Episode 2: In Pursuit of a Healthier Relationship with Food

About the episode

In this episode, registered dietitian nutritionist and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Malina Malkani shares her thoughts on the importance of helping kids develop a healthier relationship with food — and how parents can make a difference. (Spoiler alert: Part of it involves bringing kiddos into the kitchen.) We also talk about the value of family meals — in all their forms. And in our second segment, Melanie Potock, a certified speech language pathologist who specializes in feeding children, gives us her top strategies to proactively tackle picky eating.

MEET OUR GUESTS

Malina Malkani is a registered dietitian nutritionist, media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and founder of Malina Malkani LLC, a nutrition lifestyle company dedicated to providing modern moms with tools, recipes, and programs that make it easier to feed their families a mostly plant-based, nutrient-dense, whole food diet (that they really like).

Her mission is to re-shape the nutritional habits and behaviors of our next generation to optimize their long-term health and reduce the likelihood of obesity, cancer and chronic diseases. Learn more.

Melanie Potock, MA, CCC-SLP, is a mom who once had a picky eater. She’s experienced firsthand the stress that parents feel when they are worried about their child’s nutritional health. Fast-forward to today, and you’ll find Melanie blending her knowledge of feeding therapy with practical parenting strategies that help the entire family eat healthier. She’s an international speaker and author of three books, including co-authoring the award-winning Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater. Learn more.

Episode highlights

1:40 – Get to know Malina Malkani

3:40 – Defining a “healthy feeding dynamic”

9:45 – How kids are good at managing food

15:30 – The value of cooking with kids

19:00 – Why family meals matter

21:00 – Kitchen Questions, our lightning round!

24:05 – Meet Melanie Potock

24:40 – Melanie’s advice on picky eating

28:40 – Closing thoughts

Our favorite quotes from the episode

“It is our responsibility as parents to offer a wide variety of foods, to choose what those foods will be at the meal, to choose when the meal will happen and where, whether it's at a table in the home or it's a packed lunch. The children decide whether they're going to eat the foods and how much of each food they will eat, and this is a really simple concept to explain and a much more difficult concept to implement.” — Malina Malkani

“Kids are really good, for the most part, at up-regulating and down-regulating their intake, depending on what their needs are and what foods they need, what nutrients they need. When we, for the most part, leave them alone and give them a really solid structure of meals and snacks that come at dependable times, they're really good at listening to those internal cues.” — Malina Malkani

“In my opinion and in my experience, getting kids involved in food prep and in grocery shopping and meal planning and any kind of aspect of food, is magic. It really increases the likelihood that they will eat what you serve because they become so much more invested in the outcome, and they become really interested in how it's going to taste and then, it sets them up for the ability to then, throughout the rest of their lives, feed themselves in a way that they choose to do.” — Malina Malkani

“Kids and teens who share family dinners together just three or more times per week are less likely to be overweight, more likely to eat healthy foods, they perform better academically, they're less likely to engage in risky behaviors like drugs and alcohol and sexual activity, they have better relationships with their parents, fewer emotional and behavior problems, less likely to engage in disordered eating.” — Malina Malkani

“Before you call the family to the table, just take a few deep breaths, four or five seconds to just calm yourself down so that you can really focus on what's most important at family mealtimes. And that's family. It's not always about the food, it's always, always, always about being together as a family.” — Melanie Potock

View The Transcript