If your child eats lots of fruit and veg can you share an example day?

[iprobablyshoulddo]

I've always had poor eating habits, but I've tired to do better by DS.
I'm struggling to get a lot of veg and fruit in.
Grapes or strawberries with breakfast, beans or peas or sweetcorn with dinner (school lunch) He has a yo-yo bear as a snack.

Any tips for getting more in please?

You don't mention what you feed him for dinner OP. Onions, peppers and tomatoes with seasoning is the base of so many Italian, Mexican or Spanish dishes and is 3 of your 5 a day.
Mine are grown now but a typical day for when they were in primary would be:
Cereal with chopped banana or porridge with some defrosted berries. My DS went through a banana on toast phase I remember.
Fruit mid morning at school.
School lunch usually had 2 portions but they all had packed lunch for most of their school years. Meat or cheese and salad wrap, a pot of chopped fruit, a piece of banana cake or apple muffin,
Then for tea, pasta and sauce, mini roast dinner, roasted veg and couscous with a sausage.

Don't always rely on hidden veg; it's better to get a taste for vegetables when they still have their textures too. Hidden veg is s last resort.

Mine generally get offered a bowl of 'sticks' with hummus as a snack and fruit just before bed. Sticks made up of a mix of carrots, cucumber, sugar snap peas, peppers, tomatoes, runner beans, celery etc

If dinner is looking a bit low on veg then the sticks are a 'starter' as they watch TV / gaming etc before dinner

Breakfast: Avocado on toast with raspberries on the side.

Snack: Apple and strawberries, piece of cheese, some oatcakes.

Lunch: a few cocktail sausages, a few crackers with cheese, a pear, cucumber and tomatoes and a whole carrot.

Afternoon snack: couple of children's biscuits and a few nuts.

Dinner: Tuna pasta with veg in the sauce (onions, carrots, celery, broccoli).

Breakfast for ds aged 11 croissant and a pear, school snack carrot sticks and crackers, lunch at school no idea, dinner salad bowl (chopped up lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, cheese, olives, spring onions) to start then hot vegetables ( kale, broccoli, baby corn) with chicken and potatoes. Snack before bed grapes and breadsticks.

Count it over course of week not day. Lots of "hidden" veg in any sauce base (i.e. verybfibely chopped and mixed through tomato, Bolognese or curry bases. food processor is excellent investment), adding pulses to salads and stews, adding veg to pasta and rice (e.g. spiralised courgette or carrot to spaghetti, cauliflower food processor and mix through rice), using gram flour for pancake mix, adding spinach to a pack of bread mix to make green pizza dough...

Apple, grapes and berries with toast for breakfast plus fresh oj.

Lunch is school dinner he will usually eat veg with it.

Dinner chicken, potatoes, peas and gravy

Supper toast and banana

Banana with breakfast every morning.

School snack is an apple or orange.

School lunchbox has 2 or 3 of the following; peppers/ carrot/ cucumber and any fruit, usually grapes or strawberries.

If having a school dinner there will be no fruit or veg eaten!

At home I make most meals from scratch and freeze leftovers for days I don't have time to cook. I use as many veg ingredients I can in things like pasta sauces and if I cut up really small or blend they're easily disguised. Baked beans are loved in our house and are 1 of 5 a day although can have high sugars.

Fruit is given after meals in the week and treats after dinner at weekends.

My dc eats red peppers like they’re apples. His diet isn’t perfect by any means but he does like vegetables so luckily that’s one thing I don’t worry about too much. My younger one is going through a phase of refusing veg though but I hope by keep offering it and not making a big deal of it, he will come out the other side of it eventually.

typical day
breakfast: slice of toast with marmite (no butter as he doesn’t like it) or a bowl of shreddies, with an apple and a small handful of raisins

snack- fruit/veg at school, or at home he loves a ‘picnic plate’ of some combination of carrot sticks, cucumber, grapes, pears, peppers, mangetout, celery with cream cheese etc and then maybe some crisps or a biscuit now and then.

lunch- eats all the veg with his school dinner (apart from sweetcorn as he’s not a fan)

after school snack: crumpet or cheese and crackers with some fruit (grapes etc)

dinner: always serve with two portions of veg on the side (peas and oven roasted broccoli/green beans are his favourite ones)

if making a pasta sauce I try and hide/blend veg into them. I like to batch cook them and freeze, eg cauliflower blended into cheese sauce, every type of veg I have into a tomato sauce, chop up spinach small into curry’s etc.
Also I find if he actually helps me cook something he’s more likely to try it and usually then likes it.

Mine get more in holiday time. During termtime:
Breakfast always involves some fruit. This morning it was porridge with apple slices. Yesterday, blueberries with Greek yoghurt and muesli.
Dinner was lasagne cooked with onions, tomatoes, aubergine, courgettes and carrots. Served with a green salad on the side. Yesterday we had leeks for a starter, cooked with lots of lemon juice, and then roast lamb with potatoes, carrots and courgettes. A couple of days ago it was pasta, broccoli and cauliflower baked in a cheese sauce.
I cross my fingers they make it to one portion of fruit and one of veg via school/nursery lunches and snacks, but not holding my breath.
The other day we were travelling, so I packed a lunch including carrot sticks with hummus, cheese sandwiches with beetroot slices, and blueberries. Banana for a snack, and packed tea was pasta salad with pesto, broccoli and cherry tomatoes.

We're on half term this week, so the lunches are a bit different to term time. Breakfast and dinner are the same sort of thing regardless of school hols or term time. They are 7 and 9yo, but have always eaten whatever we're having.

Yesterday they had:
Breakfast - crumpet with cashew butter (DD1) and toasted olive bread with hummus (DD2) plus fruit (I'm not sure which as they helped themselves, but there is usually a choice of apples, satsumas, bananas, blueberries, kiwis and grapes). DD1 also had a Wheetabix, and both had one of those probiotic yoghurt drinks (holiday treat)
Lunch - steak, salad and hummus wraps
Afternoon snack - crisps and a couple of sherbet lemons 😬
Dinner - paneer, lentil and kale coconut curry with garlic naan

During term time, they each have school dinners once a week, DD1 because it's one less thing to carry on the day she has to bring a larger PE kit (for rugby/football/hockey etc. The day she has eg Dance, it isn't an issue), and DD2 because she wants the Friday fish fingers! Both prefer a packed lunch otherwise as they find the school food bland and the portions tiny. DD1 also hates the long queue!
Their packed lunches have a sandwich (usually cheese & pickle, but either egg, cream cheese or tuna & sweetcorn at least once a week), 1 or 2 portions of fruit (as listed above), and 1 or 2 portions of veg (the usual suspects, but also beetroot, olives, and gherkins in the rotation too). They also get either crisps or a cake bar/chocolate biscuit. Sometimes I put in pasta salad or a pasty instead of the sandwich.
There was a brief period where DD2 stopped 'having time' to eat the fruit & veg part of her packed lunch, although mysteriously had time to eat the crisps/cake... I found removing the treat so she wasn't forced to make such difficult decisions between what to eat in her limited time worked wonders 😬 She now manages everything again!

We also do the same as PPs and sometimes give 'starters' of chopped veg to snack on whilst dinner is being cooked, particularly if the dinner is a bit veg-light.

Banana with breakfast

Packed lunch includes a pot of veg (cucumber or cherry tomatoes) and a pot of fruit (berries at beginning of the week and grapes at the end)

Dinner will have one full portion of veg (e.g. broccoli) but I also add mini portions e.g. peas to anything I can (as it's easy to do so) and we have a lot of tinned tomato based meals. I also try to shove a bit of carrot into sauces or a bit of chopped up pepper.

Likely another banana (not sure 2 per day is good tbh).

He does eat a lot of junk as well though. And I do think I will find it harder as he gets older..as a portion will be bigger so I'll likely swap to cheaper things than berries.

I'm lucky he enjoys most basic fruit and veg. But he doesn't like lettuce, mushrooms and a few other bits and I never force him to have these.

We make pasta sauces with the following:
Tomato
Onion
Garlic
Courgette
Carrot
Celery
Peppers
Various fresh herbs

The above is blended into a smoothe sauce and cooked mince meat is added. That is a brilliant way to get your veggies in a child.

Soups. Home made, always blended. Kids love soups with crusty bread.

Smoothies and juiced vegetable drinks

Adding to an earlier post...not a regular occurence but yesterday DS was out with family and ate junk all day..not a vegetable in sight...and wasn't really hungry for dinner. So I did him a big bowl of cucumber sticks, red pepper and tomatoes and let him munch his way through it in front of the TV, which I know is a terrible habit but made me feel better!

I think the main thing is just always having it available and I find that mine like raw fruit and veg more than cooked. I tend to offer it on a sharing platter in the middle of the table for meals, as I find they help themselves and eat more if they think that someone else might eat it first, rather than dishing it out individually on plates (where there is no pressure to eat it!).

So yesterday, for breakfast, my youngest (6) had half a melon (yes, I know, he really likes melon 😂) plus a banana. That was all he had as didn't want anything else - probably because he'd eaten half a bloody melon!

They get a choice of fruit/veg at snack time at school - so no idea what he had, but it would have been raw fruit or veg.

School dinner for lunch, which wouldn't have been super veg laden. I think yesterday jacket potato with cheese, probably some crudites on the side, cake/yoghurt for pud.

After school, they just sort of feast all afternoon and that can be on various things, but yesterday was (more) melon, an apple, a banana, a carrot.

For dinner, we had pasta bake and then I pop a big plate of chopped salad veg on the table for everyone to help themselves - baby tomatoes, sliced pepper, sliced cucumber, and mixed leaf salad with salad cream, plus some gherkins, which I guess also technically count as a veg.

Breakfast:
Weetabix or porridge with an apple or banana

Snack at school: Apple or carrot or cucumber.

Packed lunch:
Ham and cucumber or cheese and cucumber sandwich, yogurt, and a piece of fruit or veg that she chooses.

Snack at home: yogurt and fruit and some wotsits.

Dinner: I always have at least 2 veg with dinner. Spag bowl, pasta dishes, meat and 2 veg, pizza with peppers / mushrooms, lasagne etc etc

She will also often have a fruit and veg smoothie. I'm conscious of the sugar in them though so I make them with frozen fruit rather than fresh, and I only add water or Greek yogurt. These fruit juices and smoothies store bought are full of sugar.

I think what you model makes a big difference - not on an individual meal but over a lifetime.

If you serve yourself a big pile of broccoli and cabbage, or a big variety of different veg, with your meals then even if you're giving them peas because it's the only thing they eat, over time they will gravitate towards your habits. What you do, not what you say. So I would recommend buying and eating a lot of whatever veg you like best. If you want them to snack on carrot sticks, snack on carrot sticks yourself.

We have some popular meals with a high veg content - home made soup, Chinese from one of those fresh veg packs, dhal, curries and stews that have always been heavily padded with veg, bubble and squeak. They don't love salad but they will eat it with mayo. I usually sling a can of beans or chick peas into curries, chillies, enchiladas etc. Coarsely grated onion/carrot/mushroom/pepper mix with a can or two of beans (butter beans, haricot, black beans) makes a good veggie base for any of those mexican dinner kits. Also add salad into sandwiches if they will eat it (mine won't). Also home made coleslaw and potato salad - completely different to the bought stuff, much higher veg content and I'll give kids a big pile of it. Supermarket stuff is more of a garnish.

My top tip of the lot is the home made soup. Bought tomato soup can have like half a portion of veg per serving and will have thickeners etc. Home made soup is nearly all veg.

My DS (5) is pretty good with his fruit and veg (but before I start sounding smug I should caveat this with he is food obsessed and our issue is his appetite and constantly asking for food!)

Typical day would be:

Breakfast - cereal with some sort of fruit topping (banana,raspberries or blueberries)

Morning snack - an apple and some cheese

Lunch - ham roll, smoothie to drink, baby cucumbers or carrot sticks with it, crisps

Afternoon snack - grapes and crackers

Dinner - something like pasta with a home cooked sauce (includes chopped tomatoes, onion, carrot and probably some sweet corn or broccoli)

On weekends usually a bit more lapse/beige food as we end up eating out more and he has a sweets day once a week where he's allowed two things (eg packed of buttons and a lolly). Usually cone kind of cake consumed over weekends what with the endless bday parties lol

If your little ones struggle with it a bit more a whizzed up blended sauce where lumpy veg are not as obvious may work well! I was a picky child and probably would have got on better with this as it's a texture thing!