Cool Food School: How to go from veggie battles to relaxed family meals

With children back in school and life in fast-forward once again, parents have little time to deal with picky eaters at dinnertime. Enter Deirdre Doyle of The Cool Food School, who teaches healthy eating in a fun, interactive way

Deirdre Doyle, founder of The Cool Food School in Wicklow and a BTEC-qualified health coach, understands the struggles that parents deal with and she has made it her mission to teach children about the joys of healthy eating.

AS THE school year kicks off and regular routines resume, parents will breathe a sigh of relief at the return of structure: Until it’s dinnertime. After a long day of school and work, the last thing anyone wants to do is have a battle over broccoli or spend time pleading with children to eat just one more pea. Evening meals can be stressful if there’s a picky eater in the family, and no one wants tears before bedtime.

Deirdre Doyle, founder of The Cool Food School in Wicklow and a BTEC-qualified health coach, understands the struggles that parents deal with and she has made it her mission to teach children about the joys of healthy eating.

As a mother of three, she has plenty of hands-on experience. “When you have children, you go into [parenthood] thinking, ‘My kids will just eat whatever I give them’ and they do for the first couple of years, especially before they go into primary school,” says Doyle. “And then I started noticing people saying, ‘My son won’t eat this’ and ‘my daughter won’t eat that’.”

Inspired by her training as a health coach with the Irish Institute of Nutrition & Health, she decided that there had to be a way of tackling picky eating. “I knew myself that vegetables were the big issue. I could see this at home with my own kids, so when I set up [The Cool Food School], it was to help kids eat more vegetables, basically, and to make food fun. For a lot of kids, food is a real battlefield, and it can be a real stress point for parents.”

Since starting in 2018, Doyle has worked 15,000 children in her entertaining and interactive workshops in schools and at food events, helping them explore food in a positive way and encouraging them to get curious about what’s on their plates.

She has a knack for engaging young participants, aged from three years upwards, to touch, smell, chop, play with, and taste vegetables and fruit that they might otherwise avoid. Her workshops are a full sensory experience for smallies, stimulating their attention and interest, something that can pay dividends at subsequent meals.

“My goal was to help kids and parents and to break down barriers that they have around certain foods, especially vegetables.”

Alice Rose-Crowley with her sister Ciara enjoy a fun and interactive pop-up cooking class for kids at St Peter’s, part of the Cork on a Fork Fest programme.

In 2022, she wrote Chop, Cook, Yum! (O’Brien Press), a cookbook for children to use themselves, gently encouraging them to experiment with new flavours and cooking.

While parents often worry when their child refuses certain foods — or categories of food — it’s essential to realise that, in some ways, this is a survival instinct, says Doyle. “We have this inbuilt defence mechanism that saves us from eating anything that is poisonous, because it tastes bitter. But, as a result, because a lot of vegetables are bitter, kids don’t like them, because they instinctively think that they might be poisonous.”

Although a reluctant young vegetable eater can turn the dinner table in to a place of conflict, Doyle espouses the division of responsibility in the feeding approach, which American dietician Ellyn Satter developed. “I’ve done this for years. My kids are all teenagers now and I still do it every day. According to Satter’s approach, the adults provide and the kids decide.

“Parents have the responsibility to provide the food we want them to eat, where and when we want them to eat it. The child is responsible for deciding whether or not they are going to eat it and how much they are going to eat. Ultimately, when they’re hungry, they’ll eat.”

She avoids having biscuits, crisps, and chocolate at home. “They’re not banned. I’m not saying don’t give them stuff like that — you can absolutely give them stuff like that, but on your terms. If you don’t have them in the house, then it’s much easier.

“What I tended to do when the kids were small was to buy the treat stuff while we were out and about, in coffee shops, or getting ice cream in the playground.

“Then, I provided balanced meals, and it was up to them whether they wanted to eat them or not. It stopped the battles dead.”

Doyle talks to many parents who bribe and cajole their children in to eating their food. ”There’s a lot of, ’Just one more bite, or three more bites or take a bite of this and I’ll give you a jelly’.” But that’s counterproductive in terms of a long-term relationship with food for our children.”

She believes that involving children in food is key to getting them to try something new. “Cook with them. I see it every day at the workshops. Kids who make something themselves are much more likely to eat it. Get them involved in food in any way you can, cooking and shopping. Growing is the holy grail, but I know that it’s not possible for many people.”

Rather than turning mealtimes in to power struggles over parsnips, Doyle encourages parents to “make trying food playful and interesting”, and to have patience.

”Don’t expect them to change their minds on a food the first time they try it, or the second, or the third,” she says. “They have to learn to eat new foods, just like they learn to ride a bike or read and write. Perseverance is key.”

You also have to “practise what you preach”, she adds. “Eat your own vegetables if you want kids to eat theirs.”

Find The Cool Food School at Midleton, Co Cork, on Sunday, September 7, and the Samhain Festival of Food and Culture in Kells, Co Meath, on Saturday, November 8, and Sunday, November 9.

• See: theecoolfoodschool.ie