82. I'm Launching an App for Selective Eaters! Meet: Food Hopper
👉🏼 Join the waitlist and get early access to the app HERE!
In this episode of the Nourishing Autism Podcast, Brittyn shares a very special announcement: she’s launching her very own app for parents of selective eaters! 🎉
Introducing Food Hopper: the first-ever app that helps parents discover new foods for their child based on sensory profile AND nutrition needs!🥦
Listen in as Brittyn takes you behind the scenes of how the idea was born a decade ago, why she created it, and what makes Food Hopper unlike anything else out there. You’ll hear how it will help parents like you answer the question “What food should I try next?” in just seconds, with tools to track exposures, log progress, and build your child’s very own sensory-friendly food list.
✨ Plus, get the exclusive scoop on launch details, early access perks, and how to join the Food Hopper Insiders Broadcast Channel on Instagram for sneak peeks into the design process and feature voting!
If you’re a parent of a selective eater and ready to make mealtimes easier and more sensory-friendly, this is an episode you don’t want to miss!
Join the waitlist and get early access by clicking HERE!
CLICK HERE to join Brittyn’s Instagram Broadcast Channel - Food Hopper Insiders!
Join the Nourishing Autism Collective to start getting nutrition support today!
Follow @AutismDietitian on Instagram
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TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Brittyn, a Registered Dietitian and autism sibling. I have a passion for helping parents of neurodivergent kids navigate nutrition and wellness for their child, one small step at a time. Here we'll explore practical nutrition tips, learn from top autism experts, break down the newest research, and share inspirational stories that will empower you to utilize nutrition to help your child feel their best and thrive.
Listen in while picking kids up from school, sitting in a therapy waiting room, taking a quick walk or wherever you find yourself, looking for some inspiration and a friend to guide you along this journey. This is Nourishing Autism.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Nourishing Autism Podcast. I'm your host, Brittyn Coleman, The Autism Dietitian, and I have some super exciting news that I've been waiting for so long to share with you, and now it's finally public knowledge and that is that I am launching an app and I am so psyched about it.
You guys, this has been 10 years since I came up with the idea for this app, and it's been about six months since I finally decided to take it seriously, and I'm really excited to give you some insight as to why I am creating this app, what it does, and a sneak peek behind it, as well as how I even came up with this idea and how this was planted as a seed 10 years ago.
So this app is created for parents who have selective eaters, who are looking to expand their diet in a sensory friendly way. Basically what I find is that all of the parents that I work with, they have a hard time with figuring out which new food do I offer next? And that is constantly the question that people are asking me.
And one thing that I love doing is helping people find those next few foods based on the foods that their child already eats. Now it does take some brain power. You have to be pretty creative and think through, okay, what's the sensory profile of the food?
What are the trends that we see in the child's diet? And what are foods that match that? And I have over the years thought about, well, what if I could build something that could do this for families and they could do it in seconds?
I've also thought about how families can track the foods that their child eats, making sure that we keep safe foods in rotation, that we can bring foods that they used to eat back in, and how we can plan and basically have your own little Pinterest board of new food ideas that you plan to try and foods that your child's working on, and ways that you can see how many times you've exposed your child, how it went, what's the next step and so much more.
So about 10 years ago, I was in grad school and I was completing an internship called LEND, which stands for Leadership Education and Neurodevelopmental Disorders. I was selected as the one nutrition intern for that year. It was 2014 to 2015, and ~I, ~we all had to come up with a project.
And I was already studying sensory sensitivities in autism and how they impact nutrient intake. And so I decided to create for my project what's called the T.V.N.T, and the T.V.N.T stands for The Table of Vitamins and Nutrients Related to Texture. Basically what it was was an X axis and a Y axis of different nutrients and different textures, and inside each cell was a different food that represented each texture and nutrient.
So for example, if you went to the row where it said protein and you went to the column that said, crunchy, you could find different foods that were crunchy and had protein in them. So I presented my idea at the end of my internship and the program director looked at me and said, you have to make this an app.
And I remember when he said that to me, of course I was so flattered and honored, but in 2015, I was like, who creates apps? Like there's no way I could ever do that. And I just pocketed away this information and kind of just took that forward with me and took that idea forward with me.
And then life happened and I graduated. I became a dietitian. I started my own private practice. I launched a membership site. I got married, I started my own family, and it just never happened. And it was one of those things that I just always had in the back of my head when my clients would ask me, which new food should I try?
How should I introduce this new food? And I just always wish that I had an app or like this generator where I could type in their food and it can come up with all of these ideas for them so that they could do it on the spot and figure out what's going to be the best for them to introduce next, and which is the most realistic.
So that idea has just sat with me for 10 years until finally, I thought, you know what? I just need to do it. If not now, when? So I started the creation of this app and jumped straight into it. And it has been the most fun six months of creating and designing and dreaming on this app.
And now we're to the point where we are fine tuning it. We are putting in all the final details. We've had to create an extensive database to be able to log all of these foods and create our own food sensory algorithm to help sort by relevance when it comes to you putting in a food and it recommending, like spitting out all of these new food ideas for you and what's going to make the most sense for your child given their current sensory needs.
And what you'll also be able to do is filter our database by texture, color, temperature, even nutrients and food groups to be able to filter down what food you are looking for and what's gonna be the best fit for your child. So there's also this really nice intersection of sensory needs and nutrition needs.
So if your child really liked crunchy foods, but they also were iron deficient, how are we going to identify foods that are going to fit for your child's sensory and nutritional needs? And then from there you can save them to your food list and log the exposures as you go, how it went, and understand the different sensory steps on how to expose your child to those foods, and if it doesn't work, how we can take a step back and if it does work, how we can take a step forward and eventually move those foods from your child's learning list into their favorites over time, and you hop from one food to the next. AKA - Food Hopper.
I am so excited about this and I cannot wait for you to see it! Right now, I am sharing lots of sneak peeks and insights, and I am letting families give different insight and vote on new features, and I'm doing that all inside of my broadcast channel on my Instagram called Food Hopper Insiders. You can join that by clicking the link in the show notes or going over to @autismdietitian on Instagram, and you'll see Food Hopper Insiders listed underneath my bio so that you can join.
I'll be sharing updates on Instagram. And then lastly, if you wanna be notified whenever this goes live and we start pre-selling, which is going to be on Black Friday, you can get an exclusive discount on Food Hopper locked in FOREVER! I will be sharing with the wait list.
So if you wanna get on the wait list, you can either DM me "Food Hopper" on Instagram and I will automatically send you the link to join, or you can click that link in the show notes of this episode. Or lastly, you can go to foodhopper.co and add your name to the wait list so you can be notified when it goes live, and I'll be sharing early access to the Black Friday deal to everybody on the wait list as well. I am so excited to build this. I'm so excited that it is finally out in the universe and that it has finally gone this decade to be a real app, something that is actually going to help what I believe will help thousands and thousands of families expand their child's diet using sensory friendly approaches and helping their child feel their best and thrive. I'm excited to have you all on this journey with me. I hope to see you in the broadcast channel on Instagram, and definitely add your name to the wait list so that you can be notified first.
I will be back next week digging into a full episode of the Nourishing Autism Podcast. If you haven't already, please subscribe and give a five star rating to the podcast. I would be so grateful. We just passed one hundred 5- star ratings on Apple, and we are building up on Spotify as well. Thank you all so much for all the love on this recent announcement on Instagram for Food Hopper, and I cannot wait for you all to see this and have this on your phone and help your kiddos improve their nutrition and take the mental load off of you to help make your life easier and feed your kids easier as well.
I'll see you next week!
Transcribed by Descript
About Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD
Brittyn Coleman, MS, RDN/LD, is a distinguished Registered Dietitian and Autism Nutrition Expert, known for her innovative, sensory-friendly feeding approach to nutrition for children on the autism spectrum. As the founder of the Nourishing Autism Collective, and as an autism sibling herself, Brittyn brings both professional expertise and personal understanding to her work. She empowers families with her expert guidance, helping children receive essential nutrients for optimal health and development. Her strategies are tailored to the unique dietary needs and sensory preferences of each child.
Brittyn's influence extends beyond her membership site through her active social media presence and her popular podcast, 'Nourishing Autism'. Her educational content on Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms has established her as a leading voice in autism nutrition, providing valuable resources, practical advice, and a supportive community for parents and professionals.
