How do you get 5 a day into your 3 yr old. Could do with some new ideas.

[bubblejumping]

Any ideas that dont involve sticking raw fruit/veg on a plate and putting it in front of him greatley received.

dd is very resistant - I hide lots of things, eg spag. bol has tomato, carrot, courgette etc in there somewhere without her realising. She will eat puree fruit pots and bananas so she gets lots of those. I do give her a vitamin tablet each day to make sure...

she is now nearly 4 and is starting to be slightly more adventurous but still dislikes the texture of fruit & veg on it's own....and I swear I did everything right when she was little...!

DS1 is nearly 4 - he has
1 - a glass of fruitjuice at breakfast (sometimes we add fruit puree into his porridge)
1 - fruit portion at nursery break time
2 - veg in his meal (we have a hot lunch)
1 - packet raisins mid afternoon snack
2 - evening meal (we tend to have a hot meal again)

inbetween times he randomly asks for fruit grapes, orange, banana, apple.

However he does go through weeks where he doesn't eat well - I tend to take things on a 2 week balance.

Does your little one not like any fruit or veg?

just wanted to add this link

will help you to realise perhaps your little one has more than you thought?

well going by that DS has five portions in his lunchbox today!

He does like fruit though, don't really have any good suggestions apart from smoothies and ice lollies if they don't like them...

Stewed fruit has always gone down well with my two. And with pears they need to be very lightly stewed indeed and then just mashed. Sometimes I add a pinch of cinnamon to stewed apples. Bananas and custard?

Make a pot of creamy vegetable soup. Cook a load of veg in stock or water with marigold powder added, blend, then add some milk and cook for a bit longer. Maybe serve with croutons. I find that on car journeys, giving them a chopped up apple is a good time for them to eat it as they are sat passively, but you may worry about choking.

You can count fruit juice as one of the five. A good time to serve this is breakfast, I think.

what about dips? Cook some carrots till soft, blend to a puree, mix with humous and give to your DS with some breadsticks or toast soldiers.

If he eats mashed potato puree some veg into that too, carrot, swede and sweet potato work well.

my 3 and 4 yo will have fruit juice at breakfast and sometimes a piece of fruit.

lunch will be a sandwche, and ill add cucumber and carrot on the side

snacks sometimes off humzingers (for a treat) or fruit/veg

dinner will be at least 2 portions of veg

i have been trying my best to eat 5-10 portions of fruit and veg a day, so try to give them at least 5. but there are days ( at a party/ out for dinner) where this wont happen. and i do let them eat choc/sweets. but as long as i know they are eating wwell the other days i dont think it matters to much.

cx

flapjack with mashed banana (or any other mashed fruit) and dried apricots and raisins in it? (have recipe if you want)

Also - they're expensive, but Organix do date and banana bar things that look like something more exciting and are very sweet and chewy so might be thought of as more of a treat than fruit!

Thanks jen - are those portion sizes for adults? Are they the same for kids?

Liking the carrot and hummous idea.

He did much better when he was younger, and he would eat everything apart from olives! I did hope that we would be ok on the fussy eating thing, but he does refuse foods I know he does like sometimes, I thought trying new things might be a way forward. I do find it easy to give him the same things because I know he will eat them so I have to make sure I do different sometimes.

I would love the flapjack/banana recipe nooname if you get chance. Thanks.

Good ideas advice here. Seems sometimes that all they want is sausages and breadsticks and chocolate. Actually does eat pears, peas, broccoli too. Wish I had time to cook even more?!!

If you make bolognese sauce, whizz as many veg as you can find - mushrooms, courgettes, peppers, carrots, and so on (I even used borcolli once!) - in the food processor and cook for ages, poss in a slow cooker, so the veg are indistinguishable from the rest of the sauce.
We also have home-made fruit sauce (bananas, strawberries, or whatever's going a bit mushy) over ice-cream. Just blend it up and pour over. The bags of frozen fruit in the supermarket are particularly good for this.

Fruity milkshake smoothies are popular with my dc.

This is interesting, but it still doesnt tell you how to do it!

www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/?page_id=59

75g butter
75g brown sugar
2 tblsp honey
200g oats
medium banana (mashed) (as ripe as you can get it for flavour)
dried fruit (as much as you can fit in! I put raisins and chopped apricots)

Melt butter, sugar and honey in saucepan, mix in oats, banana and dried fruit.

Cook at GM4 in baking tray (sorry don't know elec equivalent) for 30-40 mins

DS (19mo) loves this and asks for flapjack constantly!!

(I usu double it up as the above doesn't make loads.)

Also, you could substitute the mashed banana with mashed tinned pears? (We eat a LOT of tinned fruit in our house!!)

How do I get 5 a day into my fussy dcs? Sadly, the only way I do it without murdering them is to send them to fulltime nursery/school with fabulous onsite cooking.

They eat so much better and so much more variedly there than at home (even though I could cook them exactly the same). Peer pressure rocks.

those are adult portion sizes so for a 3/4 year old I reckon half an adult portion should cover it?

Well, as an afternoon snack, frozen peas in an eggcup seem to work for mine.

am I right in thinking that a portion of baked beans counts as part of the 5 a day? Kids will usually eat those.

Agree with giving a glass of apple of orange juice, that's another one.

Often kids love soup and you can put loads in there; ds dips bread in rather than spooning the whole lot in as a grown up would but he still gets soup inside him that way

frozen peas as a snack is a new one on me! good idea.

Mine also like frozen peas in a little pot as a snack.

Try providing the fruit and veg before a meal, when they're really hungry and waiting for the main course.

I also bribe. Cheese on pasta if vegetables are eaten. otherwise, no cheese. Or no pudding. etc. That's very effective with my fussiest one.

The cloudy apple juice (which apparently is better than the clear)
Also red berry smoothies
Tangerines...think it's the getting the peel off and splitting it up that appeals
Apples and Bananas are a winner
Raw carrot sticks go down well
I buy that frozen spinach and find the kids will eat that as it's really really finely cut and can be put in pasta sauces etc without them caring. Grating courgettes in to meals seems to work.

Other thing that worked for us was getting people DS1 liked A LOT to convert him...so he thinks his grandads favourite veg is brocolli and now eats that. One of our best mates made him chase round the garden to steal his strawberries and he's eaten them ever since. DS2 will eat anything DS1 eats even if he doesn't like it.

Another idea - we're having egg fried rice for tea made of leftover rice, diced chicken, tin of sweetcorn, diced cooked carrot, handful of frozen peas and egg stirred through. You can use whatever veg you have and it's hard to get a spoonful without a sneaky vegetable making its way in.

Mine also like frozen peas - thought we were the only ones!

You're never alone, scoot.