Walking into Annabel Karmel's home in St John's Wood feels a little like stepping inside a modern art gallery. Larger-than-life pop-art-style paintings line the walls, a life-size security guard mannequin stands watch and colourful sculptures – including a giant patchwork elephant – fill every corner. The woman who has shaped the way Britain feeds its children for more than three decades mingles with guests, scooping up babies for cuddles as she goes.
Since publishing her first book in 1991, Karmel has sold millions of cookbooks and become the first port of call for families navigating weaning, picky eating and toddler nutrition. She's taught a generation of parents – including my own mum – how to feed their children, and I've got more recipes than I care to admit saved in the Annabel Karmel app for my own 15-month-old daughter.
How weaning advice has changed
A lot has changed since that first book landed on parents' bookshelves. Back when I was a baby, parents stuck to bland purées like apples and pears and wouldn't dream of feeding a six-month-old finger foods, let alone a Chicken Tikka Masala. They were also advised to delay introducing common allergens like eggs and peanut butter.
‘When I was a mum, people weren't giving peanut butter and eggs until the baby was nearly a year old,’ Karmel tells me. ‘Now we know it's important to introduce potentially allergenic foods from around six months.’
Current UK guidance recommends introducing common allergens one at a time from around six months and continuing to include them regularly if tolerated (evidence has shown that delaying the introduction of peanut and hen's eggs in particular beyond 6 to 12 months may increase the risk of developing an allergy to these foods).
She also believes we've become much better at understanding babies' nutritional needs during weaning. ‘Fruit and vegetables are not enough,’ she says. ‘From six months they need critical nutrients, particularly iron and essential fatty acids.’
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The latest thing parents are told to get 'right'
Officially, I'm here to talk about infant gut health and why the first 1,000 days of life (from conception to a child's second birthday) matter so much for a baby's developing microbiome. Unofficially, I'm hoping for some reassurance.
Despite following the books, introducing bitter vegetables first and doing everything I thought I was supposed to do, my daughter has never really taken to weaning. She's currently surviving off a limited diet of yoghurt, Weetabix and macaroni cheese, while anything green or remotely resembling a vegetable usually ends up on the floor. Some days I feel like a complete failure.
And so our conversation quickly moves beyond probiotics and the gut microbiome to something much more familiar: mum guilt.
New research commissioned by SMA Nutrition found that 60% of parents of under-fives believe modern parents face more pressure than ever before, while 82% of parents say they regularly search online for answers about their baby's gut health – and for reassurance about baby poo, digestion or tummy discomfort.
Karmel isn't surprised by the findings. While she believes parents have always worried about getting things right, she thinks today's endless stream of advice (and comparison culture on social media) has only heightened the pressure.
‘I think there's a lot of pressure on parents to be perfect,’ Annabel tells me. ‘I think it's always been like that. But it's not a perfect world, and I'm not a purist when it comes to feeding children. My children could go to McDonald's occasionally, and they ate cake at birthday parties. I didn't ban sugar because I felt if I did, they'd want it more because it was “forbidden fruit”.'
Rather than focusing on restriction, Karmel says she's always preferred to make healthy food so delicious that her children naturally gravitated towards it. ‘That's kind of been my life's work: to help parents and to give them the confidence to know that what they're making themselves, in their own kitchen, without spending too much money, without having too many ingredients, is the best way to feed their child.’
‘It's not complicated,’ she adds. ‘You mash a banana and avocado, and it makes amazing baby food – better than anything you can buy in a jar or a pouch, and cheaper.’
So, what actually matters for your baby's gut health?
There's really no escaping gut health. It's become one of the biggest buzzwords in wellness – our social feeds are full of supplements and probiotics promising to transform everything from digestion to immunity – so it's kind of unsurprising that gut health is increasingly making its way into parenting conversations, too.
From the effect of antibiotics and C-sections, to your health during pregnancy, breastfeeding, formula feeding and introducing solids, parents are being told that almost every decision could shape their baby's gut microbiome. It's fascinating science. But it's also one more thing to get ‘right’ as a first-time mum.
For Karmel, the answer to feeding little tummies with good bacteria is simple. Rather than buying expensive supplements, she encourages parents to add lots of fibre-rich, plant-based foods to their babies' diet.
‘Live yoghurts are going to be good for them,’ she says. ‘Fibre-rich foods like oats and porridge are really good for them because they feed the good bacteria. Things like sweet potato, broccoli, avocado, pulses, lentils and butter beans are brilliant too.’
Perhaps you wouldn't think to serve lentils to a baby, but Karmel says it's one of her favourite purées. ‘It's delicious and super easy. You put everything into a pan – sauté onions, add the lentils, tomatoes and vegetables like sweet potato, a little bit of cheese, and you just cook it all together, and that's it.’
Of course, knowing what to put on your child's plate is one thing. Convincing them to eat it is another entirely.
When weaning doesn't go to plan
Now, I know that when you first introduce your baby to solid foods, it's less about how much your baby eats and more about exploring new tastes, textures and flavours. Playing with food is literally all part of the fun. But by the time your baby is on three meals a day and has cut down on milk feeds, the pressure to fuel their little tummies with plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, protein, healthy fats, and good carbohydrates builds.
So when a beautifully prepared homemade purée is met with resistance, or they fling the bowl of porridge across the room and throw everything on their tray on the floor, it's hard for the mess – and lack of success – not to drive you a little crazy, and feel like a personal failure.
Karmel is quick to reassure me that it can be difficult – and it won't necessarily happen overnight – especially if they're stubborn or picky. ‘I always think that the less you react to their not eating, the better,’ she says.
‘A hungry child would be a less fussy child – and often children don't feel hungry because we give them lots of snacks. We just feel that we need them. And the proliferation of bag snacks – which I don't really like for kids – just fills them up and doesn't give them any nutrients. So, sometimes, it's better that you let them go hungry and they do miss a meal because then they might try something new. Otherwise, they end up in this very narrow repertoire of foods.
‘I think trial and error really helps,’ she adds. ‘I make hidden vegetable chicken nuggets. I make hidden vegetable tomato sauce. You'll find ways that your child likes to eat things. My children didn't like cauliflower when I steamed it or boiled it. But when I roasted it in the oven and put vinaigrette on it, they loved it.’
The truth about raising a 'good eater'
By the end of our conversation, I realise Karmel hasn't given me a foolproof way to get my daughter to eat broccoli – or, well, anything on the list of gut-friendly foods. What she has given me, however, is permission to stop treating every rejected mouthful as evidence that I'm somehow getting motherhood wrong.
After more than 35 years of helping families navigate weaning – from purée evangelists to baby-led finger foods – she's learnt that truly no two children are the same. While repeated exposure to foods is important – it can take exposing a child to food up to 15 times before they accept it – she says it's also important to recognise that some children just won't like everything. And that's ok.
‘Sometimes you have to accept that they don't like something,’ she says. ‘I don't like beetroot, and however many times you gave it to me, I still wouldn't like it – unless you gave it to me in a beetroot brownie. I think you have to respect that.’
Her advice is to keep offering foods in different ways, without turning mealtimes into a battle. Roast vegetables instead of steaming them, stir extra vegetables into familiar meals like rainbow veggie orzo or add butternut squash to macaroni cheese – and don't just assume one rejection means you've failed.
Perhaps the most reassuring thing she tells me is that even Britain's best-known children's cook didn't have children who happily ate everything she put in front of them.
‘I had three very fussy children, and they were very difficult,’ she laughs. ‘That's how I learned.’
As I leave, Karmel tells me she's eagerly awaiting the arrival of another grandchild. Her chosen grandmother name? ‘Nanabelle,’ she laughs.
It's fitting. After 35 years of helping millions of parents feed their children, she's about to have another very willing food tester.
This interview took place at an event hosted by SMA Nutrition to launch its Infant Gut Health Journey guide, which aims to help parents better understand the first 1,000 days of gut microbiome development.
With a decade in journalism – in print, online and social – at national newspapers and lifestyle magazines, Alice has tackled just about everything when it comes to health and fitness. A former competitive swimmer, sport has shaped her life from a young age, leading her to take on marathons, an Ironman 70.3, and even cycle up Alpe d’Huez. From sweat-testing the latest (and weirdest) fitness fads to living off a diary-free, meat-free, caffeine-free, fun-free diet at an extreme Ayurvedic retreat in Sri Lanka, she’s tried it all – always in pursuit of peak performance and, of course, a great story.
Alice began her career with a five-year stint at The Telegraph, where she wrote for the Telegraph Magazine's ‘Worth leaving the sofa for?’ fitness column and was the face of the Telegraph running newsletter, documenting her journey over 16 weeks training for the London Marathon. She worked as the Special Reports Commissioning Editor and as a Lifestyle Commissioning Editor before stepping into the world of freelance journalism.
As a freelance lifestyle writer, her work appeared in Women’s Health, Elle, Stylist, Grazia, The Independent, Glamour, Marie Claire, Glorious Sport, The Metro, Conde Nast Traveller, Country and Town House, Queen of Retreats and The Wedding Edition.
In 2022, Alice joined Hearst Magazines as Runner’s World’s Commissioning Editor and now oversees food content as Women’s Health’s Nutrition Editor. With a ‘food first’ ethos, she is here to help you decipher exactly which foods will support your health, and which macro-counting, pasta-replacing, intermittent-fasting, 13-day cleanse is just, well, a scam. A keen baker and host, she firmly believes that no dessert beats a pavlova – especially when topped with summer berries and a generous helping of whipped cream. Delish.
You can keep up with her latest adventures on Instagram at @al_barraclough.
