If you're anything like me, you grew up hearing all sorts of unhinged phrases about the morality of chocolate and sweets.

"That's not GOOD for you." "Oh go on then, I'll be NAUGHTY and have a slice." "A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips." "Not too much, it's BAD for you."

Our parents' generation simply would not have understood the impact this kind of talk could have on our relationship with food and our bodies. So as someone who has struggled for decades with my relationship with food, I have vowed to do my best to know better and do better around my kids.

But what is the right thing to say anymore? Here is what I have learned.

It's not just what we say, it's what we do

You’ve most likely heard me harp on about the fact that ‘all behaviour is communication’. I do my best to help parents to realise that their children aren’t being naughty; they’re trying to communicate a need. We just need to listen.

What I don’t talk as much about is how that philosophy works the other way. Our behaviours around food send a message which is just as loud as our words, whether we realise it or not.

Things like hiding sweet foods, putting them high up on a shelf, joking about stealing their treats or hiding to sneakily eat where the kids can’t see. All of these are seemingly harmless things we might do to manage excitement or stop kids eating everything in one go, but they quietly communicate to children that sweet foods are scarce, forbidden or more amazing than all other foods.

Easter makes this particularly tricky because chocolate suddenly appears in large quantities. So what can we do and say to make sure we’re sending the right message about sweet foods?

What feeding specialists call food neutrality, and why it's worth knowing about The research and guidance from dietitians and feeding specialists points consistently towards something called ‘food neutrality’. The idea isn't that all foods are nutritionally identical - nobody is suggesting we teach that chocolate is the same as lettuce. It's about removing the moral judgements we’ve somehow attached to food over the years, using words like like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘naughty’, and ‘guilty pleasure’, even ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ - because they’re all terms that can add a layer of shame to our food choices.

What we now know about disordered eating is that a lot of it can be traced back to these early messages about food being something to earn, restrict or feel bad about. So if we can learn to speak about foods in a neutral way, we can do our best to set our kids up with a positive relationship with food and with their body.

Even without a formal diagnosis of an eating disorder, many of us will have spent years thinking less of ourselves for eating certain foods and struggling to manage our impulses. What we say and do now will directly impact whether our kids feel the same way. My whole job is about understanding the impact of language, so I’m pretty passionate about doing and saying things differently. So where can you start?

Speaking and behaving in a neutral way around food 
Here are a few things I’ve changed that you might want to try:

• Instead of saying “healthy” and “unhealthy”, I talk about all food being fuel. Some foods our bodies need for fuel and others we enjoy but we don’t need as often.
• We’ve dropped the word ‘treat’ where we can, as it implies it’s something that has to be earned or is better than other foods.
• We talk about the benefits of all food. “This food is high in carbohydrates, it gives us energy”, “This food is full of protein and it helps our muscles to grow”. “This food helps our bones to grow strong”.
• We don’t make sweet foods a reward for eating other foods.
• We keep sweet foods accessible in the pantry and not hidden, so they’re not ‘forbidden’ or exciting.
• Kids are allowed to keep sweet foods they’ve been gifted in their rooms if they want to.
• We remind them that they never have to hide food or eat it secretly.
• We try to stick by the idea that it’s our job as parents to decide the what, when and where of food but it’s our children’s responsibility to decide how much.
• We encourage them to check in with their bodies and feel if they’re full or not. This teaches them to stop when they’re full and not just shovel it in because it’s their only chance.

Problem solving at Easter
Here are some common things that come up for us parents at Easter time and what we can say to be more neutral about all the chocolate.

When they want to eat all their Easter chocolate immediately 
The instinct for most of us is to restrict or warn our kids about eating too much and the negative impact it will have, e.g. “That’s too much sugar, it’ll damage your teeth”. What I now try to do instead is to set up a clear structure before my kids start to eat, e.g. “Let’s choose one egg to eat now and we’ll save some for tomorrow”. “It’s so delicious, isn’t it! Help me find a spot to put the rest for other days this week. If your puku is still hungry I’ll bring you some fruit to have with it”. In this way I’m holding a boundary without attaching guilt or drama to the chocolate itself. It’s important to me that this doesn’t look like restricting, it’s just helping them to regulate in a moment where six Easter Eggs all at once looks appealing! As they get older and more used to sweet foods being accessible and available, you’ll likely find, as I have, that kids need less of that scaffolding. I’m always wowed when my kids leave some chocolate and say they’re full (you betcha I’m eating those last bits!).

When kids already have chocolate and sweets on a pedestal 
You’re not alone if you already have a child who thinks broccoli is a chore and dessert is the ultimate prize. It’s something many of us will have accidentally taught our children by using a sweet food as a reward for eating other foods.

To overcome this, a lot of feeding specialists actually suggest occasionally offering a small portion of dessert alongside the main meal instead of after it. Children might eat it first, last or somewhere in the middle, but over time it becomes less exciting because it’s no longer rare or conditional. It’s just another food on the plate.

This can feel really counterintuitive (and I remember my own Mother glaring at me like I was insane for giving my son Christmas chocolate with his dinner) but the logic makes sense and it’s something I’ve been trying with my own kids. I just say “here’s a bit of your easter chocolate with your dinner if you want it”.

When someone else has told your child that chocolate is ‘bad’. 
My kids were taught about healthy and unhealthy foods at preschool, so it was out of my control that what they heard wasn’t neutral. As they’re both quite black and white thinkers, the message they received was ‘chocolate is bad, it’s not allowed in my lunch box, I’m bad if I have any chocolate in there because it’s not good for my body’. This definitely took some unpacking with them as not only did they start to worry about the baking we were doing together, they began to pass judgement on other people's lunch box offerings as good or bad. We did a lot of reframing to try and correct this moral labelling of foods and lunchboxes. We said things like “chocolate isn’t bad, it’s just a food we have sometimes”. “Some families do things differently to us and that’s ok”. There’s no quick fix but our calm, consistent messaging over time adds up.

When your child struggles with impulse control around sweets and chocolate 
Some children, particularly neurodivergent children, find it genuinely harder to regulate themselves around very rewarding foods. It’s often related to impulse control, sensory seeking or how their brain processes reward - it’s certainly not a flaw or something they need to be disciplined out of.

Structure and predictability help so much more than restriction in these situations. You could try keeping all the sweet foods in a shared container and letting your child know clearly when it will be available. The anticipation of not knowing when the exciting thing is coming can make obsessive feelings bigger, so offering it at consistent times will help to reduce that feeling of urgency. What I’d say: “We’ll have some chocolate with/after our lunch - I’ll let you know when it’s time. “The chocolate stays in this bowl and we can choose some again tomorrow”. I’d also use visuals where possible to help them understand, like crossing off days on a calendar to mark that we’ve had some of our chocolate and celebrate how many days we made it last.

None of this needs to be perfect 
Most of us are still unlearning decades of unhelpful messaging about food, dieting and body size. We will inevitably say the wrong thing sometimes, there’s so many times I hear myself say something and immediately think, ‘oh I didn’t want to say it like that’.

The goal here isn’t perfection, it’s just being a bit more conscious about the language and the behaviours we model around food, especially at a time like Easter when chocolate is everywhere and literally in a wall in front of us when we enter the supermarket. Chocolate at Easter should really be just that - chocolate at Easter. Something exciting and delicious and fun to look forward to, not something that comes wrapped in guilt with a side order of “but don’t have too much”.

If any of this has resonated and you want more of this kind of thing, you can search topics like ‘food’ and ‘body’ in the Zazi Hub for more helpful articles about communicating positively with your child.

Happy Easter. You’ve got this!