FULL TRANSCRIPT: EPISODE 185
Meg Faure: Moms and dads, you are in for a treat. This was honestly one of my most favorite episodes that I have recorded in a while. Is mealtime a daily struggle for you? You are not alone.
Today I am joined by paediatric nutritionist Natalia Stasenko, creator of the Easy Bites app, and we are going to unpack the roots of picky eating and how to turn things around. What you will learn today: why picky eating peaks between 12 and 24 months, how to spot when it’s more than just a phase, how parenting anxiety affects your toddler’s feeding, and two keys to calmer meals: safety and connection.
And we go super deep here, which is really exciting. We also give you tips for serving familiar foods in fresh ways. Do not miss this episode. If you have a picky eater, we are going to give you expert strategies for bringing peace back to the table and the secret to raising confident and curious eaters.
Welcome to Sense by Meg Faure, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company. Your host, Meg Faure, is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books. Each week, we’re going to spend time with new moms and dads just like you to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges, and the questions of the moment. Subscribe to the podcast, download the ParentSense app, and catch Meg every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life.
And now, meet your host. Welcome back, moms and dads, to Sense by Meg Faure. It is, as always, wonderful to have you join us. And today is one of those sessions where we invite a person with a deep specialty onto the podcast, and the focus for today is on picky eating. I would love to welcome Natalia Stasenko to join me. Hi Natalia.
Natalia Stasenko: Hi Meg, thank you so much for having me. Very excited.
Meg Faure: Yeah, it’s really wonderful. And you know, it’s such a hot topic. A lot of our moms do battle with picky eating. We focus quite a bit on young babies, but I know your focus has been a much wider range, all the way through childhood. So before we get started, I just want to introduce Natalia to you all.
She struggled with feeding with her firstborn and decided to specialize in feeding problems in children while she was still a student at Columbia University in New York at their nutrition program. And she’s now a guest lecturer there. Natalia created family nutrition programs for Head Start, an early childhood program in the US Department of Health and Human Services. And she supports families in her private practise in New York and London. She is also an author. She co-wrote child nutrition books like Baby-Led Weaning and Real Baby Food and has built communities of thousands of parents on social media.
She has also recently embarked on the digital journey, just like I have, and has launched an app called Easy Bites. The idea is to make the responsive feeding approach easy to integrate into the busy lives of families across the globe so that we can raise generations of happy and confident eaters. So Natalia, huge welcome. And very much on the same page as what I have been building as well. So really, really excited to have you with us.
Natalia Stasenko: Thank you so much for having me. It’s interesting to see how our professional journeys developed into something with a more technological focus. And I think it’s a very fair way to democratize our knowledge and to make it really accessible to a lot more parents than we could have otherwise.
Meg Faure: Absolutely. I mean, I also ran a private practise and always felt that the idea of kind of touching maybe 20 lives in a week just wasn’t good enough. I then branched into writing books like Baby Sense and Weaning Sense, similar to you. And just like you said, kind of taking knowledge to the world can only really be done at scale through digital platforms. So very, very similar journeys.
And moms, if you’re interested right at this point in the episode, the app that we’re talking about that Natalia has built is called Easy Bites. Natalia, maybe just give us a little bit of information on the focus of the app and who the population is that you’re trying to reach.
Natalia Stasenko: Right. So at the moment, the app is focused on families with children between ages of six months and five years. And the purpose for this age gap specifically is to give a lot of support to parents whose children are going through a lot of milestones. As you know, Meg, this is the time where a lot of developmental updates are happening, so to speak, in the kids’ systems. And when it comes to feeding, it can get very confusing and very frustrating very quickly. So that’s why we are focusing on this specific age period. But we plan to expand and include older children as well.
The premise behind the app is to make mealtimes easier, less stressful by assessing the child and the family—both parents and the child—and providing very personalized guidance, both from the developmental side, but also from the psychological side, so that families can confidently plan meals that are not only nutritious, but also easy to put on the table with everything that we know about the family.
Meg Faure: That’s very interesting. I mean, I do feel like picky eating is becoming a bit of an epidemic. Certainly amongst the moms in my circles and who I deal with, almost every mom goes through a patch where her little one is picky eating. And maybe it would be worth us actually unpacking some of the myths around picky eating. I mean, how do you know if it is picky eating? Is it just a developmental journey? And when should parents be worried? Yeah.
Natalia Stasenko: Well, yeah, many, many children will go through what we call a typical picky phase. And this is just a response to their natural development. For example, their caloric needs go down after the age of 12 months, and their need for protein also goes down just due to how their bodies develop. Also, a massive boost in their need for autonomy—what we call a perfect storm. It all happens at about 12 to 24 months, and it can catch parents off guard completely because we’re just not aware of what is to come.
And this, of course, manifests in how children approach mealtimes. This is when we see a lot of requests for carbs, meals mostly rotating around the same few familiar options, really no interest in protein, and very low interest in eating overall. There are many factors that may play a role. But because we, as parents, are surrounded by so much information around what a perfect diet should look like, I think this focus on the nutritional side of things can make this period even more stressful for parents. And so this is where I think what we call now the epidemic of picky eating may at least partially stem from. And then, of course, just more focus on parenting and mealtimes in general, just trying to do the best job possible, also can aggravate that situation because all the anxiety and all the concern that parents experience will translate into mealtime dynamics that are just not optimal for feeding children.
Meg Faure: Yeah, absolutely. And I love the fact that you call it the perfect storm because that is actually what it is: a whole lot of changes in the psyche and the nutritional demands of the child, which you’ve mentioned. And then, of course, the anxiety piled on by the parent because we all want to do the perfect job for our kids. And often the table is where that plays out because it’s a box we can tick very tangibly. I can prepare you a meal, I can make sure it’s nutritional, I can take hours slaving away from farm-to-table food. And then I present this, and suddenly there’s this rejection. And so it does create this perfect storm. And as you mentioned, the word anxiety then comes in where parents are feeling anxious around it.
In my mind, when I listen to that, I’m kind of seeing that there are two really big parts to this. The one is the intrinsic factors that come from the child, and the other is what the mother brings. So I think let’s maybe divide our conversation into those two parts. So first, having a look at the intrinsic factors, do you recognize things like sensory sensitivity? Are there specific things that you see that signal more severe picky eating that parents can watch out for and that we could assist? And then later on, we’ll go on and talk about the parents’ approach.
Natalia Stasenko: Yeah, definitely. Well, first of all, there is a group of children, which is smaller than what we call typical eaters. But there’s a group of children which have those intrinsic factors that contribute to more severe cases of picky eating. Those cases sometimes warrant a specific diagnosis like ARFID, for example, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. So we do know that there is a group of children. It’s not very large, but these children need a very comprehensive level of support when it comes to navigating this stage that may last a lot longer for these families, let’s face it, than typical picky eating.
But even in those children who are not included in this very extreme group, we do have some intrinsic characteristics that play a role in their eating. And as you said, sensory challenges may play a role, as well as temperament, gastrointestinal issues, food allergies, oral motor issues. There’s a whole bouquet, so to speak, of issues that may be impacting the child’s eating. On the app, we now have a picky eater questionnaire that allows parents to assess really which of those areas may be playing a role in their child’s eating. And it can be quite eye-opening because those families are really trying to get support anywhere they can, just like I did with my firstborn, what is it, 17 years ago. And sadly, the levels of support available to parents nowadays is not much higher than what I experienced all these years ago. So that’s why we pay special attention to all these risk areas, so to speak, that need attention, that need consideration before the child’s eating actually improves.
Meg Faure: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I’ve definitely seen it in my practise where, you know, I’ve had some really extreme picky eaters, and it’s been really interesting because, I mean, I’ll never forget a little girl who came into my practise, and she was actually about to get a PEG tube into her stomach so she could be fed directly because they were not able to get any nutrition in. She was about 18 months old and she just didn’t want to eat at all, complete food refusal. And it was so interesting because I come as an OT from the perspective of the sensory, very much focused on what was going on at the sensory level. And as I started to unpack her sensory profile, I realized that the mom was actually bringing an enormous amount of anxiety as well.
And so it really did, in her case, end up being the situation of a perfect storm, which we were able to shift very effectively. But the second part of the puzzle was this anxiety that the mom was bringing, that she, every time—and they kind of started to almost train each other. The baby was picky because she was sensory sensitive. The mom started to absolutely fear mealtimes because every time she presented something, it would get rejected. Her little one was fading away before her eyes. She had the surgery hanging over her head, that her little one was going to need the surgery. And she just felt like she wasn’t doing a good enough job. And so mealtimes became absolutely fraught with this mom’s anxiety. And so as Mom approached the meal, she would come with anxiety, emotions were heightened, and the fight-or-flight response came out. And of course, this exacerbated the feelings of anxiety for the little one as well, and therefore the sensory sensitivities.
So are there a couple of little strategies that you think in that situation, when you’ve got your more severe picky eaters and a mom who’s got very high levels of anxiety, how can we short-circuit this horrible cycle that’s going on?
Natalia Stasenko: Yes, definitely. And I love that you mentioned the connection between sensory sensitivity and anxiety, because it is really, really there. And the second thing I wanted to point out, again, related to what you just said, feeding is bidirectional. It’s a relationship. It’s not just a one-way process: I give the food to the child, child consumes the food, and everybody’s happy. It’s truly a relationship. And if we don’t see it as such, we will run into problems as professionals or, you know, as many parents do around the globe. So it’s a relationship. So if a child affects the parent, the parent affects the child.
So back to your question about what we can do. Oh my God. So the overall strategy that will benefit everybody, every single child on this long spectrum of picky eating, will benefit from stress-free meals. Removing all stress from mealtimes and injecting as much connection as possible will benefit every child. And that means that nutrition may need to take a backseat, because if the parent has been fighting over these three bites of chicken or two bites of carrots for the last few years, they stop doing that. Yes, the child may not be eating chicken or carrots for a while, but it’s also fine, because what they’re building is a lot more important. It’s the actual foundation for their relationship and the child’s relationship with food for the rest of their lives. So yes, nutrition can take a bit of a backseat in this situation.
Meg Faure: So that is much easier said than done because we measure our success as a mom on our child’s weight and on their immunity and the colour of their skin and how well that they sleep. All of those being indicators of sound nutrition, as an example. So how do I practically, as a mom, release anxiety? How do I practically kind of relax at mealtimes? And do I just, is it a case of just letting my little one eat absolutely nothing, or allow them to graze? Or what sort of principles would you use?
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How do I practically kind of relax at mealtimes? And do I just, is it a case of just letting my little one eat absolutely nothing or allow them to graze, or what sort of principles would you use?
Natalia Stasenko: So there’s so much. I will try to go slow, so to speak. So the first thing we recommend parents do is recognize that a child’s well-being is not just nutrition. Stress, as you said, plays a massive role in children’s health. So let’s look at this situation, not just like, “What nutrition is going to take care of my child’s health from, you know, zero to 10?” No, there’s a lot of different factors that play a role, like sleep, for example, stress levels, activity levels, emotional health, a lot of different things that play a role in immunity, actually, interestingly, and overall well-being. So recognizing this is very important. Although eating and what they’re consuming is very tangible, something that we can see, a lot of things that are not that obvious also play a role.
Secondly, maximizing the use of the child’s accepted foods is really, really important. When parents have a list of accepted foods, and they divide it into food groups, and they know which foods provide what nutrition, and they always add at least one or two or more accepted foods to each meal and snack the child eats, chances are the child will be able to meet their nutritional needs. If they rotate them effectively, if they ensure that the amount of those accepted foods is not limited, it’s like a safety blanket. We call it a safety blanket for the child. If they’re not ready to explore new or more challenging foods yet, they fall back on the accepted foods. And actually, seeing those accepted foods on the table when they come to eat signals safety to children. And this is what we want them to feel. Everything needs to be built on the foundation of safety and connection. So accepted foods provide safety, parents provide connection. And this is the amazing foundation that actually brings long-term benefits that are translated into nutrition.
Research shows that children who are fed using this approach—in the US, it’s more common to talk about it as division of responsibility; globally, we talk about it as responsive feeding—research shows that children are less likely to experience nutritional deficiencies when they are allowed to eat as many accepted foods as they want when it comes to mealtimes and also self-regulate. So there are some limitations when it comes to establishing this structure. So it’s not the situation where children are allowed to graze or eat whenever, whatever they want. There needs to be a meal and snack schedule in order to optimize their appetite. There needs to be some thought put into what foods go on the table, how many food groups are included, and whether there are accepted foods. But when it comes to actual mealtimes, parents need to be rest assured that they’ve done all they could. And now it’s up to the child to eat what they want from what they offer.
Meg Faure: Yeah. And we’ve always spoken about the fact that the parent controls when and what is presented, and the child controls how much. And, you know, I think that I think that’s what you’re alluding to when you talk about the division of responsibilities. Is there more to it in your mind than that?
Natalia Stasenko: Yes. Well, division of responsibilities is a formula that also includes where the food is served. So we want to make sure that it’s a safe environment, such as at a table. So it’s not on the run where children may have a high risk of choking. Yes. So the division of responsibility is a very easy way to sort of encapsulate the responsive feeding approach when we explain it to the parents.
And another thing I wanted to add is that the child’s job is to choose how much or whether to eat. And this “whether” can be very, very challenging for parents. Sometimes children may choose not to eat. And I will give an example of when it’s more likely to happen. For example, toddlers, two, three, four-year-olds quite often start skipping dinner because their caloric needs are not as high. They’ve been eating the whole day and they’re tired when dinnertime comes around. And so they just choose not to eat. And this level of trust that a parent needs to have to allow this to happen is also part of this foundation that we’ve been talking about here.
Meg Faure: Very, very interesting. I love that you talked about the two key components of this mealtime being safety and connection. I haven’t really ever heard about it framed in that way. And it just makes so much sense because immediately you’re moving from your red brain and your anxiety brain into your green brain and your thinking brain and your calm brain. And then you’re much more likely to produce saliva. You’re much more able to be able to swallow. You’re much more able to be able to focus on the meal. So I really, really love that: safety and connection. So let’s talk a little bit about the connection part and why shared family meals are important and what role they play.
Natalia Stasenko: Right. So there are a couple of components to that. First, of course, the sheer level of exposure to new and less familiar foods that children get from eating with other people is a fact. Right. So if parents take care to serving meals that they like, that are part of their family heritage, the foods that they enjoy, there’s a lot more variety on the table than, for example, the meals that they prepare just for the child, even if they do their absolute best to include new or less familiar foods, the level will not be the same. So it just adds a lot in terms of how many foods, how much variety the child will be able to accept and embrace later in life. And we have research that shows that, yes, there is a correlation between families eating together and the level of variety children have in their diets later on.
Then, of course, there’s this opportunity to build connection. As I said, connection is such an important component of this learning process. Mealtimes are a learning process for children. I think this is also something that we need to recognize. It’s not like for us, for adults, who just come to the table, we know how to chew. We know what we like, what we don’t like. Everything works really well with us physiologically in terms of consuming the food. For children, it’s a very, very different process. It’s learning. It’s like going to school. So each mealtime is like a lesson for them. And that’s why safety and connection are so important, because they’re all parts of learning, fundamental components of learning.
And so, besides when eating together, you’re able to practise this bidirectional positive feeding dynamics with your child. For example, how you respond to your child when they say something, when they start complaining about the food, and you immediately sort of give them back their responsibility: “You don’t need to eat it. This is on the table for everybody to share, but you can eat what you like.” This is a massive lesson for the child to learn. And again, it contributes to this foundation, but also sparks a little bit of intrinsic curiosity in children around eating. That’s the goal of this whole responsive feeding approach. We want kids to feel naturally curious about the food.
It’s like when you play with them, right? You play with blocks, Lego blocks, and you just enjoy, have a good time with them, right? So they’re choosing whatever blocks they want. They make towers, and you’re just having a good time as a parent and child team, so to speak. But if you start being very directive with that, when they play with the blocks—”Just touch this yellow block, and then you tap the red block a couple of times and put the green block on top of the yellow block”—children will lose interest because this intrinsic curiosity, this intrinsic playfulness, and sort of, you know, “Oh, what else is out there? How else can I do it?” It’s gone. And mealtimes are the same. Children don’t approach mealtimes differently. It’s not like us adults, “Oh, I need a bit of protein. I need a bit of vegetables. Oh, you know, like calories and whatnot.” Kids don’t see things the same way, and we shouldn’t make them, because they have something that is a lot more valuable. They have this desire to learn, and that’s something we should maximize when it comes to mealtimes.
Meg Faure: Absolutely. I mean, everything you expressed there sits so well within play theory, that play is actually a child’s work, and they have this curiosity, and if you allow them the freedom to not have boundaries around play, they can be curious. And really, mealtimes are the same, which I really love because I think, unfortunately, the pendulum in the last kind of 50 years went terribly in the direction of boundaries. You know, “You can’t have anything sweet until you’ve had everything savoury. You have to eat one of every colour. You have to finish everything that’s on your plate. If you serve it, you’ve got to eat it.” I mean, there were all these crazy boundaries around mealtimes for children, which I do think took away the fun and the playfulness and the curiosity from it. And yeah, so I think what you’re saying just makes so much sense.
So, before we finish off, I think we have got to understand how does your app actually work? I mean, we’re talking about a digital product here, and how would you be able to put this into an app to make mealtimes better for parents and to decrease picky eating?
Natalia Stasenko: Right, so what we’re doing on the app is essentially trying to provide shortcuts, so to speak, for parents who hear all of that that we’re discussing now here and think, “Oh my goodness, where do I start?” So, when they come to the app, they’re able to complete the questionnaire and understand their child’s profile immediately. So, what are those risk areas? They’re also able to understand themselves a little bit more because we’ll flag their high anxiety levels or their frequent prompting of the child to eat certain things, which all can be translated as pressure in children’s eyes. So, they understand a lot more. They understand what their child eats. They can complete the list of accepted foods. They understand what food groups are included. They also get a prompt if their situation is very extreme and they need to go and see a feeding specialist. So, that’s something that we cannot solve as an app or even as a specialist like myself. I would definitely need a whole team, a whole comprehensive team of feeding specialists to support these kids. So, that’s the foundation of what they get when they come to the app.
And then, because the accepted foods are stored on the app, we can now teach them how to incorporate them into mealtimes. So, essentially, when parents look at the list of their child’s accepted foods, they start thinking, “Okay, my child eats chicken nuggets, maybe some mashed potatoes and broccoli,” and they just give them chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, and broccoli for dinner for six months. And then, the child burns out, and he doesn’t want any of that. So, what do we do? We show them recipes with accepted foods that are presented differently. It just unlocks so much more variety for them. So, they naturally start eating together. They can see what a deconstructed meal is, where this interactive approach kicks in, which is so important for waking up this intrinsic curiosity. Kids need to be able to do things themselves, serve their food themselves, make their chicken taco by themselves, or make their little pizza on their own plate. So, all of that comes through the app, as well as a lot of psychological support. So, there are daily tips and for specific feeding situations that families find tricky. We have a lot of support that resurfaces at the moments when they need it, as well as the developmental timeline of how a child will develop when it comes to eating, because we will be sending you notifications. “Your child may start throwing food right now. Watch out for this behaviour. This is why it’s going to happen, and that’s what you can do with it.” So, these prompts, we hope, will prevent this frustration and this feeling of, you know, “Where do I look for help?” that many parents experience when it comes to feeding children, because we hope to give them a bit of a heads-up when something tricky is about to come.
Meg Faure: Absolutely incredible, and I think it’s going to do more than that. I think it could be really effective in short-circuiting this epidemic that we’re seeing. I think it sounds like an incredible product. Moms, it is called Easy Bites, so do go and download it. Is it available on Android and iOS, Natalia?
Natalia Stasenko: Yes, it is, it is, and we are innovating like crazy in the last few months, so there are constant updates, and if you come to the app in two months and there’s a new feature floating around or beta testing in process, that’s the work of our small but mighty team on the background. We’re really trying to improve it.
Meg Faure: If you would like to download the Easy Bites app and start to use it, which I think you really should if you’ve got a picky eater, I have got a wonderful gift for you, and that is a promo code that you can use to download the app, and it’ll give you six months. Yes, that is six months free access, so huge thank you to Natalia. That promo code is ALLCAPSPARENTSENSE2025 in numbers. PARENTSENSE, all caps, 2025, no spaces, no punctuation. Do go and use it, so you download the Easy Bites app from the app stores, either of your app stores, and you pop in that code, it’ll give you six months free access, so thank you very much to Natalia and the team at Easy Bites. Do they use the voucher code in the app store or do they have to go to a website to do it?
Natalia Stasenko: Yes, on the app store, they will be able to do it directly through the Android and iOS app store.
Meg Faure: Okay, that’s wonderful. Well, Natalia, it has been amazing talking to you. I feel like you and I are 100% on the same page. It’s a lot of what we have been speaking about over many, many years, and I’m just delighted to find somebody who’s on a very similar journey and solving a very, very important and global problem, so thank you for joining us.
Natalia Stasenko: Thank you so much.
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