The Juna Women Podcast is a weekly discussion where Juna Founder, Sarah Kuhn, talks to Moms about their health, work, parenting, and all the different ways they’re keeping it together.
This is Episode 037, Teaching Kids Healthy Food Habits with Jennifer Anderson, @Kids.Eat.In.Color.
In this episode Sarah talks with Jennifer Anderson from Kids Eat In Color, a popular Instagram page and website that helps parents learn how to feed their kids and develop healthy relationships with food and eating.
Jennifer is a a mom, wife, and registered dietitian. She has a masters of science in public health, in international health and human nutrition from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. If you follow Jennifer on Instagram you know she is the gold standard of knowledge when it comes to this challenging topic of feeding your kids.
In the episode Sarah and Jennifer talk all things kids and nutrition. They talk about the effects of pressuring your child with food, how to set up healthy eating habits and how to expand their palate with no stress.
They also get into the age appropriate ways you can talk to your kids about different foods and how they impact their bodies.
If feeding your kids has given you any stress, or if you’re pregnant and want to arm yourself with helpful strategies when it comes time to introduce solid foods, this is the episode for you.
Listen To This Episode
Show Notes
01:30 – Intros and Jennifer shares her philosophy and roots in nutrition.
05:05 – When your good eater turns into a picky eater.
21:25 – Navigating the after-dinner snack situation, specifically when your child doesn’t eat much at dinner.
25:10 – Dessert. There is no gold standard for handling this situation. Some experts, like Ellyn Satter, recommend serving dessert with a meal. There are also dietitians who recommend routines and policy with dessert where every Friday and Tuesday (for example) we have dessert.
28:30 – What happens when you break your routine? How do you get back on track?
30:30 – FOMO and how it relates to eating.
33:35 – How to talk about nutrition and food with kids.
34:40 – Teaching kids a good understanding and relationship with food.
36:21 – How to talk about nutrition with kids of varying ages. What is age appropriate for a 6-year old is different than for a 4-year old. Kids like high level topics, like, “Some foods do a lot of things for our body, and some foods only do 1 thing.”
42:40 – Giving your children tools to create a healthy relationship with food, and how that translates to other areas of their lives.
43:56 – Jennifer shares some information about her Better Bites program, which is designed to help parents of picky eaters.
49:14 – The age old “just taste it” tactic and introducing foods after your kid has shown a distaste for that food.
52:14 – When you should comment on what your kid is eating, and how much they’re eating.
53:05 – Sarah shares some unhealthy relationships she had with food and asks Jennifer how to make sure that doesn’t happen with her kid.
Connect with Jennifer:
Jennifer has a masters of science in public health, in international health and human nutrition from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. During her masters work, she was part of a research team looking at inner city corner stores and carryout restaurants. She completed her dietetics coursework through the University of Northern Colorado, and organized her own dietetic internship focusing in policy and organizational management in the Washington DC metro area through the University of Northern Colorado.
She has a bachelors of science in Cultural Anthropology and a minor in Economics from Wheaton College. She earned a certificate in Human Needs and Global Resources by spending 6 months living in India and studying poverty and development. After college, she worked at a food bank, coordinating their Youth Nutrition Program for several years. That’s where she learned how much kids need veggies. And where she decided to go back to school for nutrition and public health.
Web: https://kidseatincolor.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kids.eat.in.color
Please subscribe to the Juna Women Podcast wherever you listen to Podcasts.
If you have feedback or know someone who would be a great guest on the show, please reach to Sarah@juna.co.
Lastly, check out the Juna App by clicking below and get your first week FREE.
