Feeding with Love is explicitly founded to be inclusive and anti-discriminatory.
Its name was inspired by the definition of love in bell hook's work (pictured below). bell emphasised that love is an action not just a feeling, and that there is no love without justice.
Our name aims to encompass this wider concept of love, we want our families to be feeding their children with love, of course. I also want professionals to help with feeding with inclusivity, love, and compassion.
I want Feeding with Love to be a safe space. For our content and its impact to be not just accepting but affirming of people from marginalised communities and those with differing abilities and identities.
The content of Feeding with Love is autism- and neurodivergence-affirming and trans-affirming. It is fat-positive/weight-neutral. It is anti-diet, anti-healthist and anti-saneist.
We aim to make our content accessible to all. Please let me know if any of the content here is inaccessible or problematic and I will aim to act quickly to change it.
I'm Zoe Connor. I founded, own, and lead Feeding with Love and its parent company NutritionNutrition Ltd.
I became a UK-registered dietitian in 2001. During my first degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, I realised that 'bench science' wasn't for me. Dietetics was a perfect blend of food, science, and helping people.
I started out working in London's leading hospitals, advising on diets for conditions like HIV, hyperemesis gravidarum, food allergies, and liver disease. As soon as I had enough experience, I moved into my desired speciality: community paediatrics. I enjoyed being outside the walls of a hospital, visiting homes and schools. I started to realise how important the 'how to eat' side of dietetics was, learning more about feeding problems through supporting neurodivergent children and their families.
Fast-forward a few years—I volunteered for a UK charity in rural Indonesia for a year and then, when back in the UK, in 2007, I decided to start working for myself. That's when NutritionNutrition Ltd was created.
Feeding with Love was born in 2022 as the newest reincarnation of NutritionNutrition. After a pause from private work, I wanted a new platform to share training in an accessible and inclusive way.
I live in the leafy English Midlands with my two small kids and partner and juggle family life with NHS work, this business, and research.
NutritionNutrition Ltd is a private limited company registered in England and Wales: 06962873. Registered address: Union House, 111 New Union Street, Coventry, England, CV1 2NT
BSc Biochemistry with Molecular Biology
MSc Nutrition and Dietetics
PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
MRes in Clinical Research
Full member of the British Dietetic Association
Resource Officer of the BDA Autism Group
Registered under the UK government Health Professions Order 2001 with the Health and Care Professions Council
Some of the highlights of my career have been
being quoted in The Times
winning awards for my work in autism and my 2013 Autism for Dietitians Masterclass
being invited to deliver autism training internationally - in Scotland, Ireland, Spain, and Australia
authoring the chapter on autism in the key textbook Clinical Paediatric Dietetics in four editions and counting
my first first-author research publication Let Down by Low Expectations: A Qualitative Interview/participatory Photography Study of Feeding Problems in Autistic Children
being awarded a highly competitive NIHR Doctoral Fellowship - which I started in 2022. Read more about my current research Developing a Toolkit to Help Parents/Carers Manage Feeding Problems in Autistic Children here.