**Background:** Disordered eating behaviors, including restrictive eating and binge eating, can evolve into clinical eating disorders with devastating effects. Parents are the primary influence on children's eating behaviors, and family mealtimes represent both protective and risk factors for eating disorder development. Positive mealtime communication—rather than weight talk or diet talk—is protective, yet few preventive interventions focus on supporting parents to use positive food communication with infants. 'Mealtime Chatter Matters' (MCM) is a brief intervention co-designed with child health nurses (CHNs) to be embedded into usual care. This study aimed to examine the feasibility of MCM by assessing acceptability to parents and CHNs, adequacy of resources, and potential impact on parent knowledge and feeding practices.
**Methods:** This mixed-methods pilot study was conducted within four Community Child Health Centers in the Gold Coast Hospital and Health District, Queensland, Australia (October 2021 to June 2022). Participants were parents of infants (<12 months) attending CHN-led group education sessions and CHNs who hosted the intervention. The MCM intervention consisted of a 20-minute education session facilitated by a Paediatric Dietitian (researcher LN), added to the regular 'introduction to solids' session. Content focused on four topics: Care (creating joyful mealtime environments), Share (making mealtimes social), Talk (using mealtimes to connect, avoiding diet talk and food labeling), and Eat (division of feeding responsibility: parent decides what/when, child decides how much). Resources included a PowerPoint presentation, a laminated A4 parent handout, and an infant feeding bib with the MCM logo. Parents completed self-report questionnaires before and 2 weeks after the intervention, including demographic questions, the 18-item Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire–Milk Feeding (FPSQ-M), four MCM-specific items, the Perceived Message Cognition Value Scale (PMCV; 8 items, 7-point scale), and open-ended questions. CHNs completed a single questionnaire after observing the intervention, with four 5-point scale items and open-ended 'why' questions. Descriptive statistics, paired mean differences with 95% confidence intervals, and inductive thematic analysis were used.
**Key Results:** Sixteen MCM sessions were delivered across four centers to 93 parents. Forty-six parents (49.5%) completed both pre- and post-questionnaires (44 female, 2 male; mean age 32.69 years, SD 3.95; 87.0% had one child; children aged 2–6.5 months). Six female CHNs participated (mean 19.66 years practice, SD 11.67). Acceptability: Qualitative feedback from 35/46 parents (76%) generated two main themes: 'informative and relatable content' and 'engaging presentation'. CHNs rated all four items at the highest level (5/5, except one item at 4/5), indicating very high relevance, usefulness, and importance. Resource adequacy: Mean PMCV scores for all 8 items were >6.00 (range 6.29–6.84 on a 7-point scale), indicating very high acceptability. Qualitative feedback from 23/46 parents (50%) highlighted themes of 'easy to understand' and 'reinforced messages'. When asked which of the four MCM messages was most important, 37.0% selected 'Talk', 23.9% 'Care', 17.4% 'Eat', and 15.2% 'Share'. Five of six CHNs rated the handout as 'completely appropriate' (5/5), one as 'appropriate' (4/5). Potential impact: FPSQ-M subscale pre-post mean differences showed: 'Feeding on demand' decreased (mean difference −0.886, 95% CI −1.130 to −0.641); 'Using food to calm' increased slightly (mean difference 0.826, 95% CI −0.065 to 0.230); 'Parent-led feeding' showed minimal change (mean difference −0.007, 95% CI −0.163 to 0.149); 'Persuasive feeding' decreased slightly (mean difference −0.036, 95% CI −0.202 to 0.130). For MCM-specific items, three of four showed small changes in the expected direction, but one item (enjoyment of meals) showed change in the unexpected direction (mean difference 0.348, 95% CI 0.129 to 0.567).
**Clinical Implications:** The MCM intervention was highly acceptable to both parents and CHNs, with content and resources valued as informative, engaging, clear, and practical. CHNs recognized the importance of early intervention and valued having evidence-based tools for their role. However, the potential impact on parenting practices remains unclear, as pre-post changes on the FPSQ-M and MCM items were inconsistent and sometimes in unexpected directions. Possible explanations include: the FPSQ-M may not adequately measure mealtime communication constructs; reverse-coded items may have confused respondents; the intervention may have increased parents' awareness/reflection, altering their post-intervention ratings; or mealtime enjoyment naturally decreases as infants age. The authors recommend further refinement of MCM, development of validated measures specifically for food communication, and testing with a control group before progressing to larger trials. This feasibility study represents an essential first step toward providing an evidence-based, scalable prevention intervention embedded within routine child health services.