The Wellness Scoop - The Extra Scoop: How to Build a Truly Healthy Relationship with Food
Episode Date: June 5, 2025As summer approaches and body image pressures creep in, many of us start to feel more self-conscious — often without even realising it. In this episode of The Extra Scoop, we’re joined by register...ed dietitian and nutritionist Sarah Elder to unpack what it really means to have a healthy relationship with food. Sarah brings over a decade of experience and a refreshingly compassionate, realistic approach to nutrition. Together, we explore how to tune into your body’s needs, challenge unhelpful thought patterns, and find a way of eating that feels intuitive, enjoyable and sustainable. We also talk about the powerful influence of social media, childhood conditioning, and the subtle ways diet culture still shapes how we see food and ourselves — plus how we can break those patterns for the next generation. Whether you're navigating years of food rules or simply want to feel a bit more at ease around eating, this conversation is full of gentle, practical ideas to help you reconnect with food in a way that works for you. In This Episode, We Cover: What a truly healthy relationship with food looks and feels like Why it’s normal to want to feel good in your body — and how to do that without falling into restriction How to start spotting hunger and fullness cues again What intuitive eating and mindful eating actually mean in practice Advice for navigating social media without feeling overwhelmed The impact of generational food messaging — and how to break the cycle One small, manageable step to help you shift all-or-nothing thinking Why healthy looks different for everyone About the Guest: Sarah Elder is a registered dietitian and nutritionist with over a decade of experience in clinical and community settings. She supports individuals in building a more balanced, relaxed relationship with food and specialises in gut health, hormonal wellbeing and the connection between food and mood. Sarah is passionate about cutting through the noise of diet culture and helping people reconnect with food in a way that’s intuitive, enjoyable and sustainable. You can find her on Instagram @saraheldernutrition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome to the Extra Scoop,
our expert-led bonus episodes giving you the need to know
on the topics everybody is talking about.
That's right, from gut health to sleep, hormones to skin,
we are cutting through the noise
with top experts, so there is no fluff, just facts.
Exactly, it's all quick, practical, evidence-based advice to fit into your busy lives.
So this is the Extra Scoop. Let's get started.
So as you probably know by now, our Extra Scoop episodes are all about taking the topics
that everyone's talking about, the things you're seeing online that you're reading
about and quickly breaking them down for you so that you have got quick, concise, expert-led
insights that leave you feeling informed and most importantly empowered when it comes to
your health and wellbeing.
Exactly.
And as summer approaches and we're just seeing so many toxic trends emerge on social media,
we want to explore the complexities of our relationship with food.
So we're thrilled to dive into this conversation with the amazing Sarah Elder,
who, of course, I know from the Retrition Clinic, but she's so, so well respected,
a registered dietitian and nutritionist with over a decade of experience.
Sarah is warm, realistic. her approach to nutrition is fantastic and with a focus on gut health,
hormonal well-being and the connection between food and mood, she's definitely dedicated to cutting
through diet culture and making her the perfect person really to have on this topic today.
So hello Sarah.
Hello, thank you so much for having me today.
It's honestly such a pleasure.
I think this is such an inherently important conversation,
probably something that we should be all replaying
to ourselves and playing to women of all generations
in particular.
But I wondered, Sarah, before we get into the episode,
could you just tell us in a nutshell,
how do you actually define a healthy relationship with food?
And what is good or normal body image and our relationship with body image?
So I think this is quite a difficult one to answer because really a healthy relationship with food is so individual to every single person.
And I think that what you've got to think about is that
what does healthy mean for me?
And I think sometimes we've got this term healthy
that is kind of put out in social media and in the news
that this is what healthy looks like,
this is what we should be doing if we are healthy.
But actually, a healthy relationship is one
where we're actually rooted in that respect for ourselves.
We're thinking about that balance, we're thinking about self-compassion, we're
thinking about what is it that my body's needing right now and how am I
individual compared to other people. So it's thinking about listening to your
body's hunger and fullness cues, listening to actually what's your body
needing in terms of its mental health, what is it that it's needing in terms of movement, getting out in nature? What do I need to nourish
myself, to connect with others and to actually get pleasure out of food? And I
guess that although we're talking about that healthy relationship with food, I
guess there's also that healthy relationship with body image like you
said there as well. And thinking a little bit about what can my body do rather than kind of punishing myself and to make my body fit an ideal that
somebody else who thinks is an ideal. So I guess I know you said in a nutshell I guess in a nutshell
it's very much individual to you but you've got to be able to know that you are nourishing yourself
for lots of different reasons. So for your mental health, your nutrition, your kind of future health
as well. It's a really, really incredible answer actually and it does just sum up why I think there is so much confusion everywhere online and why it's so important to seek out
individual advice and not just absorb the mainstream trends and media because Sarah
will spend more than an hour with most people one-to-one and I'm sure it takes months,
maybe years for some people to work through this sort of thing. But on a positive way,
maybe years for some people to work through this sort of thing. But on a positive way, how do we then acknowledge our hunger and full cues?
You said with a relationship with food, that's one key component of it,
to feel nourished, to be able to tune into that.
In a society where we all work crazy hours, that's a difficult thing to do.
It's not simple, is it?
Absolutely. And I think that's one part of a healthy relationship with
food is kind of thinking about understanding when you're hungry and when you're full but being kind
of very mindful in terms of your eating is really really difficult to do because like you say we
live in a very very busy world there's lots of external factors that are kind of coming in that
trying to tell us that you want this food or you should be doing this or you should be trying this new diet or then
you've got social media telling you that this is the new healthy thing and so I
guess what we need to be able to think about is that how do we understand how
these external triggers are affecting us and sometimes there's lots of things on social media and that can be an external trigger for someone to kind of help someone understand that actually I
need to maybe improve my nutrition in one way or I need to
improve my mental health or I need to get more sleep and that's great
but actually when some of these external triggers are really negative, they can kind of have this impact
where someone actually thinks,
well, I can only be hungry if this is happening.
I'm only allowed to have food if X, Y, and Z is happening,
or I can only eat if it's a certain time.
And I guess the first step towards actually understanding
those hunger and fullness cues is thinking about,
do I actually have any rules around food?
What are they and where have they come from?
So really starting to understand that pathway to
how do you eat the way that you eat and why?
What are those influences on that?
And I think once you start to unpick that a little bit,
then you can start to actually understand
what are my external cues that are telling me
whether I'm hungry or full,
and which ones are my internal cues.
So am I actually realizing that
I think that I'm thirsty all of the time,
but actually what my body's needing is it's needing,
I don't know, some protein, or it's needing some sugar,
or it's needing some carbs,
but I've been told over and over again
that that's what thirst is.
So it's really kind of understanding those different cues where they've come from,
and I guess that history of why you eat the way that you eat.
And that's what I would say you need, where you need to kind of start.
It sounds to me, Sarah, like what the kind of best place to start in a way is therefore stepping back
from old habits and busyness and having a bit of a blank slate
and a refresh and then bringing with it this self-compassion,
this view of how do I nourish myself.
And one of the things I was really curious about,
you spoke at the beginning about trying to move your mindset away
from this external noise of like, this is the uniform aesthetic,
which obviously is, you know, Rhee always says it
when we're on the podcast,
and it's one of the things I love that she always says,
is like, everyone's body is just different.
Where we store fat is different, our height is different,
our just natural disposition is just fundamentally different.
So the idea of a kind of cookie cutter approach
is just like fundamentally impossible
because our bodies just physiologically aren't built
like that.
And you talked about,
which I think is so empowering, flipping your mindset from that to what does my body do for me?
You know, how do I feel great in my body? Again, how do you start going about that? Because I think
diet culture is so pervasive. The media has been so pervasive. A kind of one size fits all has been
so projected on people, even subconsciously for decades,
it feels like a very difficult thing to disentangle.
It can be, absolutely.
And I think that it's really important to firstly think about
how you're going to be really honest with yourself
about what is your history around food
and what does that look like?
Because I think that if you're trying to really untangle
this kind of relationship with food,
you've got to be ready to be able to do that
and ready to kind of let go of some of those food rules
and also be ready to, how do I put this,
really nicely, to challenge other people's beliefs because
I think what we find a lot of the time is that our relationships with food come
from a long history of social media input, just media input in general before
we had social media, friends, family, the way we were kind of brought up around food.
And I think that we have to start in a place
where we think, right, okay,
I'm ready to do this for myself.
I'm ready for something to be different.
But then we also need to be ready to actually challenge
if we hear other people talking about,
like you say, that cookie cutter approach,
that actually, this is what I need to look like
to be healthy. This is what I need to look like to be healthy, this is what I need to look like
to be successful, this is what I need to look like
if I'm going to be fit.
We need to be ready to actually say,
well do you know what, exactly what kind of
Ree's been saying on the podcast is,
when you say well people come in different bodies,
people come in different body shapes,
people need different types of food,
people need to fuel themselves differently,
everybody's an individual.
And actually start to challenge
what other people are telling us as well,
because yes, it's okay for us to start to identify that,
okay, that's an unhelpful thinking style,
it's unhelpful for me to kind of punish my body
and for me to try and get my body to a place
that other people think is
acceptable, I need to actually start to think about well what is it that I can do to nourish
my body but then when other people do start to say well this is what you should look like,
try this diet, why don't you do that, to really gently start to challenge that and say why do you
think that? Where's that information come from? Why is it that we're kind of saying
that food is good and that food is bad? And just be really inquisitive with other
people so that what you can start to do is you can start to kind of think about
changing your mindset but also questioning other people's mindset as well.
Sarah it's perfect because I think it explains as well
to everybody listening in a way why lots of health professionals
are very anti what I eat in a day videos.
Because of course, you've got to challenge the mindset
that just because that person eats that in a day,
A, it doesn't mean they actually do.
Why does it mean I should do that as well?
And you see lots of really unhelpful messaging around this and challenging your internal
belief system is so difficult to do, like you said, because it's grounded in our food
world because of how we grew up.
But if I could ask you as well to explain very quickly why when you see headlines in
the media that say, I lost weight and developed a healthy relationship with food
Why that essentially like we say in the clinic doesn't really gel?
Yeah
and I think it's it's really hard and really difficult for somebody to have a healthy relationship with food and
To be losing weight at the same time because I guess
using weight at the same time, because I guess where you kind of end up
is that when people go on things like a crash diet
or they follow a certain diet that they see in the media,
all of that focus becomes around that food
and your decision around your nutrition
ends up being for a weight loss reason.
It's not because you are eating out socially
with friends and family,
it's not because that you enjoy that food,
it's not because the taste, the texture,
or that you like cooking it.
The primary reason ends up being,
I'm choosing this food because I want to lose weight.
So therefore, when you're trying to develop
a healthy relationship with food,
it's not going to be possible because
when you've got a good healthy relationship with food,
you're choosing food because of maybe a social situation,
because you like the taste,
because you're going out with friends and family.
All of that gets stripped back
if you're trying to lose weight.
So what's really important is when you're
thinking about that relationship with food, if a weight loss diet is something
that you are wanting to think about, that firstly you've got to work on your
relationship with food and understand how you've got to the point in which you
are now with your relationship and really understand that
and make sure that you are in tune with your values
and your needs because if someone's wanting to lose weight
because there's a health reason
and there's a specific reason why they want to do that,
then we need to think about how you do it
and if that person is ready to do that
because we don't want to impact
on their relationship with food.
And the only way to be able to do that
would be to think about, and I guess we kind of do this
in the nutrition clinic as well, is that what can we add in
rather than what can we take out?
Because actually with a healthy relationship with food,
it's not about restriction, it's about being able to choose,
do I want to have that today?
Is that what I fancy?
It is, okay, let me have that.
It's not about, oh, I really fancy that ice cream today,
but I'm not allowed it because it might be,
I really fancy some ice cream today,
I'm gonna have some ice cream
and maybe have some fruit and a different topping with it.
I'm gonna nourish my body properly.
So that's why it's really difficult
to have a really healthy relationship with food
and be kind of on a weight loss diet because a lot of the weight loss diets are about restriction. I think that's so helpful.
I know for me like my consistent frustration has been in interviews and things like that. People
say what's your guilty pleasure and it's like that's an oxymoron. You know you can't have a
pleasure that makes you feel guilty. That's not a pleasure. There's nothing fun about it. And it's just silly. Anyway, it's driven me mad for
a long time and you always get quite a lot of kind of, it's not really what
people are expecting you to answer with. Like, that's a ridiculous question.
Yeah. But that term guilty, why should I be guilty over something that I'm
eating that is nourishing my body? No matter what that food is, it's
nourishing me in some way, what that food is, it's nourishing me in
some way, whether it's psychologically, whether it's nutritionally, whether it's socially,
it's nourishing me. So I think that's brilliant that actually what you're already doing is that
you're kind of going back and you're saying, that's ridiculous what you're actually asking me there.
Yeah, and I think what you're saying there is so important is that food is such an emotive and complex topic
because it's so nuanced as you said,
like yes, there's the nutritional benefit of things
that help our bodies,
but there's also the psychological and social aspect of it
and it's so multifaceted
and you have to allow that to all exist together.
But what are the things I was curious about
and you did mention it briefly at the start
is we hear quite a lot about eating mindfully or intuitive eating.
And I'm sure that's something people have heard a lot.
It sounds really inherently positive.
But what does it actually mean?
So I guess your intuitive eating is kind of like a self-care framework really.
And it's been developed by dieticians.
And a lot of people kind of think about, oh, intuitive eating, it's been developed by dieticians and a lot of people kind of
think about, oh intuitive eating, it's about eating when I'm hungry and not
eating when I'm full, but there's much more to intuitive eating than that and
it's based on its 10 principles which is rejecting the diet mentality,
honouring your hunger, making peace with food, challenging kind of the food
police that's out there, respecting your fullness and discovering kind of the satisfaction within food,
honoring your feelings as well. So actually understanding your emotions,
respecting your body and then kind of exercise and doing that in a in a
mindful way and in kind of a well-being way and then also thinking about nutrition as gentle nutrition so thinking about it as yes
I'm not going to be here with lots of strict rules that I need X amount of
grams of this protein or I need X amount of grams of fat and it actually
being more of a gentle approach around nutrition and what this kind of intuitive
eating is around is trying
to really understand and connect with your body but what it needs is it needs
you to have the ability to understand your kind of what your body's trying to
tell you so our bodies will try and tell us when we're low in vitamin A for
example when we're low in iron it will try and get us when we're low in vitamin A, for example, when we're low in iron, it will try and get us to eat
kind of foods that are high in iron
or high in vitamin A, for example.
So the framework kind of helps us to be able
to really understand what our bodies are needing
and to meet those needs.
Whereas I think lots of people just think
it's about hunger and fullness and it's just not at all.
It takes into account everything in terms of your exercise,
your feelings, your nutrition,
but also that social aspect of kind of rejecting
that diet mentality.
But there are some people that would find
eating intuitively really difficult.
So for the majority of people,
your ability to eat intuitively really difficult. So for the majority of people, your ability to eat intuitively
is possible. But for some people who might be extremely low weight, where their hormones
aren't working and the hormones can't provide that feedback system and can't tell the body that
actually I need more protein or I need more energy, they might not be able to eat intuitively or if someone has lost their kind of introspective
ability, so someone who might be neurodiverse might not be able to understand what it is that
their body is trying to tell them, so they might not be able to eat intuitively. So although
intuitive eating and kind of I guess mindful eating comes into that is really really helpful,
there will be some people that it just isn't possible for at all so they might actually need to have regular meal planned
and eat almost I guess what we'd call mechanically to be able to meet all of their needs. Yeah I
think the media picked up on intuitive eating and it kind of got blown out of what it actually was
but equally it's it caused kind of a surge
of different camps on the internet
and it became a really toxic sort of place
because you had all in their own entity,
these different camps had a really nice underlying goal,
a mission, but they were all kind of clashing
with one another.
And I remember seeing headlines like,
I can eat whatever I want because I
eat intuitively. And then you had the fitness world that might go, hang on a minute, that's
not good because you now are not happy with your weight because you're eating intuitively,
taking it back down to weight loss again, which wasn't what intuitive eating was about.
And then you had some people being penalised for wanting to eat healthy. It all ended up in this vicious, horrible, complex
cycle of misery around food and nutrition, which was really a shame
because we see a lot of success obviously with certain clients who are
able to explore intuitive eating, but it doesn't mean it has to be a part of your
daily framework if it doesn't work for you, right? That's the main crux, I think.
Absolutely, and I remember us having that conversation in one of our kind of of your daily framework if it doesn't work for you, right? That's the main crux, I think.
Absolutely, and I remember us having that conversation
in one of our kind of nutrition catch-ups
of actually kind of thinking about,
wow, the media has really blown this out of proportion.
And I think that intuitive eating, that framework,
is about being able to respect your body and nourish it.
And it's really interesting that none of that
is about weight loss or weight gain.
It's about being able to meet your nutritional needs,
being able to understand your own kind of feelings,
being able to reconnect with your values
and satisfy yourself in lots of different ways.
And I love the one that's around
kind of respecting your body.
None of it's to do with weight gain, weight loss or anything like that,
but it did get kind of blown up, didn't it, in the media,
that people were kind of jumping on it for that reason.
So how do we protect the future generations?
We're looking at young girls now, as young as I got the stat here.
It's really sad, Sarah.
We have women who have been self-conscious of their body
from as young as three years old.
I mean, I cannot even imagine.
And with body dissatisfaction starting as young as six,
how on earth with the world of social media can we protect children, Sarah, from this?
I think we have to think about what's within our circle of influence.
And I think that everybody's going to have a very different circle of influence, but
what we can do and where we can start is looking after ourselves as an individual to start
off with.
And what I mean by that is thinking about, have you personally got any kind of negative
cycles around maybe your relationship with food?
Where has that come from?
And the first step is kind of having an awareness
around that and noticing any harmful beliefs
and habits that might have come from maybe friends,
family, dieting practices, anything like that.
So it's noticing, okay, have I got anything
that is unhelpful and being able to challenge them,
those beliefs and those habits yourself.
So it might be that
people kind of catch themselves saying, I'm being bad today or I'm on a cheat day or that's too many
points or I can't eat that. We need to be able to acknowledge that we're saying those things and think,
well, what do I want to do differently? Actually, can we change that instead of saying, I'm being
bad today, change it to, I'm nourishing my body differently today. Instead of saying, I'm being bad today, change it to, I'm nourishing my body differently today.
Instead of saying, I'm on a cheat day,
it's kind of saying, actually, I'm allowed to have these foods
and have different kind of nutrition today, and that's okay.
So we need to start off with ourselves,
and then we need to think about then creating that
as that whole home environment
to promote that body acceptance, that self-worth,
beyond that kind of appearance.
And then speaking really kindly about our own body to people
and making sure that we are teaching kids
that there isn't such things as good and bad foods,
there isn't such things as good and bad bodies,
that all bodies are good bodies.
And then really encouraging that kind of media literacy
to help them understand that lots of images online
are often edited, that people are jumping on
kind of like these big headlines to be able to gain
kind of like your followers
and to be able to get messages across
and just practicing that self-compassion
and being able to challenge those, I guess,
beliefs that people might have had for a long time.
So I guess it starts with yourself.
It then kind of expands to the home environment.
And then when you're ready,
start challenging that wider environment as well.
And I think that's our only way
because people don't tend to learn by you telling them.
They tend to learn by seeing other people
accept their bodies
and being able to eat freely and kind of intuitively.
People learn by watching other people's behaviors.
So I think that's the best way that we can go about this.
Sarah, this is a nuanced question.
And it's one that I find really, really interesting
and have done for quite some time.
Going back to that kind of hot debate
about intuitive eating,
however long ago it was now, I remember people saying things like,
Oh, great, that means I can eat like McDonald's every meal.
And it just got me thinking while you were saying that it's this,
and we had a question of the day from a listener saying,
how do I talk to my children about, you know, healthy foods?
And to your point, it's not about going out there and saying, this is good, this is bad, let's put everything into a dogmatic camp. And that's the
end of it and overthinking it and making it very all or nothing. But equally, there are foods we
want to be having more of, you know, we want to be having a fiber day, you know, when we can,
we want to be having lots of fiber and nourishing foods. And we don't want to eat buckets of ultra processed foods, you know,
and I think that's the thing that I find really interesting is taking it wider
versus like a specific individual relationship is what's the right tone of
really encouraging people to eat well and look after their bodies in that sense.
But without feeling that to do that, it has to be all or nothing and deeply
restrictive. And I think that's one of the tensions I certainly see all
the time, which is that obviously, like we do want to encourage broccoli and
carrots and lentils and chickpeas and things, and not McDonald's every single
meal, but without making people feel guilty for treats, you know, the whole
point when things are treats and you're adding them in, they're not guilty pleasures, they're pleasures?
It's such a difficult question, a really difficult one to answer because I don't think anybody's
got it right necessarily. It's really hard because you have got public health messages
that need to get across these foods are great, we need more of these, but these foods aren't so great, so let's have less of them.
Your public health messages have to be quite black and white
to be able to get that across.
And for little kids as well,
that also needs to be quite black and white as well.
So I think we need to think about,
instead of saying we can and we can't have
these certain foods or like you say
having these foods are treats and these foods are I don't know like everyday
foods it might be thinking about okay yes we can have a McDonald's today but
let's make sure that we've got some fruit with that or let's have the
carrot sticks alongside that so actually building kind of the nutrition into it
it might actually be that for some people
that the only nutrition that they can get in for their kids is that McDonald's
or it might be the only food. So then if that's being demonized at school and
that's been that person's kind of outing with their dad or their mum and that's
the only thing they've kind of been able to do and connect with the family that
week, which it is for some people then that's
being demonized by people and people are being told that's bad so I think what we
need to think about is how do we get a balance of food throughout the diet and
this is where I freely struggle with the term healthy because healthy is so
individual for everyone it's actually thinking more about, is my diet balanced?
And that's where your gentle nutrition comes in.
So how do we gently bring in these foods
that we know are really good for us?
How do we gently acknowledge that, yes,
maybe some of these ultra-processed foods,
some families are having really high amounts of those.
Other families might not have them at all,
but we need to get that balance right. So I think that it's a really really tricky
one to give a really set answer but I think what we need to do as health
professionals is really think about the individual that we're working with on an
individual basis and think what's best for them at this moment in time. If
we're thinking on a wider scale, which I guess is where the question was kind of
coming from, we need to think about actually coming in and saying if you as
a family are having a high amount of this or you as an individual having a
high amount of this, how do we think about swapping it for something else
rather than taking it out completely? How do we think about swapping it for something else rather than taking it out completely?
How do we think about the frequency of this
rather than saying we're not allowed
or we shouldn't be having?
It's finding that kind of middle ground,
that shade of gray between the black and white thing and curtain.
You explain the nuance perfectly.
I know how on edge it can feel to be asked,
because these questions are the things
that we feel all the time,
because you want to be kind and compassionate. Let's face it, because these questions are the things that we feel all the time because
you want to be kind and compassionate. Let's face it, at the end of the day, everyone's in a different
socioeconomic situation, some of us in a position of privilege, some of us are not,
but we can't deny the underlying factor that healthy to one person is having one piece of broccoli a week, to someone else
that's having one every day. It's just how do we get this conversation and what sadly has happened is like you said
is as a discrepancy between a public health media message versus a message that we are
putting out to individuals inside clinic, which so many people don't have access to,
but I wish they did and that's what we're fighting for, right?
We want that.
But when you've got people online and social media
that are selling plans saying, follow my diet plan,
this will give you a healthy relationship with food,
buy my book, this will give you
a healthy relationship with food,
all these things kind of throw the level of confusion.
I mean, don't even get Ella and I started on the trends
we discuss every single week on this podcast.
I think what's been so reassuring, Sarah,
is for you to say the one line you said in that was,
I don't think anyone's got it right.
Because how can we?
There is no right for everybody.
But what we can do is empower ourselves
with knowledge about ourselves.
And what we can do that day, be that what Ella always says,
is if it's just that one can of beans I've got in the cupboard and I try and use it that day that's a good addition on top of
whatever else I've done. Absolutely and I think that's the bit isn't it? It's
thinking about I don't need to be doing that every single time for every single
meal it's fine for me to go and have the chocolate brownie but actually it's also
fine for me to have a meal that's got lots of different types of
vegetables in as well. It's about that balance and thinking about if you do feel that you need to
cut down on say ultra processed foods and that's a need and that's a situation for your family that
you need to do, how do you want to do this? And I think your example there in terms of the kind of
beans, brilliant right, how do we do that? How do we add that into somebody's chilli? How do we add some lentils into someone's bolognese?
How are we doing those things to just twist it up
a little bit to make sure that we are getting
that nutrition from different sources?
But also getting stuck in and actually helping families
and helping other people to find that enjoyment
within food as well and it not be that punishment. So really thinking about how do we get people in the
kitchen, how do we make it exciting and it really it upsets me when I work with
people and they're just like I'm just not interested in cooking and I just think
oh that's such a shame because actually you've got to feed yourself every day
and you've got to meet kind of your nutritional needs, to live and to
survive and to kind of meet your values needs, to live and to survive and to kind of meet your values. You need to fuel yourself to be able to
do this and I just wonder if we can get more of that kind of cooking and
nutrition aspect but from a fun level into kind of education. I wonder if
that's the direction we need to go in so it doesn't feel like it's a chore, it
actually feels like this is an enjoyment.
And I know that I used to do some nutrition education
sessions on an inpatient ward.
And instead of doing a session about, oh, this
is why you need a carbohydrate.
This is why you need this.
We just go make some bread and make it fun.
And I think that's where it needs to go,
rather than people just kind of being lectured on,
this is what you should be eating.
It needs to be, how do we make some bread together?
How do we make the soup?
Let's make these different foods.
And that's where your gentle nutrition comes in.
So I think we need to just flip the switch a little bit.
I love that.
I think it's, we talked about this so much
on the last episode that Rhi and I recorded,
on the lens of the way that things are talked about, and again, this is such a prevalent
topic, but with ClickBay and this kind of whole like, promote a kind of emotive response
from people, it's so easy to make things feel so negative or so dramatic.
And as you said, it's just like, let's just make cooking and joyful and exciting and something
that we look forward to and we look forward to our meals.
I just think it's so, so important and such gentle wise advice.
And I think all of this just feels so deeply and inherently positive and reassuring and
such a long term view, which again, I think that we lose too much in the way that we talk
about nutrition and health
with all the quick fixes. So I'm certainly very inspired by everything today, Sarah. So thank you.
Yeah, absolutely, Sarah. Thank you so much, because the world is confusing enough and relationships with food, it's not black and white, there's no one right answer. But if you just
maybe get a little note per go back through what Sarah said, take a few little steps of what you
can actually action that day. And yeah, Sarah, thank you for coming on the Extra
Scoop.
Thank you so much.
Thank you guys so much for listening to us on the Extra Scoop. We are a community based
podcast. We want this to be helpful for you. So any requests, we want to hear it.
Absolutely. Let us know which experts that you want on the Extra Scoop and we will see
you on Monday.
Can't wait!