In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Jennifer Anderson, registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, shares how parents can help kids develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodiesâwithout shame, restriction, or diet culture. Plus, practical tips for school lunches and making family meals easier and more affordable.
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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.
We talk about:
03:00 What does a healthy relationship with food and our bodies look like?
05:00 Protecting kids from body image and weight concerns
07:00 Boys, body image, and the pressure to look ârippedâ
09:00 Talking to kids who are worried about being in a bigger body
12:00 Helping kids develop a healthy relationship with food
14:00 Treats, limits, and avoiding shame or moralizing around food
21:00 Can kids really regulate how much they eat?
24:00 Neurodivergence, interoception, and mindful eating
30:00 Emotional eating, comfort, and food as connection
32:00 Simple strategies for packing school lunches
37:00 Feeding a family when time, money, and energy are limited
39:00 Why simple dinners are good enough
42:00 Jenniferâs book and pre-order bonuses
44:00 The parenting advice Jennifer wishes sheâd known earlier
Resources mentioned in this episode:
* Jenniferâs Book Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters
* Search âKids Eat in Colorâ to find Jennifer on all social media platforms
Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:
* YouTube
* Website
* Book a short consult or coaching session call
xx Sarah and Corey
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Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Todayâs guest is Jennifer Anderson, nutritionist and founder of Kids Eat in Color. Jennifer has a new book coming out all about helping kids develop a good relationship with food and with their bodies. Thatâs what weâre talking about in todayâs episode.
Along the way, we also touched on some great tips for packing school lunches and making meals easier and more affordable. Thereâs so much conflicting information out there about feeding kids, and with their physical and mental health at risk, knowing what to do can be very stressful for parents. I love Jenniferâs common-sense and relaxed approach to eating and feeding, and I hope you do as well.
If you like this episode, please share it with a friend so more parents can learn about peaceful parenting. If youâre a fan of the podcast, you can help us out not only by sharing it, but by leaving a review and a five-star rating in your podcast player app. While youâre there, donât forget to follow the show so you donât miss an episode. If youâd like to support us even more, you can become a supporter on Substack to help us offset the cost of making the show. Weâll put a link in the show notes.
Okay, letâs meet Jennifer.
Hey, Jennifer. Welcome back to the podcast. This is your second time with us.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.
Sarah: Yeah, Iâm so excited. You have a new book coming out, so maybe you could introduce yourself and then tell us about your new book, which is available for pre-order and coming out in September. We will link to that in the show notes, but tell us a little bit about who you are and about your new book.
Jennifer: Sure. Iâm a registered dietitian. I have two kids who have not been easy to feed, and Iâm the founder of Kids Eat in Color and the CEO of Better Bites. Iâm so excited to have this book coming out. Itâs called Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life. I just cannot wait for parents to have this resource.
Sarah: Amazing. You were telling me before we started that the focus of your book is having kids have a healthy relationship not only with food, but with their bodies. Maybe we could start out by talking aboutâobviously, this could be a very long conversationâbut some of the top things youâve found that are really helpful, sort of dos and donâts, in terms of having kids have that healthy relationship with food.
And also, what do you mean when you talk about a healthy relationship with their bodies? Maybe thatâs a two-part question.
Jennifer: Yeah. I love that you framed it as a two-part question, because it is kind of a two-part question, but I feel like thatâs only because in English we donât have a way to describe the fact that these things are deeply connected in us.
When I think about a healthy relationship with food, I want to make sure kids know how to take care of their bodies. They know what a balanced diet looks like. Theyâre able to enjoy food, whatever kind of food it is. And also, we want kids to be able to really appreciate and live in their bodies, experience life through their bodies, and not have this deep whatâs called internalized weight bias, where thin is the ideal. Thin is what everybody is shooting for. You should either be worried about how thin you are or trying to get thinner. That is a soul-sucking way of living when weâre so focused on weight and diet culture.
So we want to give kids another option. We want to give kids the ability to really appreciate their bodies, and yet we also want to do so in a way that theyâre still able to care about the health of their bodies in a way thatâs healthy, as opposed to just diet culture.
What I call this is embodied independence, where kids are independent. They know all the things they need to do, and theyâre also embodied. Theyâre living in and experiencing their bodies.
When we think about what we want to do and what we want to not do, we want to model what we want kids to do, ideally, and this is in every single area of parenting, including eating. Thatâs where the independence comes from. Weâre modeling, and weâre also providing the boundaries and opportunities for them.
I always tell parents, âYou are in charge of your restaurant at home. Youâre the head chef. Youâre going to set when your restaurant hours are, youâre going to set whatâs on the menu, youâre going to set all these things.â As youâre doing that, you are teaching your child what is part of a healthy lifestyle.
On the other side, weâre thinking about their relationship with their body. We want to minimize internalized weight bias, and that means weâre not discussing body sizes or body shapes. Weâre not weighing ourselves in front of our kids. One of the most powerful things you can do as a parent is to not discuss your body size or shape and not discuss any weight-loss attempts at any point, if thatâs something you ever engage in. Those two things are huge risk factors for disordered eating and eating disorders. If we could just not do that, that would actually be huge.
Sarah: I feel like thatâs actually a real gift my mother gave me. She never talked about her weight or diets or her body, really, at all. And I feel like Iâm one of the few people I know whoâIâll say at least until perimenopause recentlyâhad no body-image issues for my whole adult life. I think that really did stem from being raised without that being a thing that people were talking about.
Jennifer: Yeah, absolutely. It was discussed in the groups that I grew up in. At the same time, my parents were like, âNo, you are not allowed to look at beauty magazines or teen magazines.â I donât remember really pushing back on that as a teenager, but now I am so grateful because, whether itâs social media now or teen magazines or so many other things, so many of them are focused on body image: how thin you are, how to get thin, how to stay thin, all this stuff. And that stuff is just toxic.
Sarah: Yeah, and it used to just be for girls, right? And now boys areâI have so many clients whoâve said their son wants a six-pack, and theyâre eight or nine years old and wonât take off their shirt to go swimming.
Jennifer: My kids are right now into parkour, and itâs interesting to watch because weâve been very careful about what weâve said about them. Theyâve recently started talking about six-packs and strong cores and all that because, in reality, my son is like, âI need a stronger core because that will help me flip better.â And heâs 100% right that his core strength is going to determine his success in this sport in a lot of ways.
At the same time, getting ripped is not the phrasing that I would really prefer because so much of that is focused on image, right? And yet this is what theyâre hearing. My kids are 11 and 13, but it really started last year, when they were 10 and 12, where theyâre just kind of being exposed to these ideas of fitness.
So when we think about kids understanding this, yeah, we have to have them understand their physical fitness, and then we also have to help them understand that itâs not about looks. It is about how we feel. Itâs about what we can do. Itâs about how we can serve people. Itâs about so much more than just how we look.
So as I think about my kids getting ready to do these things and doing these things, Iâm going to continue to focus on, âThis will help you flip,â not, âThis will help you look ripped.â
Sarah: Talk a little bit more about some of the dos and donâts about the healthy relationship. Weâve sort of focused on our bodies. Actually, you know what? Before you do, I want to ask you about something else first, so weâll stay on that for another second.
If you have a child who is in a bigger body and theyâre concerned to obsessed about being in a bigger body and feeling like thatâs, quote, âbad,â how do you talk to them about that?
Jennifer: So I think the first thing isâand I have a framework in the book that, even though itâs kind of cheesy, I call the LOVE frameworkâwe want to listen. We really want to listen, and then we want to validate. Because if a kid is coming to us and saying, âIâm fat. I want to lose weight,â one, we donât really know what they mean by that. We donât know where that came from. Are they being teased? Did they hear something? Are their friends all trying to lose weight? We have to listen and understand.
And then we have to say, âYeah, you feel like you want to lose weight. Youâre feeling bad right now. Youâre telling me that your body is rounder than your friendsâ.â As we validate, we want to use neutral, factual language. If theyâre describing their body in negative terms, we donât want to say, âOh no, youâre wrong,â because thatâs not right, and itâs also not bad to be in a bigger body. And so if weâre like, âOh, no, no, no, youâre not fat,â thatâs not helpful because weâre just invalidating their whole experience, and weâre also reinforcing the idea that fat is bad.
Instead, we want to be like, âOh yeah, youâre right. Iâve noticed that in our family, we all have softer tummies. We all have rounder tummies.â When weâre using basic descriptive language thatâs not negative, we help them reinterpret their body in a way that is more neutral, where we can then eventually move away from this judgment of body size and shape to an acceptance of body size and shape, where thatâs just not part of what weâre talking about. Itâs just like, âOh, itâs neutral. This is just a body,â and letâs move on to something more interesting.
And then, after weâve listened and validated, we really want to see if thereâs something that we need to take action on. Weâre saying, âOkay, do I need to help my child learn coping skills for being bullied? Do I need to talk to the school? Do I need to talk to their friendâs parents? What is my role now in figuring out what needs to happen? Is my child showing signs of having disordered eating? Have they put themselves on a diet?â
Those are the sorts of things where you want to take it seriously. If theyâre restricting themselves from different foods or theyâre doing things to try to change the size of their body, then is the time to involve a professional. Whether itâs a counselor, an eating disorder therapist, their doctor, whoever it is, that is the time. I know itâs hard when we think, âOh my gosh, my kid potentially has disordered eating or an eating disorder.â That can fill parents with a lot of guilt and fear and shame and all that sort of thing. Donât let that stop you from getting your child help as soon as possible.
Sarah: Yeah, this is not a DIY project.
Jennifer: Yeah, itâs not. Now, of course, you can be DIY-ing it all the way up to that point, but at the point where you see a big red flag, go bring somebody else in.
Sarah: So what are some tips for helping kids have a healthy relationship with food?
Jennifer: I love to talk about food factually, the same way we would talk about bodies. Itâs like, âOh, these are the names of foods. Theyâre hard, theyâre crunchy, theyâre savory, theyâre sweet, theyâre delicious,â as opposed to this sort of, âThese are healthy foods, and these are not healthy foods.â
It adds a level of complication that is too simple and also contributes to a very rigid perspective of food and eating. Potentially, that can even leak over into how people think of their bodies.
Sarah: Yeah, because it just occurred to meâI was reflecting before, when I was thinking of questions to ask youâthat I do know someone who talks to their child about, âWe have to eat healthy food before we eat the unhealthy food.â And why would you ever want to tell your child that youâre giving them something unhealthy anyway? âHave this dangerous toy.â You know?
Jennifer: Yeah. âDonât play with the dangerous toy until youâve played with the safe toy.â I completely agree with that, and I think it comes from a very well-meaning place where, again, weâre wanting to pass on this information that empowers kids to nurture their bodies for the rest of their life.
So itâs all coming from a good place. We just have to think that kids will internalize this sort of, âWait a second. Youâre giving me all this healthy food, but then we have this unhealthy food. Why are you giving me unhealthy food? And also, am I bad if I eat this unhealthy food? Should I feel guilty? Should I feel afraid of it?â There are a lot of things that kids can take from these conversations.
Now, it doesnât mean that if youâre using this language, you have ruined your child or you have given your child an eating disorder. I am telling you, kids are not that easy to ruin. And you can give them new skills, though, which is just to understand every food does something different in your body, and we can listen to our body to find out whatâs right for us. Because letâs say you have an allergy. Yeah, there are some foods that are truly unhealthy. Youâre going to have a really bad reaction. And there are also foods where, if you eat too much of themâand this is truly just about every food, including waterâif you eat too much of it, you can also become unhealthy.
You canât just live on broccoli. I promise you. Thatâs not healthy. And we see this in people who become really obsessed with healthy eating. They become very unhealthy. Theyâre unable to maintain their physical and mental health and social health. It affects all their relationships. So I like to get away from this unhealthy/healthy thinking.
And it is so healthy to be able to sit down and enjoy a bowl of ice cream. Weâre visiting my parents right now, and my two kids had these big bowls of ice cream, and also the two baby cousins, who are two and not even quite one yet, my mom was giving them ice cream too. I was like, âThis is such a grandma move right now.â
But here they are, theyâre all together enjoying their ice cream, and the two-year-old had sprinkles for the first time. It was just this really amazing bonding moment. I donât want my kids, in the back of their heads, to think, âOh my gosh, I shouldnât have eaten that much ice cream,â or, âI shouldnât have eaten that ice cream,â or, âThat was unhealthy for me.â I just donât want that for them.
Sarah: Yeah. You want to enjoy the food that youâre eating, no matter what the food is. So how do you talk about it then? Iâve heard some people say âsometimes food,â like, âThis is food that we donât eat every day.â How do you talk about or differentiate?
Jennifer: You can model that, and I like to do whatâs called predictable parenting, where youâre just going to be really consistent about whatever youâre going to do, and youâre going to help your kid get in touch with their hunger and fullness cues. So youâre going to serve them meals, but youâre also going to be like, âSorry, you canât have a snack right now because dinnerâs in 30 minutes.â
Youâre going to have a really predictable routine of meals, and that has the purpose of developing their embodiment, which is actually being able to tune in and listen: What is going on inside of my body? What does it need? How do I respond to it? One thing you do is just have an eating routine. That actually goes a really long way in helping kids have a good relationship with food.
Then you want to talk about food neutrally, and you want to model what a balanced diet looks like. If you really own your role as the restaurant owner, youâre not going to be making multiple meals. Youâre going to be making one meal for the family, in most cases, and youâre always going to make sure thereâs at least one food on there that your childâs comfortable with. It doesnât have to be their absolute favorite food, but itâs got to be something that theyâre comfortable with.
Sarah: Something theyâll eat.
Jennifer: Yeah, something theyâll eat, in most cases. Although kids are eating eggs several times a week for their whole life, and then one day my sonâs like, âI donât like eggs. Iâve never liked eggs.â Iâm like, âThatâs just so not true.â So you never know, which is why I say something theyâre comfortable with, something that they almost always eat.
Then you can model what a balanced diet looks like. Youâre probably not going to serve candy for meals. Maybe you add a little candy onto a meal or snack, and thatâs a strategy people often use, and thatâs fine. But youâre going to show that every single mealâor most mealsâhas a fruit or a vegetable. I like to think of it in terms of a protein food that also has fat, an energy food, which is a carbohydrate-rich source, and then also color, which is fruits and/or vegetables. Thatâs kind of how I think of a balanced meal.
We want to model that for kids for most of their meals and most of their snacks. They will absorb what that means. And so without saying anything, without being like, âOh, this is a sometimes food. This is an always food,â youâre going to show them that itâs only there sometimes.
Sarah: Right.
Jennifer: And youâre also going to show them that other foods are there all the time. Now, as kids go out, theyâre going to get hyped up on candy and sweets. Itâs not like these are going to be, quote, âneutral foods.â Theyâre not. Maybe when theyâre in preschool, but by the time theyâre six and in school, with friends and parties, they know that these other foods are different. They know.
On social media, Iâve heard, âOh, we can never restrict kids. We can never say anything that suggests theyâre different.â Iâm sorry. Hyper-palatable foodâmeaning candy, things with added sodium and sugar and fatâthey are so different.
Sarah: Right. Your brain knows theyâre different.
Jennifer: Yeah. The kids know theyâre different. So we donât have to hide the fact that we know theyâre different. We can also set some limits, but we just want to be consistent about them. Like, âOh, you can have two cookies.â Sometimes we might want to give kids more cookies. You might even say, âHey, I want my kid to be able to choose how many cookies they have.â Thatâs all totally fine, and itâs all within the bounds of something thatâs going to help kids have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies.
Sarah: I mean, I guess it depends, too, on the access, right? Like you were saying, youâre the executive chef of your restaurant. What we did, which I think worked pretty well, was we only occasionally hadâIâd buy ice cream once in a while, and weâd eat it until it was gone. Or weâd have chips once in a while, or weâd make cookies once in a while. They sort of had, not 100% free access, but everybody would eat it, and then it would be gone, and then we wouldnât have that stuff in the house anymore.
But the funny thing isâI mentioned to you before that two out of my three kids have been moved out of the house for a whileâand I figure now my 19-year-old, I can buy chips and she can decide to eat them or not. So they come home and theyâre like, âWhen did we become a chips household?â I feel like at a certain point you can just have in your house whatever you want and your kids are adults. But itâs hilarious because theyâre like, âAnd bacon? When did you start buying bacon regularly?â
Jennifer: Right. And I think ultimately theyâre going to grow up. Theyâre going to decide what they have in their house, and youâre going to decide whatâs in your house. We just want to kind of get them to that point where they can enjoy all foods without any guilt.
Like, yeah, you made cookies and you enjoyed them together, and then that was that, and then you didnât have them around for a while. You werenât sitting there saying, âOh, well, cookies are bad for you, and so we only have them sometimes.â No, cookies arenât bad for you. Theyâre only bad for you if youâre eating so many cookies that itâs pushing out all the other food that you need.
Sarah: Yeah. So that reminds me of why I brought that up, which was that you canât really ask kids to self-regulate, in my opinionâtell me what you thinkâif that food is available all the time in your house. Most kids, I think, would have cookies all the time if the cookies were just freely available 24/7. So I donât know. Tell me what you think about that.
Jennifer: Yeah, this is a great question. If you go on social media these days, youâll see people who are like, âKids can totally regulate. Kids know when theyâre hungry and full. Kids can listen to their hunger and fullness cues.â After doing so much research for this book and also having parentedâI donât have as much experience as you, but Iâm at 13 yearsâI agree some kids can regulate, but a lot of kids cannot.
And hereâs the reason. Itâs because, again, that hyper-palatable food has a different effect on their brain than other foods. And if it was an ultra-processed food, meaning itâs a food that was kind of created in a factory or the recipe was designed by a multinational snack corporation, they have done so much research to find out the exact recipe thatâs going to make people eat the most of it, override their hunger and fullness cues, and therefore buy more of it.
Sarah: Or even their enjoyment cues. Like people eating things and eating, and theyâre not even really enjoying it anymore.
Jennifer: They are overriding their body, and I think itâs unfair to ask children to try to regulate that and to put that on them. Again, some kids are good at this, and if thatâs one of your kids and thatâs just how they work, fine. Thatâs fine. You donât have to set limits.
The key, whether weâre letting kids eat as much as they want or weâre setting limits, isnât whether weâre setting limits or not. Itâs how weâre setting the limits. So if I want to set a limit on cookies, what I want to say is, âWeâre all having two cookies today,â and thatâs it. Iâm not saying, âBecause itâs a sometimes food,â or, âBecause itâs bad for you,â or, âBecause if you eat too much youâre going to gain weight,â or, âBecause you donât have self-control.â Iâm not saying any of those things.
What the research has shown, and whatâs just been observed, is that kids who have a higher weight hear more of these qualifications from their parents: âBecause of this,â âBecause you...â âBecause thatâs just too much.â That part is where youâre adding on guilt, shame, and worry, and thatâs what we want to avoid. So when we just say, âHey, everybodyâs having two cookies,â thatâs just the facts. Iâm going to enforce it, but Iâm not adding anything to it. Itâs in the addition that we run across problems.
Sarah: Right. More like moralizing. That makes so much sense. I like how you said some kids can regulate and some kids canât, in terms of the amount that theyâre eating and the kinds of food that theyâre eating, because I really did follow all of that sort of intuitive feeding advice for kids. And I did have one child who really had a hard time regulating whether theyâd eaten enough, or eating past the point of fullness, and the things that they wanted to eat.
It wasnât until I discovered through some research the connection between ADHD and feeding and found that there are some kids where you can sort of let them more intuitively know what their body needs and wants, and other kids you have to teach mindful eating, which is what we found really solved the issue. Because I was afraid to say anything, you know, because I didnât want to make this kid feel bad about themselves or their body. But as soon as we had a way to talk about it that was about mindfulness rather than that sort of intuitivenessâI donât know if you see those two things as different, but thatâs sort of how I came to think about it.
Jennifer: Yeah. So hereâs the thing with intuitive eating. It was a model, and itâs the name of a book. It was a model designed for adultsâa very specific group of women, in factâto come out of diet culture and to get back in touch with their bodies. Of course, thatâs a huge simplification, but it was never designed for children.
And you may have heard of the division of responsibility in child feeding. That was also designed by a dietitian and eating disorder therapist for the purpose of helping private-practice eating disorder clientsâchildren. But the thing is, thatâs a very specific group of people in both cases. So to take a model that was designed for a specific group and now say this is applicable to all children, I donât think is fair. Itâs not evidence-based, and itâs something that Iâve really had to do a lot of thinking about over the past two years.
Also, seeing so many kids grow up over the years and helping so many families in the Better Bites programs and things, Iâve been thinking, yeah, this model of always letting your child decide how much to eat, or how much to eat of what foods, actually is not great for many kids.
Sarah: Yeah, it wasnât great for one of mine.
Jennifer: Neurodivergent kids especially, whether itâs ADHD or autism or something else, sometimes donât have as strong of a sense of interoception. And this is true even of some neurotypical kids.
Sarah: Yeah.
Jennifer: So the interoceptive sense is the ability to tell: Am I hungry? Am I full? Do I have to go to the bathroom? Am I hot? What is going on inside of my body, and do I know how to respond to it? Do I know how to make sense of that experience?
Some people describe being anxious as being very, very hot. Like, what do you do if youâre very, very hot? They have to learn over time, âOh, that also means Iâm anxious. Therefore something is worrying me. Therefore I need to address the thing.â
So for a lot of kids, we have to walk them through that experience. One of the most powerful ways we can do that is by narrating our internal experience, where weâre saying, âOh, Iâm cold. You see these goosebumps on my arm? Thatâs telling me Iâm cold, and Iâm kind of shivering. Iâm going to put on something else. Oh, that makes me feel warm.â
Or, âI hear my stomach grumbling, and I feel empty, and I feel kind of grumpy. Thatâs telling me Iâm hungry, and so Iâm going to plan to eat a snack. I have snack in 15 minutes,â or, âItâs time for a snack right now.â And then as Iâm sitting at the table, saying, âOh, you know, Iâm starting to feel my tummy fill up.â At some point youâre like, âAh, Iâm feeling full now. Iâm going to stop eating.â
But like youâre saying, for some kids, we actually have to teach them explicitly. Some of these kids are going to have a harder time potty training. They may have a harder time learning a lot of things and how to respond to their body because they have to be taught explicitly.
Fortunately or unfortunately, that kind of falls to us to help them because weâre the ones who are with them so much of the time, and theyâre most likely to be relaxed around us and able to learn. The more we can narrate our experiencesâalthough that can be exhausting, I knowâthe more they can start to make those connections.
Sarah: That makes a lot of sense. And I think also the interoception thing that you mentioned is really a big part of it. Then thereâs also that eating can be very regulating in terms of the chewing action and being able to differentiate hunger from boredom. There are so many things that some people or children just know, and some people or children need to be, as you said, explicitly taught those things.
Jennifer: Yeah. Itâs just something that they donât know, and their body doesnât automatically make those connections. And thatâs so true, especially with chewing.
If you find your child is eating a lot when theyâre bored or when theyâre lonely or when they have negative feelings or hard feelings, one of the things you can really fall back on is your eating routine, where youâre like, âOkay, weâre going to eat our meals at these times. Weâre going to eat our snacks at these times.â It kind of keeps everybody on the same page in terms of when weâre eating.
And then itâs a little bit harder to say, âOh, Iâm going to use food to help my kids soothe themselves,â because thatâs really tempting when we know, âHey, if I just give them a snack, theyâre going to calm down.â Iâm definitely a big fan of occasionally using food as a pick-me-up because what a great tool. We could be feeling bad, and then we can eat something, and all of a sudden we can feel so much better.
Sarah: My daughter this morning had to have some blood work done, and she texted me, âThe blood work hurt my arm so much. My arm is just killing me, and so I bought myself an almond croissant to feel better.â
Jennifer: Ah.
Sarah: I said, âGreat self-care.â
Jennifer: Yes. Great self-care. At the same time, if thatâs our only tool, then weâre in trouble. And so I think we have to kind of help our kids. Iâm never down on somebody, or myself, for eating just for the purpose of feeling better or just for the purpose of enjoyment. We think about receiving meals from people in tricky times in our lives, or eating something that someone gives us even when weâre not hungry. It can still build connection and be such an uplifting experience.
Sarah: Well, and food is so nurturing, too. Again, before we started our recording, I was telling you how my 22- and 25-year-olds, who donât live at home anymore, I really use food as a way to show my care and love for them when they no longer, quote, âneed it,â right? Like making them food.
Once last year, I made a lasagna and took a picture of it and sent it to them and called it âson bait.â
Jennifer: Thatâs right.
Sarah: So yeah, food really is nurturing. And I think what Iâve come to think about it is, as long as you just donât do that all the time, right? Have seconds when youâre not hungry because itâs your favorite food, as long as you donât do that every single time you eat.
Jennifer: Yeah. I think having the ability to be flexible goes so far in our well-being. When weâre really inflexible, sometimes our life circumstances call for inflexibility. If we have very tight deadlines for when we can eat and when we canât eat, or maybe weâre working through a health issue or something like that where we just really have to be a little bit more mindful of what weâre eating, maybe we have a little bit less flexibility.
But if weâre out of that season, weâre in a different time, then we can be more flexible during that time. I think the key is weâre not over-moralizing this experience. Instead, weâre enjoying it, weâre participating in it, and weâre learning to connect to real life, not just eating away all of our hard times or avoiding all of our hard emotions or things like that.
Sarah: That makes so much sense. Okay, letâs shift gears a little bit. Iâm talking to youâI know school has already started in some parts of the country, and itâs starting in the next few weeks in other parts of the country. And with school comes packed school lunches.
Jennifer: Right.
Sarah: And I think every parent out there is like, âOh, Iâve got to start making lunches again.â So do you have any sort of hot tips for things that you findâare there ways to cut corners to pack lunches that kids will eat, that are healthy and nutritious, and also donât take a ton of time or money to do?
Jennifer: Sure. So when Iâm packing lunches, first I just kind of start with the same formula, which is a protein food, an energy foodâwhich is what I call a higher-starchy carbohydrate foodâand then the color, the fruits or vegetables.
If you want to really cut corners, get yourself a lunchbox that only has three containers. Thatâs one of my big tips. A lot of these fancy bento lunches have four, five, six containers of food, and then often people feel pressured to fill it with six different kinds of foods. Thatâs just a lot for you to think about. I have all the different lunchboxes because itâs part of my job, and we often send ones that have a few more compartments, but that can be stressful. Iâve definitely felt that, where Iâm like, âJust give me three containers.â
Also think, âIs there something that I can use from dinner or another meal that I made earlier in the week in this lunchbox?â The more you can incorporate that, the better. Or, if you canât, see if you can make it during your dinner meal. When youâre already in the kitchen, things are already a mess. It might look like a bomb went off in your kitchen, where thereâs a half-made lunchbox, thereâs a half-made dinner, but if youâre the sort of person who can kind of manage that chaos, then do it then, because then you only have to clean up once. Itâs already chaos; youâre just adding a little bit more chaos.
And you can also train your kids to help you, depending on your kids, of course. That can be a way for them to help save time for you. And then also kind of lean into maybe a baby carrot or a cucumber that you just chop, chop, or stuff where youâre cutting it up but it doesnât feel that hard for you.
I think so much of whatâs hard and easyâI was kind of talking to my Instagram audience about this recentlyâis individual. Making meatballs to me is a bridge too far. That just feels so hard and tedious. And a lot of people are like, âOh my gosh, it feels so easy to me.â So I think a lot of this is what feels hard and what feels easy to you, and kind of run with that. Donât compare your childâs lunchbox to everybody elseâs.
If your kid is going to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, if you can send peanuts, or a sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwich every day, go ahead. Send them with the same lunch every day if theyâre the kind of kid who just needs the same lunch every day. If your kid needs a different lunch every day, obviously thatâs a little trickier.
But also, if you can say, âOkay, can I use something from dinner?â that can really help. My kids have also learned that they kind of like soup at lunch, and I freeze it in one-cup segments, little portions. They know how to take it out of the freezer, put it in the microwave, heat it up, and put it in the thermos. Thatâs something that I was able to train them to do.
So any prep that you can do outside of it, when youâre already doing something else, is just going to save you a little time. And then if you can also save time with cleanup by doing it at the same time as dinner, that can be really helpful. We have a whole bunch of under-15-minute lunches in my Everyday Lunches e-book, as well as mix-and-match guides.
Sarah: Okay, nice.
Jennifer: And they can be really fun. I think engaging your kids, tooâfinding out what are they going to actually eat, asking them questions. âDoes this lunch look okay?â If it comes back uneaten, ask them what was wrong with it so that you can kind of iterate on lunches as well.
Sarah: I once accidentally sent a thermos full of hot water with one of my kids to school. I forgotâI think it was probably macaroni and cheese that I was putting in itâand I forgot to put the macaroni and cheese in.
Jennifer: Oh my gosh. There are so many times that Iâve messed up on lunches in one way or another. You do the best you can, you know?
Sarah: Yeah. I mentioned before when we were talking about lunches that making foodâand Iâm somebody who cooks a lot, and Iâve made a lot of food for 25 or 26 years now with kidsâit does take a lot of time and money and energy to make, Iâm going to say, ânice food,â whatever that means to you. But the food you feel good about serving your family.
If youâre short on time, money, energy, or one, two, or three of those things, whatâs the best use of resources, do you think, for feeding families if youâre short on some of that stuff?
Jennifer: First, go for frozen fruits and veggies. Just go right there, because that is no compromise whatsoever. Itâs just a different form of the same food.
Sarah: Theyâre often cheaper too, I find. Especially frozen fruit is a lot cheaper than fresh fruit.
Jennifer: Yeah. Lean into that first. Also, find some cooking methods that are easy. The other day I put a bunch of chicken thighs in the Crock-Pot and poured some salsa over it. It was delicious at the end of the day. It took me five minutes, if that. Iâm trying to think of what I served with it. I think it was leftover rice or something that was already leftover, something I could just quickly heat up in the microwave.
I canât remember what we did for veggies, but I could have also added on the side of that just a couple bags of frozen peas, and we wouldâve been good, right? So some bread and some frozen peas. I had a meal that took me maybe 15 minutes to make, very economical. Itâs really kind of looking for those time-saving prep methods and then saying, âOkay, what can we do?â
Sarah: Yeah. One thing I always talk to overwhelmed parents about is trying to just really, really simplify dinner. Coming home, daycare pickup, everyoneâs tired, blah, blah, blah. And I always have this funny story. Once when I was pregnant with my third, and my other two were two and five, my husband had an out-of-town job for four months, and I was in school full-time.
Jennifer: Oh my God.
Sarah: It was exhausting. And I would make eggs for dinner a lot.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness, yes.
Sarah: Eggs and baby carrots and toast were the go-to dinner, to the point where one Saturday morning I said to my sons, âWho wants some fried eggs for breakfast?â And my two-year-old said, âSilly Mommy, fried eggs are for dinner.â
Jennifer: I love that. Oh my gosh, we went through years and years and years where at least once a week we had eggs and toast and baby carrots, or some microwave peas or something from the freezer.
Canned soup is an okay dinner. There are so many things that I think people are feeling kind of hard on themselves about. Donât listen to other peopleâs rules. What is working for you right now? Go with that.
Sarah: Yeah, like pesto pasta and jarred spaghetti sauce and noodles and apple slices. And I think sometimes itâs hard for parents, too, because they like to cook and they want to make nice food for themselves, right? But something has to go.
Jennifer: Yeah. Somethingâs gotta go, man. Making something nice for yourselfâdo it when you have a chance, but otherwise itâs okay to let that go for now. Youâll get it back.
Thatâs the other thing. We feel like, âOh, I donât want to give up this part of myself.â Youâre not giving it up. Youâre just saying, âHey, Iâm not going to do that. Iâm going to do other things right now, and then at a different stage I will do that again.â Iâm actually cooking a lot better now that my kids arenât holding onto my feet and fighting while Iâm trying to cook.
Well, they still do that, but theyâre not really getting in the way of cooking. Itâs so hard to cook with little kids around.
Sarah: Totally.
Jennifer: I always say I would notoriously let my kids make a huge mess while I was making dinner, and I call it a âtime loan.â Theyâre making a huge mess, but I was able to actually get dinner on the table. I got that time, and then, yeah, Iâll have to pay it back. Iâll have to clean up their mess when they were really little, but itâs worth it.
And I will also say, if youâre having a really hard time budget-wise, but you still have some time to cook, I have a meal plan thatâs specifically designed to save money. Itâs all about making the most of the food, using up all leftovers and preventing waste and all that, so that you can really spend significantly lessâ
Sarah: Yeah, I think I saw that a few years ago. Weâll link to that. Youâve had it for a while, right? Itâs called Affordable Flavors.
Yeah, weâll link to that in the show notes. One thing Iâm just remembering that we did when my kids were little is there was another familyâthis woman who had kids around the same ageâand we lived a few blocks away. Once a week, we would make double dinner and give it to the other one.
Jennifer: I love that.
Sarah: Yeah. She was Japanese and a really nice Japanese cook, and my kids actually, to be totally honest, werenât huge fans of her dinners, but my husband and I certainly were.
Jennifer: Oh, thatâs great.
Sarah: Yeah. But it was really nice. Once a week, you didnât have to make anything because somebody gave you dinner. And itâs not very hard to make double of your own dinner. So if anyone has a neighbor that they could do that with, it was really a nice thing to do.
Jennifer: Yeah. Thatâs a great idea.
Sarah: Well, thank you so much. Tell us about your book launch. Weâll put any links in the show notes, but you told me before that you had some prizes and things for the pre-order.
Jennifer: Yeah. So there are a bunch of pre-order bonuses. As soon as you buy the book, you can upload either your receipt or, letâs say you requested it from the library, you can upload just proof of that request. I have some printablesâhow to talk to kids about red foods, orange foods, yellow foodsâthat are super popular. I usually sell it, but Iâm giving that away as a pre-order bonus.
There are also mealtime conversation cards coming. There is a live call with my mom that Iâm going to be doing thatâs also recorded, so depending on when you hear this, itâs still available. There are also conversations like, what do you say if your kid comes back and says, âIâm fatâ? What are some scripts? There are some scripts for that. Thereâs also my bedtime snack chart. There are a lot of tools where youâre like, âOkay, I want to make some improvements in different areas.â There are pre-order bonuses that give you tools for almost every area that you could want to apply.
And then Iâm also doing a really fun book tour where Iâm meeting with child feeding and food specialists from all over the United States over time, and Iâm going to be posting my interviews online for everybody to see. Itâs almost like a short-term podcast kind of demo. Itâs going to be a lot of fun for people to follow along.
Sarah: Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on. One last question, which I ask all my guestsâand Iâve asked you this before, so I can go back and compare and see if you answer it the same wayâwhich is: If you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself? It can be about anything. It doesnât have to be about food or feeding.
Jennifer: Sure. So now that Iâm 13 years in, I think the one thing that wouldâve been so helpful for me to know is: Itâs not my job to make my kid happy. It sounds so simple now, but Iâm like, no, it wasnât my job to try to make them stop crying. It was my job to just hold a boundary and be there.
And when I stopped, when I just kind of let go of that idea of trying to make them happy, oh my gosh, the weight, the dramaâit just went away. Itâs like, âOh, itâs okay for you to be unhappy. Thatâs you and your feelings over there, and Iâm here to support. Iâm here for you.â And also, itâs not my job to fix that.
Sarah: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much. Best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?
Jennifer: Kids Eat in Color, whether thatâs kidsincolor.com or on your favorite social media. Iâm there.
Sarah: All right. Thank you so much, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for having me.