Season 1

Once the decision has been made to start a child on a blended diet, it’s never the dietitian alone who is responsible for supporting this. The entire multi-disciplinary team needs to be aligned and working closely together to help support this patient. Harriet Farr talks us through the role of the MDT in supporting blended diets and how this is best structured, communicated and monitored.

What happens when children who are on a blended diet go to school? How do children and families manage this? Carol Baguley talks to Linia about the practicalities of managing a blended diet in a school setting. What does Carol advise parents about when preparing, storing and transporting a blended diet into her school and who administers it when they’re there? What happens if a school does not have a policy for blended diets? Tune in to find out more.

More and more parents and carers are asking their dietitians about blended diets. Blending real food to use as an enteral feed through a tube is becoming more widely accepted as a positive way of feeding. Children generally do much better on a blended diet compared to other feeding alternatives, and often symptoms like sickness or reflux disappear. But why are blended diets so well tolerated? Lucy Jackman and Dr Graeme O’Connor delve into the science behind it.

In this episode, Cath Fogarty discusses blended diets for enterally fed children and how dietitians can best manage these patients and their time. Cath gives us some insider tips on how she manages patients following a blended diet on her case load, including advice on the practicalities of blended diets and how to help parents prepare recipes.

Clare Thornton-Wood shares her experience of supporting children with blended diets and discusses why they are becoming more popular amongst parents and carers. Why are they preferred by some parents? How do they benefit the children and the family? And how can dietitians themselves ensure they are set up to support parents wishing to start a blended diet? Clare also talks through what the BDA has to say about blended diets with a look at their latest policy statement.

Tune in and discover what’s in store in the first series of Inside Medical Nutrition, a podcast powered by Nestlé Health Science.