Earlier this week friend of CIHAS, Molly Forbes, tagged me in a reel advertising the latest episode of Fearne Cotton’s podcast Happy Place. You can watch it here. Fearne’s guest on the episode is a naturopath (fake doctor) called Lucinda Miller who, it seems, was there to promote her new book and some fringe theories about feeding neurodivergent (ND) kids.
The reel gave a few provocative sound bites, something to do with oysters and high-protein breakfasts. I skimmed the comments and saw that there was a split between self-aggrandising ‘real food’ evangelists and parents who, understandably, felt judged and shamed by the insinuation that they could or should try to ‘fix’ their neurodivergent child through diet.
I was going to link to it in this week’s Snacky Bits with a little snark commentary.
But then my 4 yo old came out of his first day of reception class looking greener than the grass. I had some time to kill as he more or less watched all three seasons of Bluey, so I went ahead and listened to the full episode.
While he has moved onto Octonauts, I’m still spiralling over what I heard on this podcast. I need to get some things off my chest so here’s my Rapid Response: a quick and dirty rebuttal to whatever the fuck it was I just listened to.
Most of what you are about to read will be a lot of swearing and sass, but there is something serious I need to put right at the top.
I see the ways that ableism, neuronormativity, and capitalism collide with a woefully underfunded NHS, overstretched schools and teachers and a lack of acceptance and accommodations, leaving neurodivergent (ND) families feeling like they’ve been hung out to dry. I see the ways that conventional ‘treatments’ and ‘therapies’ rooted in the medical model have caused harm and traumatised ND people. It makes so much sense to me that parents of ND kids, who themselves are likely to be ND, seek out alternative therapies that they hope will be more gentle or ‘natural’ than medication. I also see how burnt out and overstretched and desperate for some relief many families are. I think that simply writing this episode off as quackery (which it 100% is), without acknowledging the real pain and frustration that ND families experience is a mistake.
AND, if your ND child isn’t eating salmon and broccoli and carrots every night, you’re not doing anything ‘wrong’. If your kid never left the ‘beige phase’ when their peers did, it’s not because of anything you have or haven’t done. If your child is ‘stuck’ on a limited diet, you didn’t fuck them up.
And if someone is making you feel bad about what your child does or doesn’t eat, that’s more a reflection of their lack of understanding of neurodivergence than an indication that you or your child need to change.
Alright team, strap yourselves in because it’s going to get bumpy.
Here’s everything that the episode got wrong about feeding neurodivergent kids.
There was a whole load of unchecked ableism
The basic premise of this episode was that parents fundamentally do not know the importance of feeding ND kids nutritious foods, nor are they aware of the (allegedly) huge impact that diet can have on kids’ wellbeing.
Fearne starts out by saying that ‘when we look at mental health, diet can be a bit poo pooed, like, oh as if diets got anything to do with depression and anxiety’. She goes on to ask why Lucinda thinks it’s so overlooked.
What Fearne seems to be missing here is the, I wanna say fifty or so??, years of research into autism and diet that has been hellbent on trying to ‘cure’ neurodivergent bodyminds. And the predatory industry exploiting that research and selling it to vulnerable and desperate parents. Take for instance the GAPS diet developed by ‘Dr.’ Natasha Campbell-McBride, another fake doctor, which puts children, sometimes even babies, on extremely restrictive diets, encourages the consumption of raw milk (!!) and raw eggs (!!), fearmongers antibiotics (!!!) and advises against vaccinating your children (!!!!!). As long as there have been neurodivergent bodyminds there has been some shady ass huckster trying to sell a diet (or a supplement) to cure it.
This ahistorical perspective is important because it erases so much of the violence that ND people (and disabled people more broadly) experience. The slow violence that many ND kids face in their day-to-day experience – things like years’ long waiting lists, lack of even basic accommodations, difficulty accessing medication and support, SEND plans that are largely ignored (if one exists at all) – has a much more profound impact on that child’s experience than zinc does. This lack of deeper analysis means that all of their ‘solutions’ are firmly fixed on the individual, reinforcing a personal responsibility narrative that distracts us from looking at the social and structural issues that ND folks are up against.
It’s clear that Lucinda and Fearne are trying to be neurodiversity-affirming in the conversation. Lucinda talks about how proud she is of her brain. Fearne repeatedly says this isn’t about ‘fixing’ anything. But so much of what they said revealed the reverence they still hold for neuronormative ideals. For instance, in the same breath as saying how much she loves her brain, Lucinda reels off all of her achievements and accomplishments including running a business and writing a book. In other words, Lucinda can still perform to neuronormative standards. That means she’s still valuable to capitalism and, I suspect, therefore doesn’t experience the same marginalisation as ND folks whose bodyminds are considered disposable. Lucinda loves her brain because her brain = 🤑 What if her particular flavour of ND meant that she couldn’t keep a job for more than a few months? Or that she struggled to apply for benefits or housing? Or the pressure of trying to perform to neurotypical standards in a neurotypical world made her suicidal? Would she still love her brain then? Because this is the reality for an awful lot of ND folks and it can’t be cured with salmon. The privilege displayed in this episode shows absolutely no regard for how precarious things can be for ND folks who are multiply marginalised.
Another chilling quote from Lucinda. After following her programme ‘They’re more confident. They sleep better. Suddenly, they’re getting better reports from school. They find they’ve got more friends around them. Life at home is easier. They feel better liked within the family environment. They just feel they fit in everywhere’.
One reading of this is positive: I know a lot of parents of ND kids who wish their kids got better quality sleep. But another reading reveals the deeply disturbing idea that ND kids’ worth, value, and how liked they are is contingent on their ability to make adult’s lives easier. All ND kids deserve community and acceptance. But my interpretation of what Lucinda is saying here has more to do with masking and performing neuronormativity.
It was completely untethered from the reality of feeding ND kids
What I think Fearne really wanted to say when she said we ‘overlook’ diet, was some version of ‘why do parents feed their kids so much shit, DO BETTER!’.
Lucinda sort of co-signs this by implying that most (all?) ND kids are pale and sickly and deficient in all sorts of nutrients - patently not true. And let me state here for the record that even kids with very very limited diets can thrive.
But the thesis that Lucinda and Fearne seem to be operating from is that parents just need to be told what to feed their kids. If they feed their kids ‘right’, it will result in less meltdowns, better mood, better sleep, better focus. So, that is another way of saying, ‘appear more neurotypical’. They are framing the problem as one of ignorance, as though parents of ND kids are just fucking clueless and have never heard of oats and bananas before.
They then go on to suggest foods that literally everyone knows are good for you.
Guys wait, hold up. Have you ever heard of… a carrot????
The problem is not that parents don’t know how to compose a healthy or balanced diet.
The problem is that when an adult is feeding an ND child, they are also coming up against that child’s:
Burnout; demand anxiety; sensory overwhelm; dysregulated nervous systems; exhaustion from masking; exhaustion from navigating complicated social interactions; exhaustion from their brains absorbing so much more of the world around them than a neurotypical brain; restraint collapse; shutdowns and meltdowns; executive functioning differences; lack of felt safety; need for routine and predictability; constantly changing and/or shrinking list of preferred foods; sensitivity to sensory qualities of food; needing a lot of sensory input from food; needing to stim using specific foods; low appetite; big appetites; ARFID; medication; anxiety; needing body breaks during a meal; getting distracted from the meal and so much more.
Of course, ND kids are not a monolith. For instance, some kids may need more structure and routine around eating, some will need less.Some kids are very sensitive to sensory input, others are sensory seekers and need lots of it. Some are a little of column A and a little of column B. But the fact that maybe only two or three of the things on that list were mentioned – and even then, only fleetingly – is very telling.
And all of this is before factoring in the needs of the adult, who themselves may be ND and have competing needs to their child. Or if there are multiple ND children in a family, it can add to the cognitive and sensory overwhelm both the kids and adults can experience. Not to mention the cost and stress of having to plan, shop for, stock, and prepare preferred foods.
It is not that parents are ignorant about vegetables, it’s that they are dealing with so much, usually with very little support or understanding from the people around them.
My friend Jen, whose son is ND and was one of the many people who I bombarded with texts and voice notes (sorry Sarah!!) about this situation, put it like this: ‘Have a high protein breakfast? Getting dressed is hard enough sometimes 🤯’
Lucinda seems to have very little understanding of the very real challenges that ND families face.
On top of the fairly insulting insinuation that parents don’t know about vegetables, was this relentless obsession with protein. Boiled eggs, peanut butter, and yoghurt for breakfast.
There was virtually no acknowledgement that protein foods are some of the most challenging foods for ND kids to eat. Shit, they’re the most challenging foods for all kids to eat.
Eggs are a perfect example of a food that is slimy, smelly, and a bit squeaky; all qualities that will trigger a disgust response in sensory sensitive kids. This can also apply to kids who may not ‘qualify’ for a diagnosis of any sort, but who are nonetheless sensitive to certain sensory qualities of food. The disgust response is both innate (present from birth) and learned as children become more experienced with foods and discover smells, textures, and other qualities of food that are offensive to them.
The foods that are most likely to trigger a disgust response are slimy foods like bananas, slimy and chewy foods, like oysters (!) and meat, multiple textures and mixed foods (pasta sauce with chunks of tomato/veg, stews, chunky soups). This probably conferred an evolutionary advantage to ND kids, because these are the exact same foods that were mostly likely to contain pathogens.
The foods that are most likely to trigger a disgust response are also the ones that Lucinda recommended.
Another, particularly batshit recommendation was to hide foods in other foods.
I’ve spoken about why this is problematic before. But here’s another take from Gillian Harris and Elizabeth Shea. In Food Refusal and Avoidant Eating in Children (not a perfect resource!), they write:
‘We have discussed in previous chapters something that adults often do to get children to eat disliked foods. They try to hide a refused food in something that is usually eaten – for example chopping vegetables small and adding them into another meal. Parents will often say that they have tried this and it worked, but these are parents who don’t have an avoidant or sensory sensitive child. Disgust responses are more extreme in the sensory-hypersensitive child. Hiding a food that a child finds disgusting in a liked meal can lead to an extreme refusal response in the child.’
Now, I don’t think Lucinda said explicitly to add disliked foods to accepted foods. Regardless, the advice to ‘sneak’ things into accepted foods was there (red lentils in the tomato sauce, chickpea flour into baked goods, nut butters into whatever). She claimed this would be easier than introducing a piece of steak or salmon, which I agree with to some extent. But she glosses over the very real risk that altering a child's accepted or preferred food by hiding other foods in it causes that food to become contaminated. Foods that are considered to have been contaminated trigger the disgust response and might be dropped altogether. For kids with a very limited diet, that’s a really big risk. And if you add two preferred foods together, they might drop both, doubling the risk. Contamination can happen even when things aren’t mixed together, it can happen when baked beans touch sausages or if a stray piece of pepper makes its way into pasta. I know this might seem like a fairly ‘extreme’ example. But if you’re going to go on a podcast branding yourself as an expert on feeding ND kids, shouldn’t you caveat your advice? Don’t you have a responsibility to consider how your recommendations aren’t right for everyone and make that clear?
I know so many parents of kids with extremely limited diets will have rolled their eyes at this episode. But I also wonder about those who saw the reel or listened to the episode who walked away feeling like they’ve failed their child because they can’t get them to eat pasta sauce with motherfucking red lentils in it.
If this is you, please know that this is Lucinda’s lack of experience, education, and awareness, rather than your failing as a parent.
So many parents and carers of ND kids will have tried absolutely everything they can think of to help their kids eat a wider variety of foods - hiding and sneaking veg, rewards charts, bribes, pleading, rationalising and so much more. But if your child cannot eat your from scratch meals and snacks that ‘don’t have too many ingredients’ as Lucinda and Fearne advise, then what choice do you have but to give them packaged and convenience foods? Which brings me to the next thing this episode got completely wrong.
It shamed and judged foods many ND kids rely on for nutrition
Now to her credit, Lucinda was a lot less judgy than Fearne about ’processed foods’, which she branded as ‘shit’, and ‘crap’. I mean, way to make people feel good about how their kids eat. But even Lucinda said to ‘get processed foods out as much as possible’. This not only shows a fundamental lack of understanding of why so many ND kids rely on packaged foods, but a misunderstanding of processed foods themselves. Long term readers will know that under NOVA classification, home-cooked, from scratch meals are considered ‘processed’. Lucinda and Fearne were referring to what has been termed ultra-processed food, or UPF. And it’s quite clear that they have swallowed the overblown headlines, rather than spend any time exploring the murkiness and the unknowns surrounding UPFs, or applying any critical thinking.
Three US cohorts shows processed meat and sugar-sweetened beverages are main drivers of the association between ultraprocessed foods and increased cardiovascular disease risk. In contrast cold cereals, yogurt/dairy-desserts and savoury snacks were associated with reduced risk https://t.co/ZCxJeMtVCZ
This study, which looked at three large US based cohorts, found that most of the negative health effects that have been associated with UPFs come largely from sugar sweetened drinks and processed meats. This is a surprise to absolutely no one.
Conversely, ultra-processed cereals (like Cheerios), savoury snacks (Goldfish, Ritz), and yoghurts/desserts are associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease. I hope parents of kids who exist almost exclusively on these foods will take some reassurance from this.
And even if your child does exist solely on Peperami, please don’t freak out; just talk to a nutrition professional who is actually neurodiversity affirming and not a fake ass doctor.
From a nutrition perspective, UPFs are an important source of essential nutrients that kids might otherwise struggle to get. Flour in the UK is fortified with iron, calcium, and various vitamins, meaning that anything made with those ingredients (crackers, biscuits, crumpets etc…) also benefit. They can also be high in fibre, or fortified with essential fatty acids.
And as for why UPFs are easier for ND kids to eat?
They’re the same every time; they’re familiar and predictable and comforting. They don’t have strong smells or flavours. Many are eaten at room temperature. Their appearance is consistent and uniform. They don’t change too much as they’re chewed. They don’t make much mess.
In other words, they feel safe. And felt safety is the cornerstone of feeding ND kids well.
Even ND kids who have a fairly big repertoire of foods they enjoy will gravitate towards the predictability and comfort of packed foods when they are burned out, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, and exhausted (which is a lot of ND kids a lot of the time).
It was peddling dangerous pseudoscientific ideas
This really is the big one. This episode was so full of mis- and disinformation, half truths, and heavily distorted ‘science’. I’m really surprised, and very worried, that Happy Place would platform someone who is so liberally linking antibiotic use with ND traits – a claim straight out of the GAPS playbook.
On top of this she endorses hair follicle testing, and fringe theories about zinc making more ‘gastric juices’ (it doesn’t, if anything, high level zinc supplementation can reduce hydrochloric acid production in the stomach). At one point she says there’s glutamic acid in citric acid which is ?????? She also said that antibiotics ‘carpet bomb’ our microbiome (inaccurate). And that you can ‘retrain the immune system’ which will ‘[stop] the brain from being on fire’.
Stop the brain from being on fire.
I see why they did have her on - Lucinda uses scientific-sounding language. She bamboozles us with GABA, acetyl choline, and theanine. After I listened to this episode and heard the words that were familiar to me be put together in ways that seemed to create entirely new realities, I started to wonder if it was me who had lost the plot.
I needed a reality check, so I texted my friend Hammad who is a GP (real doctor).
‘This sounds very pseudoscientific’ he reassured me. ‘Totally wrong about zinc and immunity’.
And finally, and perhaps most damningly: ‘If the suggestion that regularly imbibing fistfuls of oysters is needed for optimal cognitive performance in late stage capitalism then I guess I’ll just bow out now’.
There are too many half-truths and distortions for me to fact check them all individually here. But here’s the thing, if zinc cured all of the things she claims it does then it wouldn’t be ‘functional’ or ‘naturopathic’ medicine. It would just be medicine.
Instead, Lucinda takes plausible mechanisms and distorts them beyond recognition. She promises results that ‘conventional’ medicine can’t provide. She sows fear about well established medical interventions (antibiotics). She’s promoting a ‘natural’ alternative to mainstream therapies that the medical establishment are keeping from us. She gaslights the complexity of neurodivergence by reducing it down to a zinc deficiency, or too many processed foods. And of course, she has a book to sell. All of these are classic moves from the wellness grifter playbook.
And none of this is to say that nutrition can’t be a tool that we use to support ND folks; of course it can. But it has to centre the lived experience, values, and needs of the ND child and their family. It has to be grounded in truly neurodiversity affirming practice and principles, not offer thinly veiled ableism dressed up in neurodiversity affirming language. It has to offer real relief for ND people, not teach them how to mask themselves into oblivion so they can be productive capitalist bots.
It puts the emphasis on individual ‘choices’ and ‘responsibility’ rather than advocating for accommodations or understanding
Last point I’ll leave you with. I’ve never listened to the Happy Place podcast before, but it seems it has a pretty big reach with over 400K followers on Instagram and over 100 million downloads by July 2023. This could have been such a powerful opportunity to centre the ND experience, talk about the challenges that families face to access SEND resources, OTs, educational psychologists and other supports. From a feeding perspective, they could have talked about how we all could stand to be more accepting of feeding differences. They could have talked about how Registered Nutritionists and Dietitians need training in ND affirming approaches so they can support ND and ARFID clients without judging or shaming them and help them meet their nutrition needs in ways that didn’t cause trauma or require masking (looking at you exposure therapy!). They could have talked about the accommodations schools can make to school lunches more accessible or how they can create sensory safe spaces for ND kids to eat lunch. They could have discussed why ND kids may struggle to get everything they need at lunchtime and why they should be offered preferred snacks and additional breaks to eat them.
Instead of doing this, they furthered the narrative that in order to be accepted/acceptable, ND kids have to appear more like NT kids. And failing to do so is largely down to the parents not feeding kids the ‘right’ foods.
ND kids and their families need support, acceptance, and accommodations, not the blame, shame, and judgment this podcast delivered. This requires serious social and structural changes and can’t be sorted out by adding yoghurt to your kid’s breakfast. Parents and carers need reassurance that their kids' eating is not a failure of their parenting but a fundamental aspect of their child’s neurodivergence that requires care and tenderness.
Tell me, have you listened to this episode? Seen the reel? What was your reaction? I especially want to hear from you if you have and ND kid/are ND/both. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
