Help children to eat foods from different cultures, with Rachel Mujanovic – Food For Kids Podcast episode 53

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. At this time of year, we're all thinking about getting together with family over the holidays. And sometimes we're thinking about what our children might or might not eat. And sometimes we're thinking about how our family members might react to how our children eat. Having boundaries around that will be the subject of another episode coming up. But for some families, there are additional things to take into account if their family comes from a mixed cultural heritage and needs to balance different food traditions too.

So today's episode is an interview with Rachel Mujanovic, who is a paediatric clinical lead dietitian in the NHS. Rachel herself comes from a family with Caribbean heritage, her partner's family are from Bosnia, so they are definitely one of those families who are balancing lots of different cultural influences on their family dinner table.

Alongside her NHS clinical expertise, Rachel also specialises in helping families to support their children to enjoy cultural foods to honour and explore their family's place in the world. So I thought she'd be perfect to talk to about this and let's go to that interview.

Joanne (01:24)

So Rachel, your family is quite an unusual mix of cultures because your Jamaican heritage and your husband's Bosnian, I believe. But I'm sure there's other people listening who've got their own mix of different cultures. And for those families who want to make sure that their children are comfortable with the food from their extended family, what suggestions do you have, both as a dietitian and as a mom of three little ones, for going about doing that?

Rachel (01:53)

Thanks for having me on to talk about this, Joanne, because it's something with my background as a paediatric dietitian and being in a family that's mixed heritage is something that I really like to talk about and help families navigate. What would say to families first and foremost is be intentional from the offset and start young. So what I tend to find with the families that I meet in clinic is, quite rightly, they'll follow the UK-based guidelines on weaning their babies onto solid foods. And these suggestions that come with the weaning guidelines will often use fruits, vegetables, early weaning foods that are typical of a UK diet. So we might start off with fruits and vegetables like broccoli, carrots, apples, and bananas. But some of these families coming from different and mixed cultures won't typically be eating these fruits every day in their home. So what I would say is think about what you're already eating as a family and for us it might have been Caribbean foods like mango or yams or plantains.

So I might have started weaning my children on those types of foods early on and what that does it just keeps things familiar and builds that familiarity for the baby because what we don't want to do is wean them on foods that we don't really eat in the house and then when they get to around one year and we want them to be eating the same foods as the rest of the family, we put these foods in front of them and they're unfamiliar just because they've never had them before. And they're at the age where they're becoming a bit more curious and maybe picky about what they want to eat. And then what I tend to find in clinic is those traditional foods are kind of pushed to the side. So mum and dad will be eating them and children will be eating something different.

Yeah, so I think it's never too late to start, even if your children are older, we can talk about ways to build those cultural foods in. But my first piece of advice would be to use the UK weaning guidelines in terms of safety, modifying textures, avoiding salts, sugars, that type of thing. Use those guidelines around the foods that your family have already eaten when you start with your baby. So that would kind of be my number one piece of advice.

Joanne (04:02)

So what about if children haven't had that, two or three, they're already a little bit fussy about food, but they want to start introducing some of their own foods in, how can they go about doing it when they've missed this stage?

Rachel (04:13)

I would definitely start by regular exposure to those foods. So if you're eating them as a family and your child might normally be having a separate meal because they're not eating these cultural foods, serve foods in a family style way if you can. So that means buffet style, putting the different components of the meal in the middle of the table and letting everybody help themselves decide what they want on their own plate.

For children aged two and above, it gives them some autonomy about what's on their plate. They've chosen to try that today. They've not been forced to have anything and it often helps open up that curiosity to try new foods without that pressure. And what I would say again with the older children is serve the cultural foods with a familiar food that your child already accepts. So for us, that might be occasionally if we're having a Bosnian dish - that’s quite complicated for young children, they're not quite there yet - we might put a side of bread with it or a side of rice or some potatoes. Tends to be kind of a plain carbohydrate starch food that lots of young children are safe with. We put that on the table and then what they've got there is the option that there's definitely something that they are happy to eat within that meal whilst still getting exposure to those cultural foods and flavours even if they decide to smell it, ask about it or even to taste it. It's all building up that familiarity with those foods which is really important.

Joanne (05:39)

So even if you put a spoon of something onto the plate alongside their safe foods and they literally ignore that cultural food completely and eat their other things, you've still built up their familiarity by they had it there, nothing bad happened to them, nobody made them eat it and at the end of the meal they were still safe and that was in the mix when they were safe.

Rachel (06:02)

Exactly, It just helps build that safety around new foods. You'll get different children with different levels of curiosity and variety in their diet. So I have three children and even between them, I've got two that are quite adventurous and one that definitely takes a while to warm up to new foods. But I think that the one that is a little bit more cautious having those accepted foods so he knows he's not going to be pressured to try anything has really worked with us and I see it working with families in clinic that I work with as well. It's not necessarily a quick fix and it's those small steps that eventually lead to hopefully the child wanting to expand their variety a little bit more.

Joanne (06:43)

I know a lot of parents when they're thinking about introducing foods that are not your typical, kids' menu foods, they worry about things like spices, pickles, fermented flavours, very strong flavours or bitter flavours. Should they be worried about that? Or are they fine to introduce from day one?

Rachel (07:01)

I agree with you Joanne that often families are really worried about adding any kind of flavour to children's foods. I think in the UK we're very prone to serving bland foods at the beginning but what I try to encourage families to do is to incorporate that flavour so adding herbs, spices, things like garlic just to extenuate those natural flavours that come within foods and cooking them in different ways. So roasting carrots rather than just giving boiled carrots. It all helps those children particularly that like strong flavours to help expand their palate a bit more. So I think my answer to that question is don't be worried. The only thing that I would say is stick to the guidelines. So we're not having too much salt in there. We're not having lots of sugar and things like chilli and hot spices we want to be careful with for young children. Once they're around two and above, gradually introducing some of that hot spice is absolutely fine for children. And again, they'll all have different tolerance levels, but I'm at the stage now with my three, seven and nine year old where if I'm making a Jamaican curry, I would make it as hot as I would make it for the whole of the family and they're quite accepting of that now.

Joanne (08:17)

Okay, so that's super helpful for families like yours where you're drawing on the diversity of your own family's traditions. But what about a lot of families listening will have a food culture that is more closely aligned to what you'd find in a kid's food menu, know, more of a white European kind of food background. But a lot of those families still want their children to be able to eat a diversity of food. They want them to be able to go to restaurants of other cultures, go to friends' houses where those friends have got more diverse background, or just be able to eat out on holiday, or when they're grown up, be able to have more autonomy about what they choose. So if you haven't got those traditions in your family, how do you go about doing it then?

Rachel (09:00)

What I'd say there is, again, it starts from building that familiarity at home that different people will be eating different foods around the world. And that can start off with simple things. So story books that children are reading. Can you find books that talk about different types of families and eating different types of food? Not for every single book, just having a few in there that build in that variety and expose the children to different households and understanding different cultures. And I think TV programmes, watching them together, cooking programmes, that kind of thing, are always ways of exposing children to things without them actually trying these different foods initially. And there's a wonderful little program on CBeebies called My World Kitchen that talks about different cultures and children talk about different meals and recipes within that. that's Things like that are a really good way just to start exposing little ones' minds to different types of recipes and diets.

Being a role model as a parent yourself, so showing curiosity about different foods, showing that it's safe to try different foods. You might not like them all, but it's nice to have a try and try to connect with people through food. Something that I'll often say in my household is try not to "yuck somebody's yum." often if we're exposing children to lots of weird and wonderful different cultural dishes, their initial response as children might be a bit… “that looks a bit yucky”. And it's fine to have an opinion on the food, but it's about trying to promote acceptance that we might not like it, but other people do. so let's be supportive of that.

Deconstructing foods: So if they're going on holiday or to a family friend's house and it's a completely new dish, maybe separating out the components so they can actually see what the dish is comprised of might give them a bit of confidence to have a go at a little bit, maybe not all of it, but start to try little bits alongside those accepted foods.

So if you have to bring something from home, if you're going on holiday and you need to pack a couple of their safe foods, just so the child has got something there and they feel comfortable that their tummy is going to be full at this meal, it can take away some of that anxiety of “goodness, there's all this unusual food in front of me and I'm being expected to eat it”.

I think if it's in terms of you're at home and you wanting to try things, maybe look at things like having different takeaway nights, picking up something unusual at the supermarket, especially if you're going on holiday and you have a look at what those foods might be on holiday, trying some of it at home first to start building that familiarity is a good way to go about things as well.

Joanne (11:42)

That's brilliant. I think sometimes people feel a bit like they're failing if they're trying out some different food or on holiday or something like that. And they end up, having fries or bread on the table, And their children only eat that, that that's somehow a failure. But still, they've still been at the table with all of that food and they haven't felt stressed by it. So it's better that they're at the table with new foods and a plate of fries in the middle than to be at the table, being frightened and not wanting to eat anything at all,

Rachel (12:07)

Exactly, I completely agree with that. And I myself will often have things like fries, rice, plain potatoes, those safe carbohydrates I mentioned before on our holiday table because children are away from their normal environment. They're distracted by the fun of being on holiday. So sometimes for some children, it's not the right place to start to try to introduce lots of new foods. It will depend on your child's personality and their eating behaviors. But if they have got that accepted food there and they're comfortable and they want to enjoy with the rest of the family some new foods, they're the right kind of ways to go about it.

It's absolutely fine for them to be having just that safe food with that exposure to the new foods and the new culture. And possibly the new way of eating. So my in-laws are from Bosnia and they would often sit on the floor to eat. So there are a lot of dishes in the Bosnian culture that my children don't accept yet. But if that food's being eaten, they will sit on the floor and they'll eat some of the sides like the bread or the salad because they're getting that familiarity, that exposure. And it's fun to sit and eat on the floor because it's not something that they do every day, building fun and connectivity into the meal as well, rather than just focusing on them actually eating all of the new cultural foods is really important.

Joanne (13:27)

Yeah, that's true. And also, guess like tools and ways of eating, like, mastering chopsticks. eating with your hands, a lot of people eat with their hands, there's vast parts of the world that use breads to pick up sauces. There's all those different ways you can build those skills up and then it feels less scary.

Rachel (13:44)

Exactly, yeah. So building fun into things, building in traditions. So going back to my Jamaican heritage, certain foods are eaten at Easter time. So now my children are getting a bit older, they'll say, it's Easter, is Granddad going to buy the spice bun? Is Grandma going to cook the fried fish? And they might not be eating all of these foods, but they're starting to connect those memories with the foods and the traditions. When they're living in a different country, it's really important to keep up those regular exposures and traditions so that they can build memories and all that helps them as they get into adulthood and teenagehood to have that connection with the food and then their palates might have expanded a lot by then and they've still got that connection to then go and try the food. So it might sometimes seem that it's quite a slow road, but all these little building blocks do help cultural foods keep going for the next generation.

Joanne Roach (14:42)

I really enjoyed that chat and I thought there were lots of great suggestions in there about building up exposure to food consistently and without pressure, but also making sure that children connect the foods to the people, traditions and places they come from.

Food is a brilliant way to bring people together to make connections and understand each other. And enabling children to understand how rich and varied food can be is a lovely way to not only give them opportunities to branch out for themselves, but also to build relationships with other people. I loved Rachel's focus on building in traditions, fun and exploration into our children's connections with food. Rachel posts lovely content on Instagram and especially on her stories, so go and give her a follow. I'll put a link in the show notes.

Well, that's a wrap for November. So I'll be back on Monday with the regular rundown of seasonal foods this time for December. So I hope to see you then. And in the meantime, happy eating.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:24 How to introduce your family's cultural foods to your children

02:46 How to adapt the weaning guidelines to build familiarity

04:02 Introducing cultural foods for older children

06:42 How to introduce strong flavours, spices and seasoning

08:16 Introducing foods from other cultures than your own family

10:12 Teaching acceptance of other people's foods

11:00 Food on holiday and in unfamiliar places

12:52 Understanding different eating styles and tools

13:44 Connecting foods to traditions

14:41 Summary and outro