Katie Wells, founder of Wellness Mama, says she tries to encourage healthy eating in her family by offering mostly nutrient-dense foods at home, avoiding food rewards and punishments, and letting her children decide what—and how much—to eat.
Katie Wells, the founder of the parenting and health site Wellness Mama, argues that parents can support healthier long-term eating habits by emphasizing structure and modeling rather than strict control.
In a post published January 23, 2026, Wells says she does not “micromanage” what her children eat. Instead, she focuses on what she describes as providing nourishing options at home, modeling balanced habits, and encouraging children to pay attention to internal hunger and fullness cues.
Wells links her approach to research suggesting that restrictive feeding practices can backfire. One study in the journal Appetite reported that restricting children’s access to certain snack foods can increase their intake of those foods when they become available, with effects that vary by child characteristics such as inhibitory control and how reinforcing they find the restricted food.
She also cites research indicating that pressuring children to eat certain foods—such as insisting they finish vegetables—may be associated with lower vegetable consumption. The post points to findings in feeding and nutrition research that parental pressure can discourage children’s fruit and vegetable intake, alongside broader evidence that parents’ own eating patterns and the food environment at home are important predictors of what children eat.
Wells also cites work published in The New England Journal of Medicine observing that young children’s energy intake can vary substantially from meal to meal while remaining more stable across the day, a pattern the researchers attributed to children adjusting intake over successive meals.
In day-to-day practice, Wells says she keeps her home stocked primarily with whole foods—such as proteins, fruits, vegetables and leftovers—and cooks one family meal rather than preparing multiple separate dishes. She writes that children are free to eat what is served or, if still hungry later, to choose simple alternatives such as eggs, fruit or leftovers.
She says she avoids using dessert or other foods as rewards or punishments, arguing that turning food into leverage can shift attention away from hunger and satiety signals. Instead of labeling foods as “good” or “bad,” Wells writes that she tries to explain what foods do in the body—such as protein supporting tissue repair and carbohydrates providing energy—without attaching moral judgment.
When eating outside the home, Wells says she does not comment on her children’s choices at restaurants or friends’ houses and views occasional indulgences as less concerning in the context of a generally nutrient-dense diet.
Wells also cites a 2020 narrative review in Pediatric Obesity that describes “positive” or “authoritative” food parenting—combining structure with support for autonomy—as being associated in the research literature with healthier child eating patterns compared with more coercive approaches.
Ultimately, Wells frames her goal as raising adults who trust their bodies and can make informed food choices without ongoing parental oversight, and she attributes part of her approach to her own experience of finding forbidden foods more appealing when she gained more independence as a teenager.
