Customized eating plans tailored to your child

Medical nutritional therapy through Nutrition Services at St. Louis Children’s Hospital starts with a complete assessment that reviews your child’s:

  • Medical history, including weight and family history

  • Laboratory tests

  • Supplement and medication usage

  • Food intolerance and allergies

  • Diet history and current eating habits

  • Nutritional needs

This assessment is used to create a personalized medical nutritional therapy plan, which can help your child:

  • Improve food choices and habits to build a solid foundation for lifelong health and wellness

  • Maintain his or her weight or lose excess pounds 

  • Select a nutritional diet that accounts for food allergies or preferences such as a vegetarian diet

  • Help reduce complications from diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease

Help addressing special dietary needs

We know it can feel overwhelming to figure out how to cook for special dietary needs, such as a diabetic diet or other specialized diets.

Through one-on-one counseling, our registered dietitians can help you break down your child’s dietary needs into ways that work well for your family. Registered dietitian counseling can address:

  • Food allergies

  • Weight management

  • Vegetarian diets

  • Sports nutrition

  • Challenging weight and growth

  • Tube feeding assessment

Creative ideas to make eating fun

Our registered dietitians have a variety of creative ways to make eating fun for your child. They are there to make the process of providing healthy food easy for you and your family.  

Interactive ways to encourage behavioral change

Through the Head to Toe program, we partner with exercise specialists and social workers to offer a family weight management program. The program includes group classes that get people cooking healthy foods and moving their bodies.

Head to Toe is a fun way to involve the whole family in developing healthier lifestyles — from regular exercise to eating nutritious meals.