How dietitians help people

By Shanelle Pescud

Marketing & Communication Officer

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Dietetics | Our People

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23/03/2023

Our dietitians play an important role in helping our clients to achieve their nutritional goals. Hollie, one of our dietitians, has been working with a family to build a positive relationship with food and make healthy lifestyle changes.

How are our dietitians helping clients to achieve their goals?

Hollie has introduced sensory play with food, to encourage new foods into the children’s diets. This evidence-based approach allows them to explore and learn about foods without the pressure of eating or trying the food. They can look, touch, smell and feel the food and become more comfortable interacting with different foods and eating them when they are ready. Interacting with new foods in a fun and relaxed environment can help reduce their anxiety around food and foster positive food relationships.

The family that Hollie is working with all have similar goals of improving their tolerance to new foods and increasing variety in their diet. Charlotte and Ruby’s goal is to take a piece of fruit to fruit break at school so that they can eat with their classmates. Their brother Kristian’s goal is to increase his tolerance to a range of new foods and smells and his preference for certain food choices.

With the help of Hollie, the girls now smell, touch and lick fruits and have even bitten into different fruits. Kristian is happy to smell and touch most foods and has even recently tried an apple.

What happened in their recent session?

Using skewers, grapes, strawberries and apples, the family constructed fruit rockets which then turned into trees where they created a fruit forest. At the end of the session, we asked Charlotte what her favourite fruit was from the options she had to pick from, and she pointed to the strawberries.

Ruby then created a rabbit using cut apple pieces for the head and ears and grapes for the eyes, which excited the girls for Easter!