Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

How to Feed Picky Eaters (Without Diet Culture) ft. Katja Rowell, M.D.

Nov 20, 2025

Dr. Katja Rowell, a family physician and pediatric feeding specialist, discusses the intricacies of responsive feeding and how to navigate picky eating without succumbing to diet culture. She highlights how playful tactics can backfire and lead to increased avoidance of food. Katja delves into the pitfalls of BMI screenings in young kids, emphasizing the need for a supportive environment that respects children’s hunger cues. Her insights aim to foster healthier relationships with food for families, free from anxiety and confusion.

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ANECDOTE

Personal Journey Into Feeding Work

Katja Rowell describes becoming a feeding specialist after her own toddler became food-preoccupied due to her anxiety about weight.
Reading Ellen Satter's Child of Mine and adopting division of responsibility transformed her family's feeding within weeks.

INSIGHT

Expertise In Feeding Is Patchy

Many professionals offering feeding advice lack comprehensive training and may rely on brief courses.
This patchwork expertise confuses parents and can lead to inconsistent or harmful feeding recommendations.

ADVICE

Watch For Worsening Anxiety

If recommended therapy tasks increase your child's anxiety, resistance, gagging, or vomiting, seek a second opinion.
Trust your observations if interventions worsen dysregulation rather than improve feeding.

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Katja Rowell, M.D. joins us to discuss responsive feeding, picky eating, and how to parent without passing diet culture norms on to your kids.

We also explore the science behind a few common misperceptions from parents and doctors including: why playful or gamified tactics to change eating habits can be harmful and backfire, the problems with many “early interventions” around child BMI, and reasons to question growth charts in early childhood.

This episode is cross-posted from our other podcast, Rethinking Wellness.

Katja Rowell, M.D. is a family doctor, author, and feeding specialist. Described as “academic, but warm and down to earth,” Rowell believes that helping children grow up to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies is preventive medicine. Her interest in the world of feeding was sparked by her own worries as a parent, ending up with a toddler preoccupied with food. Helping her family get onto a better path inspired Rowell to learn more. Rowell expanded her knowledge; learning from and collaborating with OTs, Speech Pathologists, dietitians, psychologists, and eating disorder experts.

Rowell has particular interests in avoidant, or “extreme picky eating” including ARFID, as well as food preoccupation. She supports adoptive and fostering parents through a trauma-informed lens. Learn more at thefeedingdoctor.com.