Blog
Trusting a child’s appetite – why is it so hard?
Recently, I watched a video of a family meal – Mum, Dad and their five year-old daughter. The meal lasted 58 minutes! How could a four year-old sit at the table for that long, I hear you asking. Well, she did a pretty good job of it. It was her mum who became...
The Power of Parents
You have more influence on what your children eat than you may think. For children under 12, both Mum and Dad are the most important role models for kids when it comes to eating and physical activity. Children would rather eat a meal with you than with anyone else....
Do you know a child with a food allergy?
It’s most likely you do, as around 1 in 20 children have a food allergy. It’s 1 in 10 for babies and less for older children as many babies grow out of their food allergy by the time they go to school. What is an allergy? An allergy occurs when the immune...
Brain food
What we know about breakfast Parents are continually being told that children learn better at school when they have had breakfast. Even so, by late primary school nearly one quarter of children go to school without having had breakfast and this number increases as...
Packing school lunches
Packing lunch boxes is a task that parents do thousands of times. Some find it easy, others find it difficult to know what to put in there. If your child doesn’t eat the food you provide, it doesn’t mean you got it wrong. There are many reasons that food comes back...
Tips on handling holiday eating
During the holiday period, do you find it more difficult to keep to the regular routine of feeding your family? You may be going away or having a break from work and school. The usual rush in the morning and the pressure to get a meal on the table in the...
The trick with Halloween treats
It's that time of the year again. Halloween, which is becoming increasingly popular includes the tradition of trick or treat. Children dress up and visit the neighbourhood in pursuit of treats, usually confectionary of one sort or another. They can end up with quite a...
Food tastes better when you eat with your family
These days, I'm an empty - nester. There are two of us in the household. Our girls flew the coup years ago and one of them has two children herself. So when my husband is away, I eat alone. And I can definitely say for myself that food tastes better when you eat it...
Are you a competent eater?
I have written before about the work of Ellyn Satter, a leading paediatric dietitian and family therapist from the USA. She is the author of the Division of Responsibility in Feeding, which is the gold standard for feeding children. I use her approach in my work with parents.
If they never, never see it, they will never, never eat it.
The other day I was asking a mum if she put vegetables on the table at any of the day's meals. She said that at dinner she cooks corn, carrots and broccoli most days. I asked her if she ever offers other vegetables. Her answer was ‘ they don’t eat any other...
Eve Reed
Paediatric Dietitian Sydney
Eve Reed is the director of FamilyFoodWorks and is an Accredited Practising Dietitian with over 30 years experience working with children and parents and other health professionals, with an extensive background in child and adolescent nutrition, early childhood care, childbirth education and breastfeeding and counselling. She specialises in paediatric nutrition with a special interest in feeding behaviours, weight management and assessment of children’s/adolescent’s diets.