Professor Marion Hetherington on Eating Behaviour

Professor Marion Hetherington studies eating behaviour across the lifespan at the University of Leeds.  During the conversation, she highlights the range of her research interests, such as the importance of early exposure to vegetables, as early as in utero through the mother’s diet.  She shares her experience of studying adolescents with eating disorders and why they can be difficult to overcome, and the importance of monitoring fluid and food intake in older adults where lack of appetite can be problematic.  Although she didn’t formally use her teaching qualification, it has certainly come in useful for her research in educating primary school children on vegetables, through stories, touch and taste, as well as in her work in Uganda, via the “Give a Child a Hope” charity.  Here she collaborates with teachers to embed nutrition into their teaching, with the aim to reduce stunting derived from an insufficiently diverse diet.