February 1, 2023 • 14 mins
Tips to make lunch time a little easier
Topics included in this episode -
- Why is it so challenging for so many families?
- How to support kids with special needs
- Problem solve together
- School is not the time to be stretching our kids
- Food safety
Learn more about Deb Blakley from Kids Dig Food
To access the Feed Your Picky Eater [without going crazy] evergreen online course for parents: https://kidsdigfood.com.au/resources/
Book an appointment with an APD from the Kids Dig Food team: https://kidsdigfood.com.au/appointments/
Find us on Facebook at Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
Email us your questions and comments at podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson. Welcome to Happy Families Podcast.
So grateful to have you here and that you're choosing
to spend your time with me talking about your kids
and how we can make your family happier. School's been
back for a little while now, kids are probably if
your children are anything like mine, showing up at home
hungry after school, then you discover that they gave their
lunch to somebody else because they didn't like it, or worse,
they throw it in the bin. And you're sort of thinking,
(00:32):
number one, it costs a lot of money to do this,
to provide lunches. But number two, do you think that
I've got time to sit around in the morning and
make you a lunch that you're not going to eat?
I mean, this is the challenge with kids. Or alternatively,
they're just complaining and winging and whining and they're saying
I don't like anything.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And of course it's the middle of.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Summer, which means that lunch boxes get hot, which means
food just doesn't usually taste quite as good as we
might like. It to Today, I'm having a conversation with
Deb Blakeley, the founder, director and LEE accredited practicing dietitian.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Of Kids Dig Food.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You can find everything that you need to know about
Deb and Kids Digfood at kidsdigfood dot com dot au.
Deb followed her heart I think would be the easiest
way to say this, like just loves this work and
created Kids Dig Food in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's been ten years now.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
After many years as a community dietitian, community nutritionist and
a hospital based clinical dietitian, and Deb has a sense
to become passionate about supporting grown ups to positively and
joyfully connect or reconnect with food and eating and share
this with the children that they care for. And now, Deb,
I love food and I love sharing food. My children
(01:40):
don't appreciate the way of that I do. I don't
know if you've noticed this, but kids, they're happy to
eat the cheap ice cream, Whereas when we get a
bit older, we start to avoid the cheap stuff. We
just go for the good stuff, right, Like our taste
buds have matured, we know what's good and what's not.
But kids we sort of say they'll eat anything and
then it comes to school lunchboxes and they won't.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Eat anything at all. Why is school lunch so challenging
for so many families.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yes, eating at school is really different to eating in
other places, and there's a lot to think about for
kids when they're eating at school. So it might to
us seem like, oh, I've given you the lunch, it's
come home, it's either not eaten or it's all gone,
and you're saying you're hungry. And there's different routines and expectations,
(02:27):
and as we know, there's often less time to eat,
so sometimes kids are only given ten minutes maybe to
get their lunch done, and depending on the child, that
may or may not be enough time. And if they're
a bit of a chatter box, then that might get
in the way of eating as well, or if they're
more interested in play. So it can be really helpful
(02:49):
to work out what the environment in the school is
like around lunches, what the routine is like, because it
can take a little bit of problem solving with your
child and the school and with the teachers to work
out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Sometimes we had a situation so one of our kids
got ADHD and we had a situation where she just said,
I haven't got time. But what we realized is she
was just so busy as soon as the bell went.
She had so many things that she needed to do
in that little period of time because she knew that
she'd be back in the classroom soon, and she wanted
to run and play and talk to friends and do everything,
and eating was such a low priority. Of course, kids,
(03:23):
especially kids who have any kind of additional needs, when
they're not eating, they become even more difficult to manage.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And we kept on trying to say.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
To her, you need to eat the food, like we've
packed it for you. You've got to do it. You've
got to eat first. But they just don't want to.
And I remember having a conversation some years ago with
one teacher. She was essentially saying, making sure that all
twenty eight kids in my class eat their lunch is
one thing that I just can't promise that I can do.
Sympathetic to that, but like you said, we have this
(03:52):
perfect well where we think, Okay, we'll have a conversation
with a teacher and everything I'll be okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Doesn't always work.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Like that, No, it certainly doesn't. And I think the
teacher is right that, you know, it's it can actually
be quite unrealistic to say to a teacher, you.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Know, please my child or my kid eats it.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So there's a lot of other things that we can do,
and kids with special needs, say who, for example, your
daughter who isn't eating or wasn't eating very much? You know,
sometimes they do need a bit more support around that,
and that support can look really different in many different ways.
But let's just say, let's take a broader approach and say,
(04:34):
you know, we've got a typically developing child or a
child who might have special needs where you just think
they're just not paying attention. There's something getting away in
the way for them. So some of the things we
can do from the home perspective is do a bit
of problem solving and go, okay, so tell me what's
going on, what do you really want to be doing,
like what happens in that ten minutes? And can we
(04:58):
problem solve together? You know, depending on the child's age,
it can be possible to problem solve together and say, okay,
well if we put something in your lunch box that
literally took you thirty seconds to eat, just so that
to make sure that you're having something at each break
to keep you going. What would that be do you
think that might be possible for you? So really working
(05:21):
with our kids to decide what it is. You know,
is it just their favorite piece of cheese on cracker
or something that's quite small, quite energy dents that they're
going to be able to eat really quickly. That might
be just that that thing that gets them through. The
Other thing I want to mention is that sometimes school
(05:43):
eating at school might be the smallest amount of eating
that your child does during the day, and it may
be that we need to help them by supplementing breakfast
and supplementing afternoon tea and dinner and maybe supper to
make up for that. So, just because a child isn't
eating as much as we would like them to be
eating during the day doesn't mean that we can't get
(06:07):
them to meet their needs across the whole day. Where
teachers can be helpful I think is establish some rules
that we don't throw food away, that if there's anything
that's uneaten in your lunch box, it's best to take
that home with you because then you as parents have
a better idea of what's actually being eaten and what's
(06:27):
not and some of the dialogue that might happen is
around Okay, so I can see that there's a lot
coming back. What's that about? You know? Is it about
the fact that I just wanted to go and play
or is it that I hate everything that's in here?
Because that then both of those things require a different
lot of problem solving. Yeah, as a parent, and then
(06:50):
from the teacher's perspective, you know, there may be some
ways that they can help the children be as settled
as they can possibly be in that ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I'd love to see the conversation in a different direction. Now,
obviously you had that webinar with your community, and you
were talking about the challenge of school lunchboxes. How do
we put lunchboxes together that are nutritious and that the
kids will eat and that won't go bad in the
hot sun at this time of the year.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I know that whenever I look at news.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Articles about the average school student lunchbox, the articles are
usually highly critical in saying, these things are full of sugar.
It's white bread, it's jam or veggie, might have peanut
butter or something else. It's full of sugar. There's a
popper which is full of sugar. There's a couple of
snacks which are full of sugar, and essentially everything that
I've ever read about school lunchboxes seems to indicate that
all of our typical, traditional, standard, quick and easy lunch
(07:47):
options tend to be less than ideal for our kids.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
What do you recommend parents doing?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yes, I really find a dialogue around like sugar, that
particularly the things that you mentioned quite problem as a dietitian,
because you know, some of the things you mentioned, like
white bread, for example, fruit, those foods provide an amazing
amount of nutrients. So, for example, if you've got a
(08:13):
child who really at the moment they're staple for bread
is white bread, you know, they don't like wholemeal bread.
School is not the time really to be stretching our kids.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I love that you said that.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I love that you said that because, as you said
at the beginning of the conversation, it's a different situation
like we've got.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
We've got a completely different context.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
There's limited or little or of any adult supervision, and
the kids have got so many other distractions and so
much else going on. School's not the place where they're
going to experiment with food, right.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, And look, they might you might have a super
experimental kid, and you're probably not listening to this podcast
if you because you know you don't have any problems then.
But you know, when we're thinking about what are going
to be foods that feel our kids up, that get
them through, we do need to rely on foods that
(09:04):
are familiar to them. Okay, so you know, some of
the foods that are demonized in a lot of media,
particularly where lunch boxes are concerned, I would think as
a dietitian, are perfectly acceptable. So sandwiches with white bread, fruit.
What else did you mention.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Justin oh I mentioned a few of the school snacks
and the popper, the pure apple juice popper, a.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Juice popper, those foods. You know, kids actually require a
lot of carbohydrate. I think that this is what we
forget as parents and people who have a very limited
view of nutrition in the sense that everything has to
be healthy. You know, that's a topic for another podcast,
but you know, really, if we can put food into
(09:51):
our kids lunchboxes that are familiar, look good, smell good,
tastes good to them, are quick to eat, they're going
to be foods that then more likely to eat when
it comes to keeping food safe. In terms of food safety,
there's real value in supporting our kids to understand if
you've got say a ham sandwich or something that is
(10:12):
going to go off. Maybe you've got an egg in there,
so you know, protein food or whatever, anything that's kind
of wet, you know is likely to you know, not
be great, or maybe yogurt or some cheese, that those
foods might be better eaten at the first break rather than
the second break. And that's a really good skill for
kids to learn. So although we don't really want to
(10:34):
be saying, well, you must eat this food first because
it's the healthy one, you know, I would take the
view that anything that you put in your child's lunch box,
let them eat it in whatever order they want to.
If you weren't happy for them to have it, it wouldn't
go in the lunch box in the first place. That's
okay to do. And even you know, training your kid
to go pick the bit that's not going to be real,
(10:56):
you know, get the sun on it. You know, we
were our kids to obviously have a lunch that they're
going to want to eat when they come to second break.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So as I listened to what you're saying here, and
our time's pretty well up, so we need to wrap this.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
If I was to summarize what I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Hearing you essentially say is kids can be a little
bit tricky around food at school because of the environment,
because of the stimulus, because there's so much going on,
because there's a lack of supervision in terms of the
actual foods that they eat. I'm hearing you sound extremely
practical and pragmatic, and what I'm basically hearing you say is,
on average, don't sweat the small stuff. Just make sure
(11:33):
that they're eating. And I've jotted down a few things
that you said as we were talking. You said, sandwiches, cheese, yogurt, fruit, salad, snacks.
The popper is fine as well. I've thrown raps in
as well, because what kid doesn't like wraps. It sounds
as if we might be making a bigger deal about
school lunches than we need.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, and even you know, some throw some crunchy foods
in there. You know, even if it is a packet
crunchy food, if it's a carbohydrate based snack, those foods,
actually there's a sensory feedback that we get from eating
crunchy foods. So crunchy foods, particularly towards the end of
the day when kids are flagging, can really help wake
them up, like physically wake them up.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
What's an example of a crunchy food? Are you talking
like a violet crumble crunch?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, it could be, although you know, you know, many
people might not feel like they want to put that. Sure,
maybe you want to save that for home. But you know,
any kind of packet, you know, cracker or something something
that your kid enjoys. You know, there's so many of
those kinds of things out there. Obviously, fruit and veggies
provide crunch, but if your kid isn't a good food
(12:36):
and veggie eater, it is okay to put some of
these other foods in there. And we don't may not
necessarily want to be totally filling the lunchbox with those
foods if we can help it. But I'm speaking really
honestly and openly and compassionately to a lot of the
families that I work with where kids have a really
(12:56):
limited food range. So work within your child's food range.
If you can't put every food group in there, do
the best you can. And if your child's lunchbox is
looking pretty bland and pretty basic. Communicate that with your
teacher and explain why, because I know that you're probably
(13:17):
doing the very best you can to work at expanding
food range in other environments at home, at school. We
just need to get them fed.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I like that kids just actually need to be fed
because they'll be better learners. They'll be better kids if
they've got food in their belly. Deb Blakely is the founder, director,
and lead accredited practicing dietitian of Kids Dig Food. You
can find out more at kidsdigfood dot com, dot you
and the webinar that you shared with your community earlier
this month. I presume that's online. Can we have people
(13:46):
who want to hear more? They can visit your website,
kids digfood dot com dot you defined the webinar, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, absolutely so. On our resources page, there's a link
to our online platform, and thebinar or a recording of
the webinar will be there, along with some other things.
But certainly the lunchbox one was the most recent one
we did just two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Perfect really appreciate the conversation. I have a number of
other questions that I want to ask you as a
result of our chat today, so we'll have to get
you back on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Have a great day and thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Thanks Justin.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That's Deb Blakely, a credited practicing dietitian and the founder
of Kids Dig Food. The Happy Family's podcast is produced
by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our
executive producer. For more information, check out Deb's website or
visit happy families dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Today you
It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Colson. Welcome to Happy Families Podcast.
So grateful to have you here and that you're choosing
to spend your time with me talking about your kids
and how we can make your family happier. School's been
back for a little while now, kids are probably if
your children are anything like mine, showing up at home
hungry after school, then you discover that they gave their
lunch to somebody else because they didn't like it, or worse,
they throw it in the bin. And you're sort of thinking,
(00:32):
number one, it costs a lot of money to do this,
to provide lunches. But number two, do you think that
I've got time to sit around in the morning and
make you a lunch that you're not going to eat?
I mean, this is the challenge with kids. Or alternatively,
they're just complaining and winging and whining and they're saying
I don't like anything.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And of course it's the middle of.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Summer, which means that lunch boxes get hot, which means
food just doesn't usually taste quite as good as we
might like. It to Today, I'm having a conversation with
Deb Blakeley, the founder, director and LEE accredited practicing dietitian.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Of Kids Dig Food.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
You can find everything that you need to know about
Deb and Kids Digfood at kidsdigfood dot com dot au.
Deb followed her heart I think would be the easiest
way to say this, like just loves this work and
created Kids Dig Food in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
It's been ten years now.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
After many years as a community dietitian, community nutritionist and
a hospital based clinical dietitian, and Deb has a sense
to become passionate about supporting grown ups to positively and
joyfully connect or reconnect with food and eating and share
this with the children that they care for. And now, Deb,
I love food and I love sharing food. My children
(01:40):
don't appreciate the way of that I do. I don't
know if you've noticed this, but kids, they're happy to
eat the cheap ice cream, Whereas when we get a
bit older, we start to avoid the cheap stuff. We
just go for the good stuff, right, Like our taste
buds have matured, we know what's good and what's not.
But kids we sort of say they'll eat anything and
then it comes to school lunchboxes and they won't.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Eat anything at all. Why is school lunch so challenging
for so many families.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yes, eating at school is really different to eating in
other places, and there's a lot to think about for
kids when they're eating at school. So it might to
us seem like, oh, I've given you the lunch, it's
come home, it's either not eaten or it's all gone,
and you're saying you're hungry. And there's different routines and expectations,
(02:27):
and as we know, there's often less time to eat,
so sometimes kids are only given ten minutes maybe to
get their lunch done, and depending on the child, that
may or may not be enough time. And if they're
a bit of a chatter box, then that might get
in the way of eating as well, or if they're
more interested in play. So it can be really helpful
(02:49):
to work out what the environment in the school is
like around lunches, what the routine is like, because it
can take a little bit of problem solving with your
child and the school and with the teachers to work
out what's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Sometimes we had a situation so one of our kids
got ADHD and we had a situation where she just said,
I haven't got time. But what we realized is she
was just so busy as soon as the bell went.
She had so many things that she needed to do
in that little period of time because she knew that
she'd be back in the classroom soon, and she wanted
to run and play and talk to friends and do everything,
and eating was such a low priority. Of course, kids,
(03:23):
especially kids who have any kind of additional needs, when
they're not eating, they become even more difficult to manage.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And we kept on trying to say.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
To her, you need to eat the food, like we've
packed it for you. You've got to do it. You've
got to eat first. But they just don't want to.
And I remember having a conversation some years ago with
one teacher. She was essentially saying, making sure that all
twenty eight kids in my class eat their lunch is
one thing that I just can't promise that I can do.
Sympathetic to that, but like you said, we have this
(03:52):
perfect well where we think, Okay, we'll have a conversation
with a teacher and everything I'll be okay.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Doesn't always work.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Like that, No, it certainly doesn't. And I think the
teacher is right that, you know, it's it can actually
be quite unrealistic to say to a teacher, you.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Know, please my child or my kid eats it.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
So there's a lot of other things that we can do,
and kids with special needs, say who, for example, your
daughter who isn't eating or wasn't eating very much? You know,
sometimes they do need a bit more support around that,
and that support can look really different in many different ways.
But let's just say, let's take a broader approach and say,
(04:34):
you know, we've got a typically developing child or a
child who might have special needs where you just think
they're just not paying attention. There's something getting away in
the way for them. So some of the things we
can do from the home perspective is do a bit
of problem solving and go, okay, so tell me what's
going on, what do you really want to be doing,
like what happens in that ten minutes? And can we
(04:58):
problem solve together? You know, depending on the child's age,
it can be possible to problem solve together and say, okay,
well if we put something in your lunch box that
literally took you thirty seconds to eat, just so that
to make sure that you're having something at each break
to keep you going. What would that be do you
think that might be possible for you? So really working
(05:21):
with our kids to decide what it is. You know,
is it just their favorite piece of cheese on cracker
or something that's quite small, quite energy dents that they're
going to be able to eat really quickly. That might
be just that that thing that gets them through. The
Other thing I want to mention is that sometimes school
(05:43):
eating at school might be the smallest amount of eating
that your child does during the day, and it may
be that we need to help them by supplementing breakfast
and supplementing afternoon tea and dinner and maybe supper to
make up for that. So, just because a child isn't
eating as much as we would like them to be
eating during the day doesn't mean that we can't get
(06:07):
them to meet their needs across the whole day. Where
teachers can be helpful I think is establish some rules
that we don't throw food away, that if there's anything
that's uneaten in your lunch box, it's best to take
that home with you because then you as parents have
a better idea of what's actually being eaten and what's
(06:27):
not and some of the dialogue that might happen is
around Okay, so I can see that there's a lot
coming back. What's that about? You know? Is it about
the fact that I just wanted to go and play
or is it that I hate everything that's in here?
Because that then both of those things require a different
lot of problem solving. Yeah, as a parent, and then
(06:50):
from the teacher's perspective, you know, there may be some
ways that they can help the children be as settled
as they can possibly be in that ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I'd love to see the conversation in a different direction. Now,
obviously you had that webinar with your community, and you
were talking about the challenge of school lunchboxes. How do
we put lunchboxes together that are nutritious and that the
kids will eat and that won't go bad in the
hot sun at this time of the year.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
I know that whenever I look at news.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Articles about the average school student lunchbox, the articles are
usually highly critical in saying, these things are full of sugar.
It's white bread, it's jam or veggie, might have peanut
butter or something else. It's full of sugar. There's a
popper which is full of sugar. There's a couple of
snacks which are full of sugar, and essentially everything that
I've ever read about school lunchboxes seems to indicate that
all of our typical, traditional, standard, quick and easy lunch
(07:47):
options tend to be less than ideal for our kids.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
What do you recommend parents doing?
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yes, I really find a dialogue around like sugar, that
particularly the things that you mentioned quite problem as a dietitian,
because you know, some of the things you mentioned, like
white bread, for example, fruit, those foods provide an amazing
amount of nutrients. So, for example, if you've got a
(08:13):
child who really at the moment they're staple for bread
is white bread, you know, they don't like wholemeal bread.
School is not the time really to be stretching our kids.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
I love that you said that.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I love that you said that because, as you said
at the beginning of the conversation, it's a different situation
like we've got.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
We've got a completely different context.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
There's limited or little or of any adult supervision, and
the kids have got so many other distractions and so
much else going on. School's not the place where they're
going to experiment with food, right.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, And look, they might you might have a super
experimental kid, and you're probably not listening to this podcast
if you because you know you don't have any problems then.
But you know, when we're thinking about what are going
to be foods that feel our kids up, that get
them through, we do need to rely on foods that
(09:04):
are familiar to them. Okay, so you know, some of
the foods that are demonized in a lot of media,
particularly where lunch boxes are concerned, I would think as
a dietitian, are perfectly acceptable. So sandwiches with white bread, fruit.
What else did you mention.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Justin oh I mentioned a few of the school snacks
and the popper, the pure apple juice popper, a.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Juice popper, those foods. You know, kids actually require a
lot of carbohydrate. I think that this is what we
forget as parents and people who have a very limited
view of nutrition in the sense that everything has to
be healthy. You know, that's a topic for another podcast,
but you know, really, if we can put food into
(09:51):
our kids lunchboxes that are familiar, look good, smell good,
tastes good to them, are quick to eat, they're going
to be foods that then more likely to eat when
it comes to keeping food safe. In terms of food safety,
there's real value in supporting our kids to understand if
you've got say a ham sandwich or something that is
(10:12):
going to go off. Maybe you've got an egg in there,
so you know, protein food or whatever, anything that's kind
of wet, you know is likely to you know, not
be great, or maybe yogurt or some cheese, that those
foods might be better eaten at the first break rather than
the second break. And that's a really good skill for
kids to learn. So although we don't really want to
(10:34):
be saying, well, you must eat this food first because
it's the healthy one, you know, I would take the
view that anything that you put in your child's lunch box,
let them eat it in whatever order they want to.
If you weren't happy for them to have it, it wouldn't
go in the lunch box in the first place. That's
okay to do. And even you know, training your kid
to go pick the bit that's not going to be real,
(10:56):
you know, get the sun on it. You know, we
were our kids to obviously have a lunch that they're
going to want to eat when they come to second break.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
So as I listened to what you're saying here, and
our time's pretty well up, so we need to wrap this.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
If I was to summarize what I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Hearing you essentially say is kids can be a little
bit tricky around food at school because of the environment,
because of the stimulus, because there's so much going on,
because there's a lack of supervision in terms of the
actual foods that they eat. I'm hearing you sound extremely
practical and pragmatic, and what I'm basically hearing you say is,
on average, don't sweat the small stuff. Just make sure
(11:33):
that they're eating. And I've jotted down a few things
that you said as we were talking. You said, sandwiches, cheese, yogurt, fruit, salad, snacks.
The popper is fine as well. I've thrown raps in
as well, because what kid doesn't like wraps. It sounds
as if we might be making a bigger deal about
school lunches than we need.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, and even you know, some throw some crunchy foods
in there. You know, even if it is a packet
crunchy food, if it's a carbohydrate based snack, those foods,
actually there's a sensory feedback that we get from eating
crunchy foods. So crunchy foods, particularly towards the end of
the day when kids are flagging, can really help wake
them up, like physically wake them up.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
What's an example of a crunchy food? Are you talking
like a violet crumble crunch?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, it could be, although you know, you know, many
people might not feel like they want to put that. Sure,
maybe you want to save that for home. But you know,
any kind of packet, you know, cracker or something something
that your kid enjoys. You know, there's so many of
those kinds of things out there. Obviously, fruit and veggies
provide crunch, but if your kid isn't a good food
(12:36):
and veggie eater, it is okay to put some of
these other foods in there. And we don't may not
necessarily want to be totally filling the lunchbox with those
foods if we can help it. But I'm speaking really
honestly and openly and compassionately to a lot of the
families that I work with where kids have a really
(12:56):
limited food range. So work within your child's food range.
If you can't put every food group in there, do
the best you can. And if your child's lunchbox is
looking pretty bland and pretty basic. Communicate that with your
teacher and explain why, because I know that you're probably
(13:17):
doing the very best you can to work at expanding
food range in other environments at home, at school. We
just need to get them fed.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
I like that kids just actually need to be fed
because they'll be better learners. They'll be better kids if
they've got food in their belly. Deb Blakely is the founder, director,
and lead accredited practicing dietitian of Kids Dig Food. You
can find out more at kidsdigfood dot com, dot you
and the webinar that you shared with your community earlier
this month. I presume that's online. Can we have people
(13:46):
who want to hear more? They can visit your website,
kids digfood dot com dot you defined the webinar, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, absolutely so. On our resources page, there's a link
to our online platform, and thebinar or a recording of
the webinar will be there, along with some other things.
But certainly the lunchbox one was the most recent one
we did just two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Perfect really appreciate the conversation. I have a number of
other questions that I want to ask you as a
result of our chat today, so we'll have to get
you back on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Have a great day and thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Thanks Justin.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
That's Deb Blakely, a credited practicing dietitian and the founder
of Kids Dig Food. The Happy Family's podcast is produced
by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Craig Bruce is our
executive producer. For more information, check out Deb's website or
visit happy families dot com.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Today you
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