How to raise kids with a healthy approach to eating and their bodies

Parents, relax: sugar-free perfection is not the goal. Claire Turnbull shares seven top tips for raising kids who have healthy relationships with both food and their bodies.

When I had my first child, it was homemade baby food, healthy birthday cake recipes, and water only. Then, a few years later, I had a second child. Time got tighter, the juggle of work and two kids became very real, and my vision of perfection started to shift.

After more than two decades of working in nutrition, and raising two very different eaters of my own, this is what I now know. The goal is not to raise children who avoid every gram of added sugar or never enjoy a bowl of chips and dip with their friends.

The goal is to raise children who can eat well most of the time and have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. It is about teaching them the skills to listen to their bodies, manage the modern food environment we live in, and enjoy a dessert without guilt.

Here are my top seven tips to help you reach this goal, too.

1. Know your job, and know theirs

A helpful place to start when it comes to supporting children to eat well is understanding the division of responsibility, a framework developed by American dietitian and family therapist Ellyn Satter.

Your job as a parent or caregiver is to decide what food is offered, when it is offered, and where it is eaten. The child decides whether they eat it and how much.

This approach has helped me immensely with feeding my boys. It provides structure and routine around food, while allowing children to keep some autonomy over their own bodies. It also helps remove many of the battles that can happen at the dinner table.

There is no need for coaxing, bribing, “three more bites” or “eat your broccoli and then you can have dessert”.

My addition to this principle is the phrase I use every day in our house. “There is nothing else.”

If my kids say they do not like what is offered, or they do not want to eat it, that is OK. They still need to sit at the table with everyone else, but if they want food later on, the same meal or snack will be on offer. Not another option.

As soon as children learn that refusing the first option means toast and butter, cereal, or something else they would prefer, it becomes very easy for them to hold out for what they want.

2. Let your food environment do the talking

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do about the wider food environment outside our homes, other than teaching our kids how to manage it as they get older. But in the foundational years, we can shape the food environment inside our homes to reflect how we would like our kids to eat most of the time.

That means making nourishing, minimally processed foods the easiest things to see and access. Having oats, rice, pasta, canned pulses, fish, eggs and other wholesome foods in the pantry and fridge, ready to be turned into a meal; along with readily available snacks such as wholegrain or corn crackers, plain popcorn, yoghurt, fruit on the bench and chopped vegetables ready to go in a box at the front of the fridge.

It also means making foods like chips, biscuits, chocolate and sugary snacks less visible and less automatic, so they do not become the go-to option every time children are hungry.

In our house, we tend to buy chips when there's an occasion to eat them, such as camping with friends or a party, rather than always having them in the house. The same goes for ice cream. Sometimes I buy a tub, we enjoy it over a week or so, and then it's gone.

Chocolate is kept up high in the pantry in non-transparent containers, which means the kids, and I, do not see it every time we open the pantry. That visual cue matters. If you see something often, you are more likely to want it.

This is not about banning foods. It's about making the foods you want your children to eat more of easy and accessible, and making other foods less so.

3. Help children tune into hunger and fullness

From about the age of four, I started asking my boys before meals, “how hungry are you on a scale from one to five?”

Five is super hungry, or as my youngest son would say, “starrrrrrving”. 1 is not very hungry. This helps me gauge how much to serve when they are not serving themselves. This is something I still do with my kids now aged 8 and 12.

It also helps them learn to listen to their bodies and understand that it's normal to want and need different amounts of food at different times.

This is a far cry from the way many of us were brought up, where finishing everything on our plate was expected. The trouble is, this can teach children to ignore fullness. And, as you may know yourself, if this is still something you struggle with, clearing your plate simply because food is there can be a very unhelpful habit to learn.

4. Understand appetite variation

As an adult, it is normal to have days when you want to eat more and days when you feel like eating less. This is exactly the same for kids, but often even more pronounced, especially when they go through growth spurts.

My boys sometimes seem to eat nearly double the amount they normally do. Then they seem to wake up an inch taller and go back to eating what they did before.

It is also very normal for some children to eat more than you do, even though they're shorter and smaller. So many times, I hear parents saying, “I can’t believe she/he/they eat more than me,” but active kids, particularly as they head towards their teens, can often have bigger energy requirements that are bigger than an adult's, especially an adult who sits at a desk most of the day.

That said, if you have a child who just eats all the time and never appears to feel full – it is worth checking in with how much protein and fibre they're getting in their meals and snacks, because without enough of that it's hard to feel satisfied. Also, being mindful of how much of their food requires proper chewing is important. More on that here.

5. Get them involved

Children are more likely to become confident with food and try new things when they have been involved in growing, planning, or preparing it.

Let them choose a vegetable, wash the lettuce, stir the sauce, crack eggs, plant herbs, grow a fruit or vegetable from seed, pack part of their lunchbox, or help plan one meal.

This does not guarantee they will eat everything they help make, but it is a step in the right direction!

6. Watch your language

This is so important. It is really unhelpful that as a society we have learnt to think of food as being “good” or “bad” because food has no moral value. It is just food. When this language is used around children, it can create judgement around eating and encourage them to feel guilty about eating certain foods.

Guilt can drive shame, and shame can drive a very unhealthy relationship with food which is something you might be familiar with yourself. Instead, I talk about foods we have “most of the time” because they help our bodies work at their best and help us feel good, and foods we have “sometimes”, which we can enjoy but are not needed for our bodies to work well.

Having your food environment at home reflect this ratio of choices really helps.

Children also hear how we talk about our own bodies and our own eating. If they regularly hear adults saying, “I was so bad today,” or “I need to work this off,” they can absorb that and it can become their narrative too.

7. Avoid the reward trap

Many of the issues I see in adults who have a dysfunctional relationship with food are linked to food being used as a reward, comfort, or distraction when they were children.

- Oh no, you hurt yourself, here is some chocolate to help you feel better.

- Well done, you did so well in that race, here is a bag of lollies as a prize.

- Eat your dinner and then you can have dessert.

These patterns are so common, and they often continue into adulthood. Food becomes something we use to cheer ourselves up, reward ourselves, numb out, or cope with difficult feelings.

This is a cycle we need to break, so we do not pass the same habits on to our children.

A note on children who need extra support

This is a huge topic, and this column can only scratch the surface. It is also important to note that, while these tips might work for the vast majority, there are some children who have very real feeding challenges which may require a different approach.

Neurodivergent children, or those with sensory struggles, anxiety, digestive issues, or highly restricted eating, may need specialist support.

If you have ongoing concerns about your child's eating habits or weight, please seek advice from a trained nutritionist or medical professional.

Claire Turnbull is a registered nutritionist with an honours degree in dietetics, a wellbeing educator and author.