Our Story
Wholesome Child was created to provide informative and creative advice, support and inspiration to empower parents to make healthier food choices for their kids.
Wholesome Child founder, child nutrition expert and mother of two, Mandy Sacher, is a Paediatric Nutritionist and SOS Feeding Consultant. Her clinical practice focuses on prenatal and childhood nutrition, helping parents and mums-to-be-feed their children healthy, nourishing foods right from the start.
Mandy’s philosophy is simple: train children’s taste-buds to enjoy nourishing, nutritionally beneficial foods early as possible to ensure optimal development and establishment of lifelong healthy eating behaviours and food choices.
After birth of her first child in 2010, she became increasingly aware of the lack of nutritionally sound information being made available to first-time parents. She was alarmed at the amount of baby and toddler food that were marketed as being ‘healthy’ when the sugar, salt and preservative content were overly high. Mandy realised our journeys to junk food can begin with the squeezie yoghurts we are fed or the teething rusks we eat.
Wholesome Child is committed to helping parents understand the food choices available to our children, and to providing information and resources that make for easier access to better nutritional options than those available in the local convenience store.
Mandy’s career in children’s health spans more than a decade.
In 2006, she, along with other paediatric experts, founded the MEND Programme – an independent, not-for-profit organisation established to research (and prevent) obesity in children. Mandy and her colleagues at MEND developed one of the world’s only proven weight-loss treatments for obese children, based on ten years of research and clinical trials (http://www.mendcentral.org).
Mandy worked as research assistant on her brother, Dr. Paul Sacher’s book From Kid to Super Kid, compiling case studies and investigating methods to improve the quality of overweight and obese children’s nutritional intake in order to affect better health, self-esteem and motivation to exercise.
Mandy wrote for the Elfy Food Show (http://www.katebulkley.com/kilgarriff.pdf), a British animated mini-series about five healthy-eating elves on a mission to retrieve magical (healthy) foods. The programme promoted the virtues of fresh fruit and vegetables to a pre-teen audience and aired on Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Toonami.
Wholesome Child was born just after Mandy’s son, when her professional expertise combined with her parental interest in ensuring the best possible nutritional options for her own children.
For the past three years Mandy has consulted to day-cares on implementing more nutritional whole food menu plans and privately to parents of children of all ages. Wholesome Child’s nutritional workshops are held at preschools, mother’s groups, non-profit organisations and medical practices.
Feed Them Right From the Start is the Wholesome Child motto. More informed and better food choices to promote well being and healthier living for our children.
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Qualifications summary:
Personal trainer and nutritional consultant (acquired from Keep Fit International in Johannesburg South Africa – 1996) ,
Bachelor of Communications in Journalism,
Bachelor of Communications in International Relations (UTS – 2004),
Co-creator of the MEND Programme (author of the training manuals and other practical elements of the programme – 2004-2008),
Certificate in Homeopathy , (2009-2010),
Certificate in Naturopathy (2009-2010),
Advanced Diploma in Nutritional Medicine ( 2012 -2014),
SOS Feeding Accreditation (2014).
