Intelligence

One of my absolute favorite moments during nutritional consultations is when a well-meaning parent looks at me earnestly and asks: “Should I be buying imported blueberries for my baby?”Or organic quinoa. Or chia seeds. Or some incredibly expensive, hard-to-find fruit they saw a lifestyle influencer post on social media. I usually smile before asking a much simpler, gentler counter-question: “Have you bought any fresh mangoes or jamuns from your local cart this week?” There is almost always a long pause. Somewhere along the way, we have inadvertently started believing the …

This is one of those clinical conversations that almost always begins with a completely different headline. A parent books a feeding consultation with me because their toddler has suddenly stopped eating well. Or because they are constantly exhausted. Or because their sweet, easygoing baby has turned unusually irritable and angry over the last few weeks. Somewhere along the line during our intake assessment, I start asking about their daily diet: How much milk are they drinking? Are they regularly consuming iron-rich foods? Have they had a routine blood check recently? …

This is one of the most delicate, politically complex conversations I ever have with parents. Not because it’s about food but because it is fundamentally about family dynamics. The messages usually sound something like this: “My mother-in-law keeps force-feeding him behind my back when I go out.” “My parents think I’m actively starving my baby because I refuse to chase her around the room with a bowl.” “Dadi gives biscuits and sweets every single afternoon, right before dinner, even though I’ve repeatedly asked her not to.” Underneath the frustration of …

During my consultations, there’s one specific mealtime moment that almost every parent asks about with a sigh of frustration. It’s the moment the roti is torn into a hundred tiny pieces, the dal is used as finger paint, and the rice is squeezed between tiny fists until it’s a paste. As parents, we’ve been raised to respect food, so our natural instinct is to think: “Why can’t they just eat properly? This is so wasteful!” It feels messy, it feels disrespectful, and honestly? It feels like another thing we have …

Picky eating is no longer a phase for a few children, it’s a growing concern for many families. Over the past year alone, we’ve seen a 40% increase in demand for picky eating consultations and fussy eating courses. Parents from India and across the world, from California to Chennai, are reaching out with the same question:“Why is my child suddenly refusing to eat anything except white rice, curd, or bread?” The increase in fussy eating isn’t just anecdotal. It reflects real shifts in how young children are experiencing food: 1. …

If you’re a parent of a toddler, you’ve probably worried about what your child eats, but have you thought about what they might accidentally swallow? Choking is one of the leading causes of accidental death in children under five in India, and while food is a well-known risk, non-food items found in almost every home can be just as dangerous, sometimes even more so. What the Data Tells Us According to national and international health estimates, between 8,000 to 10,000 children under the age of five die each year in …