Tips for Children - from the experts

Encouraging your children to eat more fruit and vegetables can be hard work, often making you resort to bribing or forcing them to eat their greens.
It doesn’t have to be so difficult. There are some simple things you can do to encourage children to eat a range of fruit and veg as part of their daily diet.

1. “If your child will not eat vegetables on their own, create things like a vegetable sauce for pasta. Use vegetables such as carrots, mushrooms and red pepper blended into the sauce. What children cannot see they cannot pick out!”
ANNABEL KARMEL, FOODWRITER

2. “Try making soup – chop up any leftover vegetables (including brussel sprouts!) and boil them altogether. Add stock for flavouring and process the whole lot until it is an appealing consistency. My daughter loves this soup and is getting many vegetables all at once without knowing what she is eating!”
HELEN BRUNTON, HERTS

3. FOOD WRITER, OLIVER GILLIE SUGGESTS ADDING OTHER VEGETABLES TO MASHED POTATO.
Although the potato doesn’t count as a portion, the vegetable you add will: “Children love mashed potato. I have found that they also enjoy mashed potato with swede or parsnip mashed in as well”

4. FOOD WRITER MAGGIE PANNELL SUGGESTS HAVING PREPARED SNACKS:
“Make up little goodie bags of mixed dried fruits to pack into lunch boxes or to take on outings and picnics. Raw vegetables are generally preferred to cooked ones and kids usually like finger food so cut up a selection of veg to serve with dips”

5. Or try making ‘Traffic Light Fruit Salad’ which consists of strawberries, kiwi fruit, yellow melon, yellow plums and mango. This is all chopped up very small.” You can use tinned or fresh fruit for this and experiment with different fruit and vegetables in the same colours.
HELEN BRUNTON, HERTS