As a Dietitian, I usually talk with parents and families a lot! It’s important to gather in depth detail about a child’s preferred and non-preferred foods, quantities of food eaten, growth patterns, fluid intake and stool patterns (and the list goes on) to conduct a thorough nutritional analysis and provide practical advice. Finding the gaps in a child’s diet to help them grow is like a puzzle and seeing how our advice can fit the pieces together for a family is extremely rewarding.
However, being able to provide practical advice to children and see their independence in the kitchen grow brings a whole other element to my work as a Dietitian. Cooking and being involved in the kitchen can be a fun and exciting way to learn about new foods. For many of the children I work with, they often haven’t been involved in meal preparation and cooking before. As a way to ease them into the kitchen, I start by cooking a familiar meal with them, so that they aren’t overwhelmed by too many new ingredients. From there, we adapt the recipes to introduce new foods based on the food groups that are currently missing from their diet.
