Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician, has outlined six science-backed strategies to help parents foster a positive relationship with food in their children. Drawing from her experience in child health, she addresses common anxieties around eating habits and picky behaviors. Her advice emphasizes emotional well-being, autonomy, and modeling positive attitudes.
Nancy Bostock, a consultant paediatrician at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, brings expertise from her roles in a children’s weight-management clinic, an inpatient mental health unit, and co-leading a food strategy for Cambridge Children’s Hospital. She expresses concern over the flood of conflicting advice parents receive, noting, “I worry that parents are overwhelmed with advice from so many different places and so may end up doing things that aren’t necessarily helpful for their child.”
Her first recommendation highlights the social and emotional dimensions of food. Early parental anxieties, such as pressures around breastfeeding or initial newborn challenges like low blood sugar and jaundice, can lead to an overemphasis on quantity over quality. Bostock advises trusting that most children will eat and drink when hungry, and encourages families to make mealtimes relaxed and joyful, fostering conversation and shared experiences.
To avoid conditioning unhealthy habits, she cautions against phrases like “You can’t have pudding until you’ve finished your food,” which may encourage overeating to reach desserts. Instead, parents should promote the idea that food nourishes the body and allow children to self-regulate, offering fruit as a post-meal option to counter evolutionary pulls toward high-calorie sweets.
Bostock also warns against unnecessary dietary restrictions, such as gluten-free diets without medical need, which a 2019 review linked to fiber loss and nutrient deficiencies. She prioritizes including fiber-rich foods, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains for long-term health.
Addressing behavioral tactics, she suggests not yielding to children using food as leverage, like emotional pleas for treats, by reframing eating as personal energy provision and providing simple alternatives like fruit and yogurt.
Picky eating, affecting 8 to 54 percent of preschoolers, is developmentally normal as children learn food safety. Bostock recommends pairing familiar foods with new ones, allowing up to 15 exposures for acceptance, and persistently offering variety without pressure, recognizing that tolerance suffices over love for all foods.
Finally, she stresses modeling: children absorb parents’ unconscious biases about body image and food, so positive self-talk and attitudes are crucial. For severely restrictive diets or growth issues, consulting a general practitioner is essential.
