To think most kids hardly eat any fruit and veg

[Mummabear04]

I've just noticed that when I have kids round for play dates that loads of them will not eat any fruit or veg snacks. I understand not everyone will like everything but there are so many kids who will refuse apples, strawberries, grapes and I just find it mad. None of these kids have AFRID or any other needs. They always ask for sweets and chocolate which is fine and I don't mind giving them some but AIBU to think that most kids don't really eat any fruit or veg?

I had 3 3 year olds here at the weekend and they ate about £12 of berries in about 45 seconds and then ate an entire water melon.

But what else did you have on offer, OP? If these kids come from households where chocolate bars/biscuits/cake are seldom to be had (which is increasingly likely), they will opt for what they don't have at home.

It's likely those kids have fruit and veg all the time at home. If 'treat' food is given as an option, they'll take it.

I haven’t noticed this. Good consumption of fruit and veg (esp fruit) in our house and respectable with guests. What I will say is, I wouldn’t judge what a child eats as a ‘guest’ as what they’re normally like. My children would lean towards treats in other people’s homes as I don’t have many in our cupboard. For some children being at a play date can be a bit like a party where they may overdose on some of the good stuff when their parents aren’t around.

This is the complete opposite from what I've experienced, especially with young girls. We put out choices of foods and they always go for the fruit platter, which we have to continually top up.

Not to be sexist, just again my experience, the boys do tend to go for the hot dogs, crisps, which the girls to too but only one!

Have a ND child who refuses fruit and veg so I have to grate it into meals, he will only ever go for the burgers etc.

Honestly, put out out a huge platter of so many fruits and crudités and the girls gasped in amazement and ate them all! Xxx

Sorry, my kid loves both fruit and veg, and so do the majority of her friends. She goes through phases with both, obviously, but doesn’t exclude them entirely.

I disagree. Most kids I know who are fussy eat a lot of fruit. Fruit is obviously sweet and full of natural sugar so it's not common that children turn it down. I have a toddler who is picky. Conversations at toddler group are all about how the kids will eat fruit but not much else. Vegetables are indeed harder to get into my child!

All my kids and foster kids eat loads of fruit especially strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and the red seedless grapes. I buy a punnet of grapes and it's gone the same day. Same with raspberries. I have to buy 2 punnets of them if I want any. They have frozen fruit smoothie everyday too. They eat vegetables too. I think if you have always given them from when they are tiny they will eat them.

I've met one kid that wouldn't eat any fruit but most kids will eat most fruits. I made a fruit salad with about 5 diff fruits and the kid wouldn't eat any of them. 😂
I find if you give them fruit first and sweets/chocolate later they will demolish the fruit. Give them sweets first and they don't want the healthy stuff after.

i can see why fruit and veg is avoided you can’t guarantee what you are going to get. In one punnet of strawberries you can get so much variation. Sweets and chocolate are consistent

My child wouldn't eat fruits that had been mixed together, but he might eat them separately.

Maybe that was my mistake then but he did say he doesn't like fruit. I'm a bit of a beige eater myself and find the textures of some fruits a bit wrong, citrus fruits in particular. I love the taste of citrus but the textures are gross to me.

That's really odd... I wouldn't buy berries for playdates, way too expensive for us.

At the moment, a single watermelon cut in slices is perfect. Quite cheap and plentiful.

Always have a fruit platter out for play dates always gets demolished. I remember one DC when my eldest was little absolutely demolished my fruit bowl, she just would not stop eating the fruit.

My son has some dietary needs which means he can only eat very small portions of fruit and veg and has to completely avoid some such as berries, broccoli & grapes.

He can eat apples, bananas, carrots, cucumbers.

Generally, I feel like fruit is a popular choice with kids but veg, not so much.

Most kids seem to love fruit.
I had a punnet of cherries yesterday and they were demolished by kids here on a play date, even the one that asked me what they were. Veg is more hit or miss. But most kids seem to eat cucumber, cherry tomatoes or peppers.

My DS2 eats mountains of fruit. He is also vegetarian. I have stopped buying berries because the punnet is finished before it comes out of the shopping bag and it's too expensive. I don't think its great because of the sugar content so I've tried to restrict him to 3 pieces a day which he has never stuck to. His immune system is some kind of miracle though so now I let him get on with it!

Dc1 will eat 5 a day naturally. Loves both fruit and veg. Dc2 will eat it if put in front of them but wouldn’t choose fruit themselves over a bag of crisps. Dc3 I ensure eats fruit with breakfast, has a snack plate when they’re back from school with some fruit and veg on and then has 2 different types of veg with dinner. They would also have some fruit after dinner (and then an ice cream 😂).

I wouldn’t think a play date was a prime example of what kids eat. All of mine eat a decent variety of fruit and veg (fussiest one eats the most). When their mates come round they usually go get their own food and it’ll be pizza or nuggets which we don’t typically eat a lot of.

Last time Dd had a sleepover they ate loads of fruit.

ND children may have aversions to fruit and not have afrid. My ND child won’t eat fruit that doesn’t look perfect (tbh I’m similar) and if she has eg a strawberry that tasted bad it’ll put her off them
for a while.

My DD is 21 now and eats pretty much anything but when she was little she wouldn't eat fruit at other people's houses. She was really fussy about varieties and optimum ripeness. She's still more of a veg person than a fruit as an adult.

She did spend a lot of time at her best friend's house as a kid and as a consequence eats much hotter curries than her siblings as bf's Dad didn't hold back on the spice in his cooking - even for tiny tots. She ate those curries but would definitely have politely declined an apple!

My youngest loves almost all fruit. Much less keen on veg though will eat salad veg like cucumber and carrot sticks- hates most cooked veg except peas and corn. I think that's fairly common though her bestie won't eat any veg and the only acceptable fruits are apples and grapes. She does have lots of sensory issues .

My eldest would eat pretty much all fruit or veg but if crisps or biscuits were on offer he'd make a beeline for those first. I think I would have done as a child too.

I think it's natural for kids not to be keen on veg as a lot of it has a bitter undertone which humans are programmed to be suspicious of initially. In my day we were made to eat our veg which I don't agree with, though I think kids should be encouraged to try and retry as their palate develops. My eldest was astounded to find he suddenly liked olives in his mid teens. But a lot of parents now will accept the first no as permanent. I'm not saying that's right or wrong but it may explain a higher rate of veg refusal these days.

I work in a nursery. For snack, the children eat watermelon, apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries, cucumber, and pineapple.

Most of them only eat sweetcorn and peas for veg though.

My kids ate a lot when they were small, DD at 2 would pretty much only eat fruit & veg but she's now 11 and has ARFID and eats cucumbers, tomatoes and peas but that's it. My DS is 14 and I guess has gone the teenage way and eats very little veg, except he loves carrot sticks. The closest I can get to them with fruit is YoYos, despite having a full fruit bowl right there.

DD is 3.5 and has been very fussy but it is slowly improving. She will eat apples, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, banana if it hasn’t been squashed and satsumas.
Veg she is fussier about- eats very little cooked veg but will eat a tomato pasta sauce happily and loves a slow cooker lentil Dahl I make with butternut squash but it’s so broken down in the slow cooker it’s just part of the sauce. But she much prefers raw veg- carrot (won’t touch it cooked), cucumber, pepper, sometimes spinach or rocket, sometimes tomato and recent addition of sugar snap peas.

Oh she will eat cooked sweetcorn. Won’t touch peas though!

I actually commented about the lack of fruit and veg on the menu when we were out for a meal. Children’s menus in loads of places don’t seem to feature much. I only noticed because my DS absolutely loves both. However I also think that if a parent has a limited diet, the child is more likely to. My DP marvels at our DC eating some of the stuff he will but his own palate for veg is quite minimal if I didn’t get things like pepper, cucumber and olives my DC wouldn’t either