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Feed Them Well: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident Eaters for Life
From Jennifer Anderson—registered dietitian and founder of Kids Eat in Color, trusted by over two million parents—comes the evidence-based guide to feeding children from baby’s first foods through the teen years.
When you became a parent, you probably thought feeding your child would be the easy part. You swore you'd never bribe your kid with dessert, never make a separate meal because it was easier than a standoff, never hear yourself say, "just try it," in a voice that didn't sound like your own.
Or maybe feeding was easy for years—until your child came home one day and said, "My friend says bread makes you fat," and you froze. Maybe your tween started picking at their plate after a pediatrician visit. Maybe your toddler who ate everything suddenly won't touch anything green. Now what?
Every parent wants to feed their kids well—but between picky eating, battles with sugar, confusing nutrition headlines, and the fear of saying the wrong thing about food or bodies, it's hard to feel confident about any of it. Now, in Feed Them Well, Anderson gives you the exact words, scripts, and tools you need to navigate it all—without judgment, guilt, or perfection required.
You'll learn how to talk about food without planting the seeds of diet culture. How to handle sugar, snacks, treats, and dessert in a way that actually works—at home, at birthday parties, at Grandma's house. What to do when your child refuses vegetables or gags on textures. How to navigate weight conversations when doctors, family, or other kids bring it up. And how to cut through nutrition confusion to figure out what truly matters for your family.
This isn't another recipe book. This is the book that teaches you how to think about feeding your kids, so every decision feels less like a guess and more like a plan.
When you became a parent, you probably thought feeding your child would be the easy part. You swore you'd never bribe your kid with dessert, never make a separate meal because it was easier than a standoff, never hear yourself say, "just try it," in a voice that didn't sound like your own.
Or maybe feeding was easy for years—until your child came home one day and said, "My friend says bread makes you fat," and you froze. Maybe your tween started picking at their plate after a pediatrician visit. Maybe your toddler who ate everything suddenly won't touch anything green. Now what?
Every parent wants to feed their kids well—but between picky eating, battles with sugar, confusing nutrition headlines, and the fear of saying the wrong thing about food or bodies, it's hard to feel confident about any of it. Now, in Feed Them Well, Anderson gives you the exact words, scripts, and tools you need to navigate it all—without judgment, guilt, or perfection required.
You'll learn how to talk about food without planting the seeds of diet culture. How to handle sugar, snacks, treats, and dessert in a way that actually works—at home, at birthday parties, at Grandma's house. What to do when your child refuses vegetables or gags on textures. How to navigate weight conversations when doctors, family, or other kids bring it up. And how to cut through nutrition confusion to figure out what truly matters for your family.
This isn't another recipe book. This is the book that teaches you how to think about feeding your kids, so every decision feels less like a guess and more like a plan.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published September 8, 2026
About the author
Jennifer Anderson
1 book12 followersJennifer Anderson is the founder of Kids Eat in Color, a trusted comprehensive resource for parents supporting their child’s nutrition and relationship with food, with a social media community of more than two million. She is the CEO of BetterBites®, a platform of digital health programs that equips parents with tools to guide their child through nutrition-related diagnoses and challenges. She is a registered dietitian and has a master of science degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two kids.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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June 11, 2026I just want to say that I followed this women's advice for raising children, for raising myself, when I was a picky eater in my early 20s. I started saying things like "I'm learning to like mushrooms" and when offered foods I didn't like would at first say no and then say, just a bite for an exposure. Or no, but can I smell it? I owe Jennifer Anderson so much. So many of my favorite foods—peaches, mushrooms, cherries, plums, squash—I could not eat before I started following her 7 years ago.
September 9, 2026
I liked this and I feel myself already integrating some of its tenets in how I feed myself and my daughter. Some of the recommended language feels a little too twee/patronizing compared to how I'm used to talking to my kid, but beyond that I think its ideas are applicable and helpful.
September 17, 2026
Do I have children? Nope.
Did I read this whole book and enjoy it? Yeup.
I feel like this information is so helpful even as an adult. It’s honestly healing to hear someone talk about how important it is as a parent to focus on food & body positively. She also discusses food as a reward/punishment and why we shouldn’t use weight as an indicator of health.
This book covers so many scenarios and situations that can occur, and how to manage each one. I just love her outlook on food positivity and think the author did an amazing job at addressing so many important topics surrounding food.
Highly recommend for parents, parents-to-be, and anyone else who just wants to learn more about health & nutrition!
Did I read this whole book and enjoy it? Yeup.
I feel like this information is so helpful even as an adult. It’s honestly healing to hear someone talk about how important it is as a parent to focus on food & body positively. She also discusses food as a reward/punishment and why we shouldn’t use weight as an indicator of health.
This book covers so many scenarios and situations that can occur, and how to manage each one. I just love her outlook on food positivity and think the author did an amazing job at addressing so many important topics surrounding food.
Highly recommend for parents, parents-to-be, and anyone else who just wants to learn more about health & nutrition!
September 8, 2026
The Book Warns About the Fire Hose—But Sometimes Becomes One
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing an advance listening copy. Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for providing an advance reading copy.
⭐️ Overall: 2.5/5, rounded to 3/5 | 🎧 Audio: 4/5
I agree with a surprising amount of the philosophy behind Feed Them Well, which is part of why this was such a frustrating reading experience for me.
Jennifer Anderson repeatedly emphasizes that feeding children requires nuance. Research matters, but research has limitations. Children are different. Neurodivergence, sensory needs, medical conditions, appetite, development, family circumstances, and individual risk all matter. Shame is not helpful. Diet culture can cause harm. Sometimes the “standard” recommendation is not the right intervention for the child in front of you.
I’m on board with a lot of that.
But in practice, I often finished sections feeling less confident about feeding my children rather than more confident, which is difficult to reconcile with a book explicitly promising to help parents become more confident decision-makers.
There are genuinely strong sections here. I especially appreciated the early discussion of research literacy and the reminder that the existence of a study does not automatically make a conclusion universal or absolute. Chapter 11, covering extreme picky eating and ARFID, was also one of the strongest portions for me. The discussion of sensory predictability—why a processed food that tastes exactly the same every time may feel safer than a blueberry that can be sweet, sour, firm, or mushy—was a particularly useful way of explaining selective eating without reducing it to stubbornness or poor parenting.
That chapter also acknowledges something critically important: sometimes adequate nourishment, regulation, or medical need means using strategies that conflict with generalized feeding advice.
My difficulty was getting there.
Again and again, I felt presented with a recommendation, followed by risks, exceptions, individual variables, and circumstances in which the opposite strategy might actually be preferable. Intellectually, I understand why that nuance exists. Practically, I frequently wanted a clearer hierarchy: What is the reasonable default? What tells me my child may be an exception? When should I stop trying to solve this myself and seek individualized support?
Without that clearer pathway, flexibility sometimes felt less like permission and more like another decision parents were responsible for getting exactly right.
And despite meaningful acknowledgment of neurodivergence and complex feeding needs, I ultimately felt that “typical” feeding experiences still won the day. The exceptions are there, but for a neurodivergent family already living inside those exceptions, they can feel like modifications to a framework fundamentally built around a more typical child and family experience rather than equally central parts of the framework itself.
The conclusion contains a warning about the “fire hose” of right answers overwhelming parents until they stop trusting themselves.
Unfortunately, that often described my experience of the book itself.
The volume of considerations—nutrition, research quality, temperament, sensory needs, regulation, executive function, body image, food anxiety, modeling, parental history, developmental stage, health conditions, social consequences, and competing risks—sometimes made feeding feel even higher stakes.
I selectively completed this book after substantial listening and reading, including targeted later chapters and the conclusion, while skimming sections in the ebook once the material became repetitive or clearly less relevant to my family. I still engaged with the majority of the book’s core framework and intentionally used the two formats together rather than continuing every chapter linearly simply for the sake of completion.
Jennifer Anderson’s narration was strong and approachable. My 4-star audio rating reflects the performance rather than my response to the book’s content. That said, this is an information-dense, reference-oriented book, and having the ebook alongside the audiobook was enormously useful for revisiting passages, jumping between topics, and locating the material most relevant to me.
Content / Reader Considerations
This book discusses extreme picky eating, ARFID and other eating disorders, weight and body image, weight stigma, food restriction, nutritional deficiencies, food anxiety, bullying, neurodivergence, sensory differences, and stressful family feeding dynamics.
Parents who already carry substantial anxiety around feeding may also want to know that, despite the book’s explicitly nonjudgmental intent, the sheer volume of recommendations and competing considerations may create a feeling of “I’m already doing this wrong” before the book reaches its reassurance that adaptation is allowed.
Who Should Read or Listen?
I think this may be most useful for parents who are relatively new to evidence-based feeding frameworks, questioning diet-culture messages for the first time, or building their foundational philosophy around food and bodies.
Experienced parents—particularly those already navigating neurodivergence, significant sensory needs, highly selective eating, medical complexity, or very different children within the same household—may find portions more foundational than practical.
There is valuable material here. I just wish the book had made its considerable nuance easier to carry.
Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing an advance listening copy. Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for providing an advance reading copy.
⭐️ Overall: 2.5/5, rounded to 3/5 | 🎧 Audio: 4/5
I agree with a surprising amount of the philosophy behind Feed Them Well, which is part of why this was such a frustrating reading experience for me.
Jennifer Anderson repeatedly emphasizes that feeding children requires nuance. Research matters, but research has limitations. Children are different. Neurodivergence, sensory needs, medical conditions, appetite, development, family circumstances, and individual risk all matter. Shame is not helpful. Diet culture can cause harm. Sometimes the “standard” recommendation is not the right intervention for the child in front of you.
I’m on board with a lot of that.
But in practice, I often finished sections feeling less confident about feeding my children rather than more confident, which is difficult to reconcile with a book explicitly promising to help parents become more confident decision-makers.
There are genuinely strong sections here. I especially appreciated the early discussion of research literacy and the reminder that the existence of a study does not automatically make a conclusion universal or absolute. Chapter 11, covering extreme picky eating and ARFID, was also one of the strongest portions for me. The discussion of sensory predictability—why a processed food that tastes exactly the same every time may feel safer than a blueberry that can be sweet, sour, firm, or mushy—was a particularly useful way of explaining selective eating without reducing it to stubbornness or poor parenting.
That chapter also acknowledges something critically important: sometimes adequate nourishment, regulation, or medical need means using strategies that conflict with generalized feeding advice.
My difficulty was getting there.
Again and again, I felt presented with a recommendation, followed by risks, exceptions, individual variables, and circumstances in which the opposite strategy might actually be preferable. Intellectually, I understand why that nuance exists. Practically, I frequently wanted a clearer hierarchy: What is the reasonable default? What tells me my child may be an exception? When should I stop trying to solve this myself and seek individualized support?
Without that clearer pathway, flexibility sometimes felt less like permission and more like another decision parents were responsible for getting exactly right.
And despite meaningful acknowledgment of neurodivergence and complex feeding needs, I ultimately felt that “typical” feeding experiences still won the day. The exceptions are there, but for a neurodivergent family already living inside those exceptions, they can feel like modifications to a framework fundamentally built around a more typical child and family experience rather than equally central parts of the framework itself.
The conclusion contains a warning about the “fire hose” of right answers overwhelming parents until they stop trusting themselves.
Unfortunately, that often described my experience of the book itself.
The volume of considerations—nutrition, research quality, temperament, sensory needs, regulation, executive function, body image, food anxiety, modeling, parental history, developmental stage, health conditions, social consequences, and competing risks—sometimes made feeding feel even higher stakes.
I selectively completed this book after substantial listening and reading, including targeted later chapters and the conclusion, while skimming sections in the ebook once the material became repetitive or clearly less relevant to my family. I still engaged with the majority of the book’s core framework and intentionally used the two formats together rather than continuing every chapter linearly simply for the sake of completion.
Jennifer Anderson’s narration was strong and approachable. My 4-star audio rating reflects the performance rather than my response to the book’s content. That said, this is an information-dense, reference-oriented book, and having the ebook alongside the audiobook was enormously useful for revisiting passages, jumping between topics, and locating the material most relevant to me.
Content / Reader Considerations
This book discusses extreme picky eating, ARFID and other eating disorders, weight and body image, weight stigma, food restriction, nutritional deficiencies, food anxiety, bullying, neurodivergence, sensory differences, and stressful family feeding dynamics.
Parents who already carry substantial anxiety around feeding may also want to know that, despite the book’s explicitly nonjudgmental intent, the sheer volume of recommendations and competing considerations may create a feeling of “I’m already doing this wrong” before the book reaches its reassurance that adaptation is allowed.
Who Should Read or Listen?
I think this may be most useful for parents who are relatively new to evidence-based feeding frameworks, questioning diet-culture messages for the first time, or building their foundational philosophy around food and bodies.
Experienced parents—particularly those already navigating neurodivergence, significant sensory needs, highly selective eating, medical complexity, or very different children within the same household—may find portions more foundational than practical.
There is valuable material here. I just wish the book had made its considerable nuance easier to carry.
August 6, 2026
“Here's what I want to leave you with: I know you're capable. The fire hose of information giving you all the "right" answers can easily drown out your confidence and certainty-it's constantly telling you that you don't know enough, that you aren't doing enough, and that whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.
But the truth is, you're doing lots of things right, even if you are exploring alternate solutions to problems or want to make some changes.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
I started following Jennifer Anderson’s Instagram content when my toddler started showing preferences for what I now know are “hyperpalatable” foods, and when I saw that this book was available as an ARC, I jumped at the chance to give it a read. Anderson’s solutions are practical, focused, and customizable to fit the needs of individual families and kids. This is a “take what works, leave what doesn’t” kind of approach that I feel takes a lot of pressure off of the caregivers while still making sure that the ultimate goals are met. I very much appreciated Anderson’s approach as an anxious mom struggling with toddler feeding, and I learned a lot from this book.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for my ARC of this book!
But the truth is, you're doing lots of things right, even if you are exploring alternate solutions to problems or want to make some changes.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
I started following Jennifer Anderson’s Instagram content when my toddler started showing preferences for what I now know are “hyperpalatable” foods, and when I saw that this book was available as an ARC, I jumped at the chance to give it a read. Anderson’s solutions are practical, focused, and customizable to fit the needs of individual families and kids. This is a “take what works, leave what doesn’t” kind of approach that I feel takes a lot of pressure off of the caregivers while still making sure that the ultimate goals are met. I very much appreciated Anderson’s approach as an anxious mom struggling with toddler feeding, and I learned a lot from this book.
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for my ARC of this book!
September 17, 2026
Nothing super groundbreaking but I loved the language she recommends we use to talk to our children about food choices and bodies. Super important topic handled really well
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
"Feed Them Well" what a wonderful approach to feeding a loved one. As humans feeding someone is love, it brings connection. All of our major celebrations involve gathering together over.....FOOD. But as much pleasure, fun, memories food brings, it comes with challenges especially in this day in age when diet culture is so prevalent. The messaging our kids (and adults) are hearing can turn meal time into a battleground ("you will finish your peas or no tv......if I eat seed oils I will get fat......but I want to eat peanuts...." The list could go on and on. What Anderson does in this book is tackles so many of the common barriers a caregiver may face when feeding a loved one. She is incredibley wise and logical. I love how she creates real life situations and case studies to open the chapters. This builds interest and makes our own situations “real”. I highly recommend this book even if you do not have children and want to think about “gentle” nutrition for yourself or any other person. I truly did not know what a gem this book was until I started reading. I am so thankful for Net galley and Ms Anderson for allowing me to read review and rave this amazing book……now GO FEED THEM WELL
I was not paid for this review
I was not paid for this review
August 6, 2026
Thanks to NetGalley, Flatiron Books, and Macmillan Audio for the ARC and ALC. This book is likely great for the ideal reader but it didn’t quite hit the mark for me. The audio narration is kind and easy to listen to but I did half to walk away from it for a bit at one point because it felt like too much. The narration wasn’t condescending but it also didn’t feel like it was the opposite either. It’s hard to put into words. Many of the tips in the book did not feel new from available literature. I will acknowledge I was going into this more for the extreme picky eater portion and it felt like most of that advice was to see a doctor, so this book may hit better for someone looking for more general information on feeding kids.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Flatiron Books, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the advanced audio and digital copies. All opinions are my own.
This book is helpful, informative, and non-judgemental. There's so much information, but she breaks it down in a way that feels very accessible and actionable. My favorite aspect is Anderson's focus on getting curious and making decisions based on what works for the individual and family.
I enjoyed switching back and forth between the ebook and audiobook. The audio is clear and well-paced, and I always enjoy hearing books read by the author.
Overall, "Feed Them Well" is a research-led, insightful and compassionate resource that highlights the importance of doing what works for you and your family.
This book is helpful, informative, and non-judgemental. There's so much information, but she breaks it down in a way that feels very accessible and actionable. My favorite aspect is Anderson's focus on getting curious and making decisions based on what works for the individual and family.
I enjoyed switching back and forth between the ebook and audiobook. The audio is clear and well-paced, and I always enjoy hearing books read by the author.
Overall, "Feed Them Well" is a research-led, insightful and compassionate resource that highlights the importance of doing what works for you and your family.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Flatiron, Jennifer Anderson, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC of Feed Them Well.
I’ve followed kids.eat.in.color for years, and I was very excited to see that Jennifer’s book is ready for the world. The advice she gives is realistic and actionable. It feels like you’re getting help from a trusted friend who cares about YOU and helping your family find real success.
I shouldn’t have been, but I was shocked by the sheer number of citations. Every claim, whether nutritional or not, is backed up with research. It was very refreshing to read a book that is so thoroughly sourced and it doesn’t make you cross reference everything yourself.
I’ve followed kids.eat.in.color for years, and I was very excited to see that Jennifer’s book is ready for the world. The advice she gives is realistic and actionable. It feels like you’re getting help from a trusted friend who cares about YOU and helping your family find real success.
I shouldn’t have been, but I was shocked by the sheer number of citations. Every claim, whether nutritional or not, is backed up with research. It was very refreshing to read a book that is so thoroughly sourced and it doesn’t make you cross reference everything yourself.
Review of advance copy received from Goodreads Giveaways
Practical and doable
Review of advance copy
My mom got me an ARC of this from an event at her local library and I’m so glad she did. It was really thoughtfully written and gave me lots of frameworks to refer to as I teach my child how to eat
September 13, 2026
Excellent book. Useful for feeding kids (and adults) at any age.
September 22, 2026
Honestly not really helpful. So much of do this but maybe don't do this. No real information.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews