus about food, just make it about connecting, children tend to eat well. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (13:00): 

I wanted to touch, Anna, on fussy eaters. What do we mean when we talk about fussy eaters? Because that is spoken about a lot, but I understand there’s varying degrees. What do we mean when we talk about fussy eaters? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (13:13): 

Fussy eating is a really broad term. It could mean so many different things and be in relation to the many different feeding behaviours, some of which might be developmentally appropriate. For example, you might have, like we spoke about earlier, a toddler that eats well at breakfast, doesn’t eat well at dinner, refuses food one day, likes it the next day. Very developmentally appropriate behaviours. Sometimes we can get stuck in labelling that as fussy eating when it is developmentally appropriate childhood behaviour, but it can be seen as a little bit fussy, right? It is a little bit picky, and that’s normal because it peaks at certain times. Then we’ve got fussy eating that can be quite restrictive and extreme, and that could be refusing foods multiple times a day, not meeting our energy requirements, not eating enough foods across food groups. There can be nutritional consequences if we’re quite very restricted or very fussy. It can be like a spectrum. It can mean lots of different things. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (14:06): 

And when a parent is noticing extreme version of fussy eating, what is some advice you have to parents if they’re noticing that it’s repetitive, maybe certain foods, and the child isn’t reaching their energy intake, what advice would you have for parents? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (14:21): 

There are some key things you would want to be aware of. If it’s causing significant stress in your family and everyone’s really stressed out at meal times, then it’s usually time to get some help. And it could just be about implementing some strategies to support your family at mealtimes. Might not necessarily mean there’s something wrong with the child, it’s just that we need some strategies to help the meal time structure. If we have a child that is refusing multiple different foods across food groups, avoiding whole food groups, you might have children that only eat carbohydrates, for example. They won’t eat any protein, any fruits, any vegetables, that would certainly be a time to try and reach out and get some individual help. Got a child that is unable to manage different textures, so they might be stuck on purees or mashed and not able to manage table foods by two or three years of age, and that would certainly be a time to reach out and get some help as well. 

(15:08): 

It’s really just identifying is it feeling more stressful than just a little bit of picky eating? That would be a time. In terms of how you would support, that would depend on the child and perhaps what’s going on for the child. It’s important to realise that eating involves coordinating our entire sensory system to eat well, sorry, sight, sound, taste, smell. We’ve got to understand our body and how to use it when we’re sitting and eating. We’ve got to maintain our posture when we’re eating. We’ve got to understand our hunger and fullness cues. There’s lots that goes on into eating. If you’ve got a child that perhaps struggles with some sensory aspects of eating, then we need to address that issue and help them with some strategies that are specific to that. And that often helps in mealtimes as well. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (15:53): 

That’s amazing. I’ve never thought of it as so involved that there’s so many things going on when someone eats. I think as grownups, we just take it for granted of that looks good, it’s dinner time, I’m eating. Whereas for a child, because they’re still learning about the world around them and like you said, there may be some sensory things going on, it’s so much more than just eating to live. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (16:14): 

I think sometimes we go, I’ve introduced solids now, I’m done. Now you should know how to eat. But actually teaching and continuing to learn the skill of eating and moving to table foods and family foods and eating a wide variety of whole foods takes a lot of practice and patience and it’s repetitive and we just need to keep persisting with serving foods in our family without pressure and without expectation so that we continue to teach the skill of eating of a wide variety of foods. One tip would be don’t stop serving food just because your child isn’t eating it. Because sometimes what we will do is you have a child who refused, say spaghetti bolognese. Now we stopped making spaghetti bolognese, but then the child misses out on the ability to learn about spaghetti bolognese because we’ve stopped serving it. It’s important to keep serving family foods and everyday foods and vegetables and meat even if your child isn’t eating them because we need to teach them the skill of eating that food. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (17:09): 

And maybe just adding a small amount to their plate with other foods. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (17:13): 

Yeah, definitely serving, yeah. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (17:14): 

Something like that, just keeping it in the rotation, but not the pressure to just eat it. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (17:19): 

You could make sure if you had a very fussy child that you had something predictable, usual food on their plate that they would usually eat and then you could still put some of the family meal on the plate as well or serve it in the middle of the table. Serve food family style. We’re still seeing food, we’re still interacting with food. You’ve still got the family modelling eating the food, and that’s long-term going to teach the healthy relationship and skills for eating. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (17:43): 

I know we’re talking about modelling food and eating and routines, but I’m wondering about language around food and does the way we talk about food impact our children and how can parents talk about food that supports the child’s mental health and wellbeing? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (17:58): 

That’s really important, broad question, but it is something that comes up quite a bit. How we talk about food and even our own relationship with our bodies can impact a child’s relationship with food and their body. For example, if we unknowingly make reference to our size or our bodies or we might comment on a child’s body or size, and obviously that could be the child can then internalise that and that become a focus for the child where it’s more about what I look like as opposed to how I feel. If we label food as good or bad, then we can be assigning a moral value to food. Sorry, for example, those foods are bad, this food is good. How does the child feel when they eat the bad food? We’re internalising shame around eating certain foods, which then makes it more difficult to have healthy relationship with food. 

(18:52): 

If you are made to feel guilty or ashamed for eating certain foods or liking certain foods over others or if we use bribes or rewards food, that can also end up a little bit tricky. We might, for example, say you have to finish all of this before you can have your dessert. Oh, you did a great job at school today. Here’s a chocolate, sorry. We’re using food as a motivation to do things around the house or jobs or moving through transitions, those sorts of things. We’re instilling food as a tool for managing emotion as opposed to listening to our bodies and are we eating because we’re hungry? It can make mealtimes or relationships with food tricky if we’re using food as a motivation to do or eat something else, if we assign a moral value to it, so is it good or bad? And then if we’re also commenting on body size and body weight, then that can also be a little bit tricky. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (19:46): 

I feel like that’s a really big part of the conversation for parents at the moment, and I feel like there’s a huge generational shift about how we are talking about our bodies and how we are talking about food. And so it is something that I feel like is always front of mind. The talking about good food and bad food is really interesting to keep thinking about as a parent and how we can frame having sweets and sugar and cakes and those fun foods. What are your strategies around when it’s appropriate to eat them and helpful language we can use to educate our kids? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (20:19): 

I mean, desserts are a part of life and we are allowed to enjoy all different types of food. Coming back to the mealtime routine and why that’s important is because you get to decide what’s served at a mealtime. Children are actually predisposed to preferring sweet foods. We look at evolution, it’s probably what’s kept us alive, avoiding bitter tastes, preferring sweeter tastes because they are generally more safe. There is that strong preference there for sweeter foods, they’re also easier to eat. They come in a packet, they’re bright and colorful. There’s so much appeal to those sorts of foods. If we decide when those foods are served and we just serve them just because, we don’t put any value on them at all. You might, for example, say you wanted to, your child wanted a chocolate and you would be like, okay, I’m cool with them having a chocolate today. 

(21:01): 

You would just serve it. You don’t need to make any comment about anything. You might serve it as part of their morning tea. You could take the chocolate and put it on the plate with some fruit and some crackers and a piece of cheese and then it’s just part of the other food. We’re keeping it really neutral and not saying you’ve got to eat your crackers, cheese and fruit first and then you can have a chocolate, right? We’re just serving the chocolate because we’ve decided that we’re okay with it and we’re serving it in a very neutral way where we’re not placing additional value on it above other foods. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (21:30): 

I think the word neutral is really important. Keeping it a normal conversation and normal language around it is so great for parents to keep in mind when they’re met with that or with the sweet requests. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (21:43): 

Look, children will request sweets all the time. That’s what they do. They will test boundaries all the time, and it’s okay to say no sometimes, we just don’t need to over explain that. We don’t need to say those foods are bad, we’re not eating those, or we don’t need to make a big deal about, oh my gosh, why you keep asking me for sweets all the time? We don’t need to instill shame in asking. We can just say, oh, you want a chocolate? That’s not on the menu today, but we can have a chocolate tomorrow after school with our afternoon tea. Just keep it really focused on neutrality rather than good or bad. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (22:13): 

And Anna, when we’re talking about food and nutrition and I guess educating our children around it, what are some ways that we can do that? I’m thinking about getting the children involved in prepping food or cooking meals at mealtime and what age can we start getting our children involved in nutrition and understanding what it takes to make a meal and what we put in the meal? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (22:32): 

Yeah. From the beginning. It’s great to get children involved. Even if we think about teaching an infant how to eat when they’re starting solids, we want them to touch and feel and interact with food because we’re teaching them about the sensory aspects of eating and if they can get messy and get their hands dirty and start touching, feeling, smelling, they’re all really, really important steps to learning about a wide variety of foods. It starts from the very beginning and as they get older, obviously you can make it a little bit more developmentally appropriate rather than just touching and feeling on their tray. You can certainly get a toddler in the kitchen. I used to love getting my kids to unpack the groceries. We’d come home with our groceries and we’d wash the fruit and vegetables. I’d give everything a little bath and then put it in the fridge, and we’d talk about the food and the colour and what it could taste like because we’re always teaching about food. And the more they can touch, feel and interact in a really low pressure way ’cause there’s no expectations to eat at those times, right? 

(23:26): 

They can actually absorb the information and learn about the food ’cause they’re not feeling any pressure. Doing it away from mealtime is really, really useful. And then as kids get older, you can certainly get them in the kitchen, cooking, prepping. I know my son now will get up and make scrambled eggs or make pancakes for everyone and make smoothies. It’s really, really important to get your kids involved. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (23:46): 

I think some of my best memories are cooking with my Nonna when I was little and learning how to put ingredients together and also seeing what goes into food as well. As parents we worry about the nutrition that goes into food and what our children eat and ways of getting vegetables into meals. Is that a strategy that parents can do, putting vegetables in a spaghetti bolognese or something like that? Or do you think it’s better to just have the vegetables out on the plate? If we’re worried about our child’s nutrition, what are some strategies around that? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (24:22): 

I think you can do both. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (24:23): 

Yeah, yeah. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (24:24): 

It’s definitely fine to serve vegetables in the food, A because they’re going to eat it that way and it’s easier to eat a vegetable if it tastes good. Carrot in bolognese with zucchini is going to probably taste better than carrot and zucchini on its own. Sorry. It’s completely fine to mix vegetables in with food, but we also need to teach about the food as well. Do both. Get them in the kitchen, say this has got carrot in it, and if they do want to try a little bit of carrot on their own, that’s also great, but otherwise it’s okay to like foods in certain ways because that’s how it tastes good. I learned a lot of advice out there is, oh, no, don’t hide veggies. It’s not necessarily about hiding vegetables in a food. You can be honest about it being in there, but it is about being realistic that you’re learning to eat vegetables which are bitter, and children have more taste buds than adults do. The taste is way more intense for a child than it is for an adult. It’s okay to just like your veggies mixed in with something while you’re still learning about eating them on their own. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (25:19): 

I never knew that about the taste buds. It’s so interesting. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (25:22): 

Yeah. For children it’s a way more intense bitterness ’cause they have more taste buds. Something like broccoli to us probably doesn’t taste that bad, but for a child it’s super bitter. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (25:33): 

Anna, I wanted to talk about snacks. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (25:35): 

Oh yeah. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (25:36): 

Because I feel like my kids just want a snack all day long. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (25:39): 

Yeah. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (25:39): 

They’ll ask for snacks and it can feel overwhelming when you’re trying to do things or when you feel like, surely you have eaten all day long. How can parents manage the constant request for snacks, but respond in supportive ways and create that balance throughout the day? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (25:54): 

It’s a really important question ’cause it’s probably something that I see come up quite a bit as well in Instagram. What do I do about snacks? And yeah, they’re asking for snacks all the time and they graze all day and they don’t eat at mealtimes. It’s really important to have some boundaries around when snacks are available and when they’re not available. And that is because food, I mean, it is available all the time, but we can’t eat all the time. We know that that will impact our nutrition intake over the day. For example, if we’re constantly grazing on snack food through the day and then not eating at mealtimes, then we’re missing out on key nutrients by doing that. From a nutritional perspective, it’s not ideal. We’re also constantly then exposing the teeth to food throughout the day by grazing all day as well. 

(26:35): 

The way to manage that is to be really confident that you can have a planned snack and then it’s okay to wait. It’s okay to wait till the next mealtime. Now when you’ve got a toddler or even an older preschool child, teaching waiting for the next meal, time is okay. A little bit of hunger is not an emergency. Sorry, it’s okay to just say, oh, dinner’s nearly ready, we’re just going to wait for dinner time. Having those boundaries around when snacks are available. The other thing to think about is most toddlers, if we look at toddlers and even smaller younger preschool children, they will need food every two to three hours ’cause they still have tiny tummies, sorry. A breakfast, and then we have a planned morning tea, lunch, and then a planned afternoon tea, dinner, and then you may have a bedtime snack after depending on what time your child’s to go to bed. 

(27:20): 

If you think about spacing your meals out and spacing your snacks in between meals, then that usually helps to support eating well over the day. But we still encourage it. You still need to have a snack, but it’s planned. And the other thing to consider is what we serve at the snack can make a big difference to whether the child can get to the next mealtime or not. If you only serve crackers or only serve fruit, then it’s very likely your child’s going to be hungry in an hour because there’s no protein, there might not be enough fibre if it’s just crackers, there’s no fat in it. There’s nothing to actually keep them full until the next mealtime. When you’re thinking about planning a snack, my advice always is to make sure that you’ve got a protein on the plate. It could be a piece of cheese, a little bit of yoghurt, some hummus, and then some carbohydrate. 

(28:04): 

That could be a fruit, vegetable, cracker, and then you can put a fruit or vegetable on the plate as well. That way you’ve got enough nutrients there to actually get them through until the next mealtime, as opposed to the never-ending bags of chips or measly bars that never actually fill them up. If you think about it, if a child eats rice cake, those little flavoured rice cakes, in half an hour, they probably are going to come to you and say, I’m hungry because they’re hungry. Think about how can you make it a mini meal almost as opposed to just a snack ’cause that will actually sustain them until the next mealtime. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (28:33): 

I think that’s really achievable as well, and that’s what I love about your Instagram and the Nourish Little Lives because you actually show visual representation of those plates, and I think that what you’ve just described then is really achievable with having the mixture of the protein and the carbohydrates. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (28:48): 

Yeah. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (28:48): 

And just filling that plate as a mini meal. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (28:51): 

As a mini meal. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (28:52): 

I think we just touched on it then about the snacks that don’t keep them going and don’t keep children full when I’m shopping at the supermarket and having the selection that is available there and trying to make the right decisions in that moment. What is your advice when a parent is trying to find snacks for lunch boxes and things like that? How do we build a good lunch box? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (29:13): 

It’s tricky if you think about snacks from the supermarket shelves, because a lot of them are ultra processed, meaning they have little nutritional value in terms of they might be high in salt or sodium, main fat, high in calories, but low in actual nutrients like fibre and protein that could help keep them full. You just do the best you can. It might be that you, for example, pick out some crackers and when you’re building your lunch box, the crackers on its own probably is not going to be very filling, but what can you add with that? Can you grab a cheese stick? Is there a yoghourt pouch? Is there even some dried fruit bars? Things like that that you can put in. We are building out a meal a little bit as well. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (29:52): 

Very similar to the morning tea. It’s like you are, you’re just building that meal and trying to create a balance. Like you said, you’re doing your best to try and create a balanced meal and some foods will be better than others, but that’s okay. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (30:03): 

That’s okay. You might grab a packet of chips for your [inaudible 00:30:06] and put it in your lunch box. You might do it every day, but it might be something that you do once in a while. And again, don’t label it as good or bad. You’re just putting it in the lunch box. That’s a very neutral way to do it because you’re then serving it with a sandwich, with some fruit, with some vegetables. You might have the cheese or yoghurt in there as well. It’s okay to do that. Just think about over the day, I guess, making sure that we’re getting that spread of nutrients is the key. And then you can have the fun stuff with it. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (30:30): 

That’s such a great way to shift this perspective as a parent to think of it as over the day. I know we touched on it before, but it’s really something that’s resonating with me right now and potentially will with our listeners. It’s thinking about it. It’s an over the day, over the week. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (30:42): 

Yes, exactly. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (30:44): 

Anna, thank you so much for joining us. I just wanted to end on, if there is one thing you could leave our listeners with from today’s conversation, what would that be? 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (30:54): 

It would be that children will eat like children, and that eating is a skill that we teach and we need to allow children to learn and have patience and have lots of practice to actually learn that skill. Sorry, it’s really just about shifting our perspective and having some tolerance for some of the more difficult behaviours that we might see at mealtimes but know that that makes that part of learning about food. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (31:18): 

Thank you so much. I feel like I’ve learned so much from our conversation, and it’s really opened my eyes to taking some new things into mealtime and like you said, shifting my perspective around mealtime and that it is a skill that a child is building, like walking and talking, and it’s all part of them learning how to be a human. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (31:36): 

Exactly, exactly. And just keep modelling eating with your child and keep doing the things that you want them to do. It’s really, really powerful to show your child and just interact with food and enjoy food. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (31:48): 

Thank you, Anna. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Anna Ritan (Guest) (31:49): 

Thank you for having me. 

Nadia Rossi (Host) (31:50): 

Thank you. And thank you to our listeners for joining us. If you would like to keep up to date with our latest conversations, we’d love it if you like and subscribed to our Emerging Minds Families podcast channel. You can also find us on Instagram, @emergingmindsau or Facebook at Emerging Minds Families. You have been listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. If anything spoken about in today’s podcast has been distressing for you or you find yourself struggling, please reach out for help. You can call Lifeline on 13-11-14, or more resources for support can be found in our show notes. 

Narrator (32:26): 

Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au/families for a wide range of free information and resources to help support child and family mental health. Emerging Minds leads the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.