Nourishing Habits: Simple Steps to Balanced Eating for Teachers
Hey there, fellow teachers! Have you ever tried to create a new food habit, only to feel like it backfired? Maybe it involved a form of restriction, like thinking, “I’m only going to eat healthy foods,” or, “I won’t touch birthday cake in the staffroom anymore.” Perhaps you decided to cut out sugar completely, even […]
From Labels to Curiosity: Rethinking Food Education in Schools
Healthy eating education in schools has long relied on a top-down approach, emphasising nutrition facts and ‘healthy choices’ to shape behaviour. While well-intentioned, this method often misses the mark. Oversimplified messages like “eat more fruits and vegetables” or “avoid unhealthy snacks” fail to address the complexity of food relationships and skills. Instead, they risk creating […]
Creating Calm Classroom Mealtimes
How to implement trauma-informed care when returning to school after isolation Trauma can have a long lasting physical and mental impact. Adverse experiences and events affect children in multiple ways. Prior to entering isolation, Australia endured some of the most catastrophic bushfires we’ve ever seen. While we do consider ourselves the lucky country, we’re not […]
That Sugar Activity
That Sugar Activity Confession: as a teacher, nutritionist and feeding therapist, I no longer place soft-drink bottles on a table with sugar cubes and ask children to guess the sugar content. Nor do I use the same concept with chocolate bars, lollies, cereals, condiments, and fruit. If you’ve used this activity before, you’re not alone. […]
The Australian Health Curriculum – Is it helping or harming our children?
“When you eat junk food, you get fat!” and “Is this food healthy?” When working with children, there’s nothing off limits and thoughts are heard out loud. Children think it and say it. These are the kinds of comments and questions I’ve had from primary students in the last twelve months. This seems to be […]
