E304: Captain & Cat’s Explorasaurus on Healthy Food

June 10, 2026

Today we’re talking with Kevin Hoban and Jordie Simkovic, the creators and starring characters of Captain & Cat, a popular YouTube kids show with 200,000 subscribers and over 200 million views. The educational show for preschoolers tells stories using entertaining songs and narratives. They’ve just launched a new series called Explorasaurus: Healthy Food and You, aimed at teaching kids about healthy food and how it’s grown. Their first episode about SugarBee apple growers in Washington State has over 500,000 views on YouTube.

Related podcasts: Child Development & Nutrition | Children | Children Food Preferences |

 

E298: Your child is not their weight – a parent’s guide

April 27, 2026

So going back more than 30 years, I was involved in work on childhood obesity. It was a prevalent problem at the time, but little attention was being devoted to children and weight issues. And it was fair to say that the field, as it were, was an academic backwater. Little was known about short and long-term effects of childhood obesity. The social and emotional lives experienced by the children hadn’t really been documented or studied much. There was very little known about treatment or strategies for parents, but thankfully, things are different now. Thanks in part to the work of a number of really innovative people in the field, and one of the most innovative is our guest today, Dr. Joseph Skelton. He’s a professor of pediatrics and founder and director of Brenner Fit. FIT stands for Families in Training, which is the family-based pediatric obesity program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He’s also editor of the Journal of Childhood Obesity is involved in clinical care, research, education, and community outreach. Dr. Skelton has just published what I think is a really important book through the American Academy of Pediatrics, entitled Your Child Is Not Their Weight: Parenting in a Size Obsessed World. I was asked to review the book and was delighted to see it before it was published and just was so happy to see that such a book existed at all, but such a good quality book at entering the picture. Really a very important advance in our field.

Related podcasts: Child Development & Nutrition | Childhood Obesity | Children | Children Food Preferences | Diet & Nutrition | Eating Disorders |

 

E270: Do food labels influence kids shopping choices?

April 16, 2025

As any parent knows, it is really important to help our children to make healthy food choices. I know as a father who cooks for my child, it is really critical that I introduce her to fruits and vegetables and encourage whole grains and try to manage the amount of additional sugars, but it’s hard. We do this with the goal of trying to make sure that our child is able to eat healthy once she leaves the home. That she’s able to make healthy choices there. But it’s not just about the future. My child is making choices even today at school and outside of school, and the question is, can we help her make those choices that are going to lead to healthy food outcomes?
Do food labels on products encourage children to make healthy food choices if it indicates good ingredients? Or would labels that warn against nutrients of concern actually discourage kids from using those or consuming those products? Today we’re going to actually explore those questions in a particular context- in Chile. In 2016, the Chilean government implemented a comprehensive set of obesity prevention policies aimed at improving the food environment for children. Last year on this podcast, we actually explored how the Chilean food laws affected school food purchases. But now today, we’re going to explore how food labels are influencing youth outside of school. It is my pleasure to welcome back my colleagues, Gabriela Fretes, who is an associate research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPRI; and Sean Cash, who is an economist and chair of the Division of Agriculture, food and Environment at Tufts University at the Freedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy.

Related podcasts: Child Development & Nutrition | Children | Food Industry Behavior & Marketing | Food Policy | Ultra-processed Food & Additives |