Louise Mercieca: Unlocking the Power of Early Years Nutrition

0:04
Today we have an expert in the field, Louise Marcia.

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She’s a nutritional therapist and she specialises in nutrition in the early years.

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Louise, thank you so much for being here today.

0:16
I thought we’d start off this segment just by getting to know you a little bit more and how you got started with the Health Kick.

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So the Healthkick started about 11 1/2 years ago and it actually came about from a corporate redundancy.

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And I was like, oh, what can I do?

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I didn’t want to do the same thing.

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I’d been working in human resources and I wanted to do a job that felt more fun.

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So I trained as a personal trainer and that’s how the Healthkick started me as a personal trainer.

0:40
But I soon got bored of the same questions from clients about nutrition.

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So I trained as a nutritional therapist, initially just focusing on nutrition for sports performance and nutrition for weight loss.

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But again, I thought there’s more to it than this.

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I wanted to learn more.

0:56
So I kept on studying, had my child, my focus changed on having him because I didn’t want to do all the evenings and the gym work.

1:04
So the whole work model started to change.

1:07
And then out of the blue, when he was three, I studied nutrition for children’s brain development.

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And I thought it was just going to be for fun as a bit of an added CPD for me.

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But it just completely changed the whole business model, the whole career direction.

1:20
And ever since then, which is back in 2018, I focused on early years.

1:25
So it’s all happened by accident, but it’s been a happy accident.

1:28
Well, that’s really interesting how one thing led to another.

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When you think about it, you’re just like, OK, I’m tired of the corporate world.

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And you’re like, OK, well, how?

1:36
Well, what made you go into personal training?

1:38
I’ve always loved exercise.

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So it was kind of doing a job that felt like play.

1:42
Yeah.

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Something that, yeah, you enjoyed.

1:44
And then from there, you’re like, OK, nutrition definitely goes hand in hand with it.

1:49
And then after just having your baby, it completely shifted your perspective on how important nutrition is.

1:55
So then how, how did you get started on setting up the health kick and then I guess, you know, bringing that into nursery settings.

2:04
So it all again happened, but there was no planning involved.

2:07
I, I finished the course and I was like, this is mind blowing in terms of the real impact that food has on early childhood development.

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I think we all know that food is important, but the real deep impact, it was kind of wow.

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And I finished the course and I was like, right, I need to tell people about this.

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So I shut myself away and I wrote a book, sat down and did How Food Shaped Your Child.

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And I was like, that’s it.

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Now I’ve done, my work is done, I’ve written a book, that’s it.

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But I hadn’t planned actually what happens with writing a book.

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And it’s not that straightforward.

2:37
So there was a lot more work that came with that.

2:40
Now the book, does it focus on like the first, like a thought, like how?

2:46
Well, actually I had a clear stead here not too long ago, which she focuses on baby baby’s brain development.

2:51
But as far as your book goes, since it’s more focused on the nutritional side of things, is it from the womb?

2:57
The the book isn’t doesn’t start from the room, but it does focus on building a brain.

3:01
So it’s more as a family guard.

3:02
When I wrote the book, it was without the concept of working in early years.

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I was just thinking of me as a parent and the book was very much what parents should know, what I felt parents should know.

3:12
So it’s kind of the influence that nutrition has on early childhood development.

3:16
So it does include a chapter on building a brain, the nutritional influences of building a brain.

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But since then, the book has opened doors into the earliest sector, which has made me change the focus from a parent focus to more of a sort of early years practitioner focus.

3:30
So that emphasis has continued changing over the years.

3:33
Interesting to going straight into the nursery settings.

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And so now let’s say I’m new to to running a nursery setting and I’ve just opened one up.

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How would you help me as far as setting up a menu?

3:48
So the first thing I always like to say when I work with nurseries is there’s more to nutrition than the menu.

3:52
So everyone focuses on the menu and all the guidance kind of size to make sure you have a healthy balanced menu for children.

3:59
But what is that interpretation of a healthy balanced diet?

4:02
What does that mean in everyone views that differently and everyone interprets that differently.

4:07
So everyone’s sort of view of a healthy balanced diet in the earliest is quite different.

4:11
So I would kind of, you know, talk to you about what needs to go into an earliest menu, the underpinning nutritional knowledge and make sure that you, the nursery owner, the nursery manager, but also that the staff understand what, the how and the why, because then they understand the impact they have on early childhood development.

4:30
And earliest practitioners are so influential in shaping, not just, I think we forget that when we work with children, it’s not just their current health that we’re shaping, it’s their future health.

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And so many adult health traits and adult health outcomes are actually laid down in childhood.

4:48
So the role that you have as an early years practitioner is super influential and super important.

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And once people understand that, they can embrace that.

4:56
So it’s not just the menu, it’s the underpinning nutritional knowledge that goes with it, right?

5:01
Yeah, that’s very important.

5:03
I mean, thinking about, you know, it’s important to build those healthy habits, you know, in the early years.

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Now, what would you say are some of the pitfalls like nurseries fall into when it comes to nutrition?

5:14
I think just not fully understanding the the depth of impact nutrition has because with childhood, nothing is in the moment.

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So people say, oh, it doesn’t do them any harm.

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It didn’t do me any harm.

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It’s it’s only this, it’s only that.

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But actually nothing is momentary in childhood development.

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So whenever we do anything with a child, especially in the very early years, there are new pathways being formed or connections being formed and they are shaping that.

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So if with food, it’s their palate development which shapes their food preferences, which shapes their food habits and behaviours and emotional connections with food.

5:47
So once we understand that, we’ll never make the mistake of not putting food, you know, not placing as much importance on food as we should.

5:54
But often that’s one of the mistakes that people make, the kind of like, well, yeah, we have pudding every day, but that doesn’t leave them any harm.

6:00
We’ll actually know if we look at the bigger picture of pudding every day, there are some biological connotations to pudding every day.

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So therefore, it’s not just momentary in the here and now.

6:10
It does have an impact.

6:12
Interesting.

6:13
Yeah.

6:14
I guess I never really thought about it that way.

6:16
Louise, can you actually go into the differences between like allergies and tolerances?

6:21
Yeah, of course.

6:21
So allergies are the serious sort of health considerations that we need to be very mindful of.

6:27
Nurseries will have the main allergen posters displayed and that’s a, it’s a proper diagnosis that the child will have and therefore it needs to be properly adhered to and eliminated.

6:36
And that’s where we’ll need to have all the kitchen considerations in place to have, you know, separate cross contamination zones, etcetera, etcetera.

6:43
And tolerances much more frequent than allergies, they are less serious.

6:47
They can have consequences, but it’s generally a delayed response to a digestive system rather than an autoimmune response.

6:55
So it’s not going to be as serious and it’s not going to be instantaneous.

6:57
So they might have an upset tummy, there might be some bowel movement afterwards which is, you know, so there’ll be some symptom, but it’s never going to be life threatening.

7:06
So with an intolerance, but they can be managed, but they don’t need to always be fully eliminated depending on the severity and also the diagnosis.

7:16
So often with an intolerance, a diagnosis is quite difficult, can take a long time.

7:22
It’s quite a sort of drawn out process to to get that food as the identified culprit to eliminate.

7:28
So often the parent will say to the setting right, they’re intolerant to without it being an actual intolerance and it could be based on one reaction.

7:36
So I think we have to be mindful and that children will develop more intolerances the less they are exposed to a range of foods.

7:44
So if we have parents who are rightfully so, a bit wary of a food because it might have had a reaction, that doesn’t mean it’s an intolerance.

7:51
It could just be any other number of circumstances around that food.

7:55
So we don’t need to eliminate it and we don’t need to eliminate it unless there’s a pattern of behaviour linked to it because it’s quite difficult for settings to cope with.

8:03
Multiple allergies are fine, they have to be adhered to, there’s no question on that.

8:08
But tolerances, unless it is an identified sort of diagnosed intolerance and expecting a setting to cope with multiple what are probably more preferences than actual intolerances is quite difficult.

8:19
But often settings don’t realise that they can talk to parents about that and it’s having the knowledge to be able to do that and to explain that actually children will get more and more intolerances if they’re not exposed to foods and therefore often causes more of a problem to eliminate all of the foods than to just keep an eye on again, food Diaries and patterns of behaviour.

8:40
Just a way of monitoring.

8:41
Yeah, absolutely.

8:42
I think in terms of the menu, there is so much more to the menu than often what a menu is.

8:48
So the menu is, you know, like normally a two or three-week rotation, but actually what it can be so much more.

8:53
And that’s what I like to work with settings on.

8:54
So the cultural awareness bit is really important.

8:57
And because some children feel really excluded if the menu is not inclusive of their cultural sort of food heritage etcetera.

9:04
And that’s, that’s, that’s not a nice thing to feel as a child because then you start to feel there’s something wrong with your food or it’s different or why is it not inclusive and you start to question that.

9:12
And I’ve seen that happen in terms of children then turning against their food and turning more into sort of Western food, which is quite bland.

9:21
So yeah, definitely encouraging that wide range of food exclusivity of the Yeah, because it helps with palate development as well.

9:28
The more foods and flavours children are exposed to from a young age and the more they will be open to try a new flavours.

9:35
If they’re only ever given bland food, any new flavour is a shock to them.

9:40
And it’s going to be the older they get, the more likely is that that will be met with sort of distaste as opposed to an open view of it.

9:48
So you mentioned before how like new flavours could be a shock.

9:52
So when it comes to kids with certain disabilities, I don’t know Asperger’s, autism, like how do you, you know, what do you advise in these cases?

10:02
So again, it’s training.

10:03
I think it’s really important, and I do lots of staff training in settings to make practitioners aware of the nutritional considerations for children with autism because they do have different sort of behaviours and patterns around food.

10:18
And to just expect children on the autistic spectrum to sit down with other children at the meal time and sort of conform to meal time is really, really stressful for children.

10:27
So understanding why it’s stressful and understanding what’s actually going on with that child, the biology within that child at that moment helps the practitioner to understand actually their transition from whatever they’re doing to the meal time needs to be managed because it’s the transition from I’m happy doing what I’m doing.

10:46
I don’t want to change that.

10:47
But they don’t articulate it that way.

10:50
And then the transition to meal time, which for many autistic children, they don’t feel hunger.

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So they’re not actually like other children would be.

10:56
Oh, right, my time is rumbling.

10:57
It’s food, it’s time to go because they don’t feel hunger and sometimes they don’t feel thirst.

11:02
Not all children, but it is a common and they’re actually not even thinking, oh great, I can stop what I’m doing, which I was happy doing because it’s food time.

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I’m happy doing this.

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I’m not even hungry.

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So why are they making me change?

11:13
So it’s understanding that children have these different individual needs and therefore there needs to be things in place.

11:20
So if it is stressful to transition from play to meal, but you do need the child to get to the meal time, I often suggest something like a song because children will respond well and then that song can become a new routine.

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So when it’s meal time in the lead up to that start the song and then it’s like a sort of a trigger, kind of like, oh right, that’s the transition.

11:40
But the song needs to be sort of repetitive and talking about stopping play and starting food because then it becomes a sort of learned behaviour that actually this is the transition.

11:49
But even then at the table, there are things that an autistic child will not be comfortable doing.

11:54
Sitting, for example, might not be comfortable to them.

11:57
So letting them not do that is important.

12:01
Using a a spoon might not be comfortable to them.

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They might want to have that sensory experience of trusting what they’re eating by feeling it.

12:08
Let them do that.

12:09
We don’t have that whole don’t play with your food anymore.

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Let them play with it if it’s important to them.

12:15
So it’s just about understanding why they’re different and not expecting them to fit in with the rest of the children, but letting them have their own way.

12:23
And that doesn’t mean have their own way, it means let them have their own way and be their own person, because then they’re much more likely to eat some food because a stressed out child will never eat at all.

12:36
I love that.

12:37
I love that kind of support.

12:38
I never thought about, you know, there’s different ways to kind of, I mean, I don’t have children yet, but I, you know, to to find other ways to get them to to, you know, eat, especially when you know they have some sort of disability and you have to find another alternative to get them to sit down and eat and also enjoy the meal like you said you do.

12:59
I mean, eating stressed out, no one will will enjoy it, right.

13:04
That’s really great.

13:05
It’s tea time.

13:06
It’s that time of the year, you know, where everyone’s losing their voice.

13:10
But I actually wanted to take it back a little bit to I’m super fascinated about like the first thousand days.

13:18
And maybe we could just go into that a bit more.

13:21
And I guess your ethos behind like baby’s brain development and your and your angle from it, because as I told you actually had Claire on the podcast and she wow, she had some really insightful information.

13:35
But you know, it’s all intertwined at the end of the day.

13:38
So nutrition plays a huge role in this.

13:40
So I would just love to hear more about that from from your side.

13:44
Yeah, myself and Claire work really closely together in terms of that whole 1000 days and the building a baby’s brain.

13:49
But for me, I think the thing that what always fascinates people is the fact that before you even think about having a child, your diet and lifestyle is impacting on your unborn child.

14:01
So it’s not just the first thousand days, it actually starts before then.

14:06
Before you even think about the conception diet, your diet and lifestyle are already it’s, it’s the epigenetic influence that we have as humans.

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And so that’s where we can pass on our lifestyle traits to our next generation, even though they’re not born yet.

14:21
And so for me, it starts before the 1st 1000 days.

14:23
But obviously for most things, it starts with sort of that, you know, prenatal nutrition and how the mum looks after themselves in pregnancy and what the mum eats, which obviously has a direct impact on the baby.

14:34
And the biggest nutritional thing that I think people don’t like is actually you don’t eat for 2 when you’re pregnant.

14:41
It’s a bit of a myth.

14:42
I think you on average need 150 calories extra a day and that’s all.

14:47
So when people sit there going, oh, baby wants cake and you know, baby wants chips.

14:52
Baby doesn’t, baby doesn’t want that at all.

14:57
So that always makes people quite sad.

15:01
Now when I hear that, I’m just going to going to give the side eye a little bit like you Sure he wants that red velvet cupcake?

15:07
I don’t think so, no.

15:09
And according to Louise, that makes me quite unpopular.

15:13
But actually what baby really wants, which is never as exciting for the mum is essential fatty acids to help build its brain.

15:22
And that’s what a baby wants through pregnancy, but also when they’re out in the world, when they’re when they’re weaning as this, when we start to actually give them food because their brain development.

15:32
I mean, you’ve gone through this with Clara is immense in the naughty to two window.

15:35
It’s like, I think it just grows an exponential way.

15:39
Never again in a human life is, is a such a rapid pace of growth and development as there is in a baby’s brain.

15:44
There is so much activity and 50% of the energy that a baby eats is literally going to build to their brain, which is why some babies look a bit like a mekon because they’ve got a really big head compared to a small body because they’re all of their energy is going to their brain.

15:58
So it is a really in depth and interesting subject, but I think it does make me unpopular when I say baby doesn’t want cake because actually in the third trimester, what the mummy starts to influence the baby’s taste preferences when they’re born.

16:11
So if in the third trimester, there’s a lot of sweet food going in, babies more likely to be born with a sweet tooth.

16:17
I was actually going to ask you.

16:19
So if I was pregnant and ate a lot of chocolate, is my baby going to be born loving chocolate?

16:23
Quite possibly.

16:25
OK.

16:25
OK.

16:25
So there’s like, yeah, direct influence then on that.

16:28
OK, interesting.

16:29
What about music?

16:30
I know this is a bad nutrition, but like, if I listen to a lot of like, classical music, well, my baby don’t have an eye for an ear for supposedly I I Yeah, I’m not sure on that.

16:39
I’m not qualified to answer that one.

16:40
But supposedly if you play a lot of music, it is meant to enter the room and they do apparently like it.

16:45
I think we’re going to need a Part 2 where we do a lot of myths, definitely.

16:51
So I guess moving into now, so how does food shape your child?

16:56
So in every way possible, I think when childhood is this unique window of opportunities that we have to shape adult outcomes.

17:04
And I think as I said earlier, nothing in childhood is momentary.

17:08
So everything we do in childhood is influencing not just the here and now for the child, but their future health as well.

17:15
So we mentioned the brain development and the naughty to wind.

17:17
So is really, really important for brain development.

17:20
So that nutritional window there is really important.

17:23
But also this skeleton is forming in childhood.

17:27
We have longer to form the skeleton, so it keeps growing until late teens, early 20s.

17:32
But that is the ultimate time to reach peak bone mass.

17:36
So the foundations in childhood for movement and nutrition are what create our peak bone mass.

17:41
Once we reach peak bone mass, it’s just a case of maintaining what we’ve got.

17:45
So in childhood, if they’re very sedentary childhood and there’s some issues around the nutritional intake, their peak brain mass is going to be lower than an active child with a more optimal nutritional intake.

17:58
And the impact of that in an adult, a weaker skeletal frame means more fractures, more breaks, osteoporosis, all sorts of things like that, plus general joint pain from a weaker skeleton and and ligaments and things.

18:10
So there are all sorts of impacts on adult health that we lay the foundations for in childhood.

18:16
And another big factor is a food relationship.

18:19
So we’ve all got to have a relationship with food for the rest of our life.

18:22
But most eating habits are formed in childhood.

18:26
So when people say to me, oh, I always have to finish a meal with something sweet or I always have to have this, it’s normally a habit that started in childhood.

18:36
So that’s that’s another thing to be mindful of.

18:39
Yeah.

18:40
Wow, this is all making sense to me now.

18:42
Like really just going back to my uni days, I have, I mean, I’m also American, Latino American.

18:48
So, so hearty breakfast is like my go to.

18:51
And I remember during my uni days I would often have like pancakes with syrup, but I would feel so sluggish, so sluggish.

18:59
And then what I do to counter that is have a lot of coffee and I’m just like, it makes sense.

19:05
And the started early on.

19:06
I remember always having, like, sweets and desserts and like, now that I’m older, like, I feel the need to always have something very sweet either after a meal or for breakfast.

19:15
I’m working on it.

19:16
Yeah.

19:17
But it’s harder to work on it than to not have it in the first place.

19:20
And I think when people work with children in the early years and they use certain food language, it can create emotional attachments to foods and emotional pathways with foods.

19:28
Like, for example, food is a treat.

19:30
One of my pet hates Food isn’t a treat, especially when that treat is something like cake.

19:34
Sorry, I’m back to cake again.

19:36
I don’t hate cake.

19:37
I’m not anti cake.

19:38
It’s just, you know, it’s just one of those things.

19:40
So often cake is called, oh, let’s have a treat.

19:43
But that does create an emotional connection and placing that food on a pedestal that it doesn’t deserve to be on the same.

19:48
If we comfort with food or if we reward with food, it leads to all sorts of damaged food relationships and grown-ups.

19:56
Well, I never yeah, that’s didn’t really think about it that way.

20:00
I feel like that’s my go to phrase, but it’s true.

20:02
Every every time I sit down with someone, I’m like, well, I’m just learning so much.

20:06
I love it, absolutely love it.

20:09
But yeah, thank you for sharing all of this and, and, you know, happy to have you on the podcast.

20:13
And, you know, I definitely think we need a Part 2 to deposit and also a nice little discussion between, you know, we need to bring back Lucy and Claire as well.

20:22
So, yeah, I’m looking forward to that, Louise.

20:25
So if anyone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to reach you?

20:31
So the website has lots of information on.

20:33
So that’s the healthkick.co.uk, but I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all of that as well.

20:40
Perfect, awesome.

20:41
So there you go.

20:43
Anyone wants to get in touch with Louise, go to thehealthkick.co.uk.