Our children are born knowing, instinctively, when they’re hungry or full and what their bodies need. They very easily regulate their appetites as well as the types of foods they choose to eat. We can see this not only during the day, as the amount of food they eat at each meal changes, but also from day to day, when they may eat us out of house and home one day and barely eat more than a few mouthfuls on another.

So many of us adults have, over the years lost this natural ability to recognise those cues, whether that’s from an expectation during childhood for us to eat everything on our plates, from eating pudding just because it’s the end of the meal, because we’ve been pleaded with to try that broccoli before we could finish a meal or from years of dieting.

Rather than our children having to re-learn as adults to listen to what their bodies are telling them, wouldn’t it be great if we could support them now to stay tuned into their hunger and fullness cues?

We can do this by being careful about what we say to them so that we aren’t putting pressure on them to eat, so that we’re not withholding food groups as punishment for not eating others, or making them eat when they’re not hungry or they’ve had enough.