welcome to Kids Nutrition

Last week I did a talk on children's nutrition at my kids school. It was great to see so many dedicated and health-conscious parents wanting to do their best for their kids health, growth and development. We discussed a lot of different areas, however one topic came up as a big one for all parents: what to put in the kids lunchboxes. Parents are always on the lookout for healthy lunch box options and foods that WILL get eaten.

Just about every parent I know thinks their child is a fussy eater. The degree of 'fussiness' varies widely of course. When my daughter refuses to eat her sauerkraut or bone broth I think she's being fussy! I usually ignore and try again the next day, when she will usually gladly eat these nutrient dense foods because she is USED TO eating them, knows they are very HEALTHY and the whole FAMILY eats them on a regular basis. I do appreciate though that for most parents, the battle is usually focused on regular foods like chicken or fish, the dreaded vegetables - of course:) and for many also fruit. However, no matter what your child is fussy about, I do hope the below strategies prove useful. I

How often do you hear any of the following: 'Mum, I really really want a cookie!' 'Dad, when can we get some chips, I REALLY feel like some chips!" Or even the pre-verbal toddler just pointing at lollies in the supermarket and then stomping feet just to make sure you got the message "lollies now!" Children's cravings are real, just as adults cravings are. They start early on and are very strong urges. However, they are not always cravings for sugary junk food or fatty chips- a lot of the time kids have particular cravings that seem quite healthy and harmless. My son always craves cheese- whenever I ask him what he would like for breakfast/snack/lunch/dinner the answer usually includes cheese. I've started doing some research on this as many traditional

When I talk to my kids about what’s going on inside their bodies (as I do regularly, to educate them about how the body works and how what they eat impacts on the bits inside) I often talk about bacteria that live inside their tummies and how they are very small, but there are actually 10 million of them! And that armies of the goodies are always on the lookout for the baddies, and if you are sick, the baddies take over and that’s not much fun. We don’t often think about this, but our gastrointestinal tract aka ‘The Gut’ is densely populated by bacteria! Despite the latest ad claiming that the cleaning spray can wipe out 99.9% of germs, we forget that even with a