To fear DC may get Scurvy?

[TopsyTurvyScurvyLurgy]

I'm only slightly kidding here.

DC2 will refuse to eat any fruit or vegetables at all. It's causing me a huge amount of stress, and I've tried everything. DC happily ate everything until around 2, and then just stopped
My other DC eat a wide range, so I'm not sure what's gone wrong.

Nothing will work - not blending / pureeing / mincing. Not soups or smoothies or sauces. Not bribing, or ignoring, or insisting.
We've read upteen books, visited the doctor, asked SENCO for advice.
I think they don't understand the issue, or think I'm exaggerating.

DC looks really run down, and is quite pale and skinny.

If anyone has any serious advice, or anything that will work, please share this with me!
They are in upper primary by the way,

I’m sure withvitamins and juice they won’t get scurvy. In a way you’ve made me feel better that my son is pale too. It’s a “pale” time of year

Have you tried frozen peas and corn?

Another option, put 2 of something easy on his plate like peas, and then make pretend voices for the veg saying please dont eat me, Ill never be the same again, then you eat one and ham up a scream and oh no etc. Many dc will reach for the other one to see if you will do the voices if they eat the other one.

I have known people who freeze grapes, then give them to DC as sweets. May not work if your son recognises it as a grape though!

I was like this as a child, my parents didn't stress and in my late teens and onwards my tastebuds exploded and I discovered so much wonderful food

I now have a dd8 who is even worse - pizza was only possible about a year ago - no veg (including any type of potato) - or fruit unless a tiny piece of apple with cinnamon and drowned in squirty cream once in a blue moon, she will grudgingly have juice several times a week

It's not scurvy that worries me but we have to work really hard on her diet to stop constipation and piles

Anyway I am trying to keep calm as she is very strong willed and I really don't want her to decide that food is the way exert control over me .. .

One thing I’ve found successful is putting chopped veg out before a meal - like a bowl of chopped cucumber and pepper or something. Don’t expect it to get eaten at first! Just put it on the table or somewhere within reach and say absolutely nothing about it - or just “there’s some peppers here” and then ignore them completely. Eat some yourself but just casually. Take them away without comment later.

They won’t get eaten immediately or maybe even for some time but hopefully one day curiosity prevails! Taking it away from the meal time set up makes it less stressful for you in a way and you don’t have that dispiriting moment of scraping full plates into the bin. Just put the bowl out again the next day or eat it yourself.

DS1 is 7 and also stopped eating all the healthy home cooked foods he used to happily eat, and all fruit and veg at 2 years old. He will also not drink juice/squash of any kind, only drinking water and 1 hot chocolate drink in the evenings. I put his multivitamin syrup in that.

It took a few years but he now eats potato crisps and some brands of fries. I also make him pizzas and so blend as many types of veg I can into the sauce, which gets covered in cheese so he has thankfully never noticed.

He won't have sauce with pasta so the pizza sauce is the only way I can get veg into him. I tried banana pancakes but he won't eat them.

He does not have scurvy, and is actually strong, fit and healthy!

To the PP that commented as to when did we start letting children be the boss, I'm not sure what you expect me to do when my child point blank refuses to eat these things. Hold him down and force feed him? I've tried bribery, and everything else I can think of in the past 5 years. My son seriously would rather starve than eat something he doesn't want. It isn't 'fussy eating' it's more of an eating disorder in my sons case based around sensory issues and anxiety.

DS2 in comparison adores fruit and veg, juices, milk, and will eat and drink pretty much anything.

How about fruity jelly i used to make that with bits of strawberries dropped in it. And milk shakes would they drink milk shakes? The pp who scoffed clearly didn't have a difficult eater

If they eat pizza they will eat veg in the tomato sauce. Just have to hide it well enough.

What about soluble vitamin C that makes an orange flavour drink? One thing of it is massively more than he needs per day, so even getting 10% of it into some squash or something should be enough.

My kids are not great fruit and veg eaters but when I put out a plate of cut up fruit with melted chocolate for a fondue they suddenly eat it all.

I've given up now with stressing over it, I always put the foods on their plate, they leave it..apart from the waste frustration, it's what we do now and part of our routine.
They have a decent multivitamin each too.

You cook, plate up and say ‘this is your dinner, there is nothing else’. All calm, no shouting. If they refuse if, take it away, but they have to sit until everyone else has finished. And remind them that it’s a long drop to breakfast, which is the next time food will be offered.

Been doing this for 5 years. My fussy DC still won't eat it, just waits till breakfast. People without fussy eaters need to realise it's the luck of the draw, not your amazing parenting. I've got one fantastic eater and one who eats nothing so I know it's bog all to do with my parenting!

OP, will he eat raisins? Or is there anything he might dip fruit or vegetable in - my fussy one loves peanut butter and will dip carrot or cucumber sticks in. Chocolate fondue?

Worst case, if they have a vitamin and juice it's not that bad.

I despaired of my DS2 eating fruit & veg (other than ketchup). At age of 9 we steeled ourselves and said he HAD to start trying stuff, it was the family law. He is now 10 and will eat apples, cucumber and smooth carrot soup. I serve a lot of apples, cucumber and smooth carrot soup. Is there any chink in his armour at all that you can build on?

Hummous?

Btw, he started with cucumber-dipped-in-ketchup and apple-slices-with-sugar-dip. Moved to the non-sugar version of both within a couple of weeks. (you'd think I thus had the answer, but same tactic not worked with other stuff...)

DS3.5 barely eats any fruit and veg.
I’m not concerned as he literally eats everything else .

My brother and I were both like that. My sister ate everything. My mum was really chilled about it and just let us eat what we liked. I sorted my diet out myself at 18, my brother in his early twenties. He's a six foot tall burly policeman. I run marathons for fun. Children won't starve themselves.
I think it's harder to get a serious deficiency than we're led to believe - I went veggie at about 15 so literally lived off pizza, chips and chocolate. I kept getting told I'd have a b12 deficiency and be anaemic. Since I was old enough to give blood I've had strong iron every single time and when I lost nearly two litres of blood giving birth (after eating a rubbish diet right through pregnancy) I still wasn't anaemic.
Honestly it's not worth you being stressed. He'll start eating it at some point when he's worried what his friends think.

Blend up some fruit and stuff it into ice lolly moulds and freeze? He doesn't need to know it's real fruit. Could even mix some cream in there too to make it less fruity tasting.

It is pretty normal for children to massively reduce what foods they'll eat at that age. More tastebuds start to develop, so things that used to taste fine are suddenly quite bitter. Keep on with the vitamins, keep offering fruit and veg without making a big deal of it. Eventually they'll get back to a more normal diet.

Fortified cereals?

Whole milk will have some vitamins in.

Look at what they do eat and look up the nutrients in that along with the vitamin tablets. They may be getting most stuff they need anyway, apart from fibre maybe.

Greens & reds supplement, hidden in a smoothie?

Tho it would have to taste ok. The green one I had when super strict dieting was vile.

After a very fussy underweight DS1 we were delighted when DS2 ate everything apart from green veg. Until he was 3, when he became very fussy.

He won't eat much fruit or veg at all- a tiny nibble of corn on the cob, a raw carrot stick before dinner and strawberries. We blend veg into chilli, bolognese sauce and curry and he doesn't notice it. He will drink smoothies too, but only commercial ones- not the ones I make 🙄😬.

How about a homemade banana or strawberry milkshake? Homemade cake/muffins with fruit eg apple or banana?

I wouldn't stress it, looking at your list he is eating enough things to survive.

DS doesn't eat fruit ever or veg much either. He pretty much lives on pizza, chicken nuggets and oven chips, with the odd ready meal or piece of fish. I recently taught him to fry steak properly so now he sometimes has that, with oven chips! He has cranberry juice, milk, water and coke to drink. He's been like that since the age of about 5, and he's now a 6ft3 strapping man of 33.

Don't make a big deal of it, have the veg there for him to choose if he wants and he'll either grow out of it or you can sneak the odd supplement in if you feel really concerned.

My DD is the same she has ASD and eats almost exclusively beige food.
We used to be worried sick about her eating habits but have learnt to relax about it more now. She used to see SALT and a dietician about it but if you're worried about the lack of fruit and vegetables in his diet you can buy complete multi vitamins. The one we use is a powder which we sprinkle onto her toast or in her drinks.
It's called biocare children's complete complex multi-vitamins.
I know how incredibly worrying and stressful it is but this should give him everything he needs whilst you work on expanding his range of foods. Good luck!

Some of the tips we took away from SALT are:
Try to eat together as a family as much as possible. We put everything in bowls on the table. DD helps herself from the bowl and she has a plate of safe food at the side to eat. We don't ask her to eat what's on her plate but as she can see us and her sister eating it's supposed to normalise it for her. She's started putting food to her lips and playing with it on her plate. All good as she's exploring the properties of it.
We also used to do something called food school where her nursery would take her and a small group of children and we would have a box of food in bags arranged by shape or colour. They would touch the foods, make up rhymes, touch parts of their face with the food and pretend they were other objects.
I see your DS is a little older so not really practical but could you start asking him to help you making pizza or something along those lines and ask him to decorate it using a variety of toppings. Or maybe having a vegetable patch in the garden and getting him to help tend it. The trick is to familiarise and normalise food. Start with the expectation that he won't eat it but try and get him to engage in activities to do with it. It's a slow and painful process but once he sees that he's not being tricked or pressurised to eat he may start to come round.

Not an immediate solution, but have you tried growing some? My DD wouldn’t touch tomatoes until we grew some cherry tomatoes and she got to water the plant and watch them grow. You don't need much space at all, just a small pot for some strawberries, blueberries or cherry tomatoes.