Happy meals - sneak peek

If you've despaired at ever coaxing anything nutritious into a picky child, Cathy Owen is here to the rescue. She explains why playing with your food can be a good thing, showing us how to tell stories with a plate of food and how to put together fun and colourful picture-plates that even the fussiest eater won't be able to resist.

Extract from Issue One

"Speaking as the carer of a seven-year-old who prefers to roll around under the table than sit up and eat, I know how frustrated I feel when my lovingly-prepared meal gets 'yucked'.

I have tried every trick in the book to smuggle healthy food into the kids, from hiding vegetables in lasagne and pureeing them into sauces to disguising them in counterproductive batter and puff pastry. At the end of the day, you can lead a child to the table. but you cannot make him eat.

Children will usually go around five hours between meals before they start to get hungry. They are often not ready to eat at set times. I have met plenty of children who will eat junk, stuff on bread or steal sweets. But I haven't met one yet who will starve him or herself to death. Barring actual clinical anorexia, a child will eat when his is hungry and stop once he is no longer hungry; relatively few will carry on eating unless you force them.

We can influence their relationship with food right now, while they are small, while they see it as a fun and satisfying way to look after their bodies, rather than a boredom/comfort plug, or worse, a forced torment. Even if your kids are older, it's never too late (speaking as an ex-picky junk food eater child who turned into an organic health foodie adult)."

See Issue One for full article