childrens diet!

[peppajay]

I was just wondering what people think of my childrens diet, they are 6 and 4 my problem is my DH works till 8pm so is too late to eat as a family, so I feed them first at about 5pm and I eat with DH later, so I have got myself in to a bit of a habit of not giving them the most nutriously healthy meals but food they like. For example their weekly meals usually consist of

day 1- jacket potatoe with tuna, cheese and salad cream
day 2 - pasta with tom and basil sauce
day 3- ready meal (as swimming lessons till 6pm)
day 4- fishfingers or nuggets, chips and brocolli
day 5- tinned spaghetti or scrambled egg on toast(as rainbows night!!)

Weekends we generally do eat together and usually a roast one night (they loathe but I insist on one mouthful of the veg!), and the other night a home made spag bol or cottage pie. Lacking from this diet I know is fresh veg but they both hate it and will not touch it and also laziness on my part I cook and it is wasted!! They will now eat broccoli and I am working on carrots!!

Pudding is a pot of fruit puree, yoghurts or fromage frais.

Snacks are bananas, breadsticks and raisins and after school 2 biscuits.

They don't much between meals and have chocalate and cakes but not on a regular basis.

Should I be making an effort to make them more home cooked meals or is this nutrious enough.

Thanks x

Where's the fruit?? To be honest, it's not the greatest diet I've ever seen, but it isn't the worst. I'd ditch the ready meals, they are full of salt. It's easier to make an extra portion one day, then freeze it. I'd serve up more fruit though, especially as you're all veg-phobic. Cucumber is nice, it just tastes of water.

I'd probably blend some vegetables into the pasta sauce, they won't spot it, and add some protein to it if you can. Ready meal night... I'd probably cook something from scratch and freeze that so it is just as easy cooking as a ready meal but with less rubbish in it. I'd definitely be working on the veg issue too, a bit of broccoli once or twice a week isn't really enough. Other than that, it doesn't sound too bad. I'd give fresh fruit rather than puree, especially if it's processed puree and not homemade.

As long as they're healthy enough, don't stress about it too much :)

First bit looks OK, and there are easy enough things you could do with that to make them more nutritious. Make it tuna and sweetcorn on the jackets, add grated carrot to the pasta sauce and throw in some peas..

DS eats these kinds of meals at least half of the time, but other meals he has are things like chicken, new potatoes and baked beans.. or sausages, root veg mash and brocolli.

I'd shove a salad next to most meals (even if its just raw carrot, cucumber, tomato and olives) and insist on one piece of fruit with each meal.

Same as above really - just add a little bit more fresh fruit and veg. If they're not keen on veg - would they eat it raw? My DD doesn't like cooked carrot but will eat it raw.
Smoothies are a good way of getting fruit refusniks some goodness in - bit better than juice alone.
I tend to make up quantities of the foods DD eats then freeze individual portions which can be easily defrosted and heated up.

Do they have a cooked meal at school?

You have said it in your post yourself OP " have got myself in to a bit of a habit of not giving them the most nutriously healthy meals" and "Should I be making an effort to make them more home cooked meals or is this nutrious enough" I think you know

Between 3 and 5yo I slowly introduced salad therefore the days that I do have things like nuggets and chips I add salad and have over time put less nuggets and chips on the plate.

A salad and fruit are not time consuming with regard to preparation so no excuse really. As long is there is not a real (ie gagging) hate of veggies and I see you say that they eat a bit at roast meals these things can be slowly introduced IMHO

Thanks for all your help there have been some good suggestions. I will try sweetcorn with the jacket potato and they do have cucumber in their lunch boxes and quite like it so could as someone mentioned easily make a salad on 'chip' night. I admit alot of it is me being lazy!!!! They are not big fruit eaters either and will not touch strawberries, apple or orange, hence why I tend to offer fruit pots, but will try offering more.

I have never offered crisps, choc, cakes as snacks and where they don't like fruit they always have raisins, breadsticks or rice cakes. My DD will drink fruit juice but is just as happy with water and my DS will not touch any type of juice so he just drinks water or milk.

If we could all eat at 6pm I would definitely cook more varied food and they would eat what we eat and at weekends and when DH is on holiday we do, I have just lost motivation in the week!!

Another option is to serve them what you and your dh had the night before. Making enough for them to have the leftovers will save you time at their dinner time but might lead to more variety for them. Not necessarily every night.

Just chop up some salad, and whack it in the fridge. I can understand why you cook foods like this; they are quick, easy, and you know that your children will eat them. You really do need to encourage them to eat veg though, whether you eat them or not. Some children can spot hidden veg a mile away, so you're always better off being upfront with them. Have a veg tasting session, get them to make a pizza, there's a fair few things that you can do. What about chicken? You can use leftover chicken from sunday to make wraps (with salad on the side), or stir fry/curry/casserole/chicken with noodles etc. It's the same with fruit, there's more than strawberries, apples and oranges. They will find something that they like, just keep trying.

Point child at fruit bowl, say 'pick at least one'. Easy.

Haha, fruit refusnik DS would laugh at me if I said that... he's never eaten fresh fruit in his life

I wouldn't let him get away with that! Not even and orange, grapes... a tomato?

What would you propose Frontpaw?

He's almost scared of fruit - my sister is just the same. He accidentally drank orange juice once out of his cousins beaker and hated it so much he burst into tears! He'll eat raisins and fruit bars, and has fruit puree on his ready brek but nothing on this earth would make him eat an orange or grapes. I could possibly get him to take a tiny bite of apple, but that's about it.

He'll get there, no point pushing it with him because it just makes it worse.

How old is he? With DS it was more of monkey see, monkey do, so whatever we had, he wanted. Maybe let him loose in the fruit aisle and let him choose. DS likes oranges which I wouldn't have thought I'd because I can't be bothered with them. Fruit kebabs are quite fun for smaller kids.

Pushing will make it worse. Kids are like bloody mi6 agents when it comes to refusing to do something!

Same as Jareth, I wish I could point my 2.10 yr old DS at a fruit bowl and say pick one! He just wouldnt! I eat fruit every lunchtime with him - a variety too, cherries, watermelon, grapes, bananas, strawberries, apple etc etc and always offer him some but he just refuses. At nursery they only have fruit for snacks, which I thought he'd eat as all the other kids do, but he'll only have raisins when they're on offer. He will also eat dried strawberries and cranberries and fruit bars but nothing fresh. So annoying as he used to eat lots more! Have tried kebabs, smily faces, dips, 'recipes' out of cbeebies magazines etc but to no avail. He will however eat any form of fruit crumble I give him, so he now has a massive amount of non sweetened stewed fruit with the tiniest bit of crumble on top as a pudding regularly! Am sure he won't be like this forever...

He's 4.. and trust me, there's no persuading him. He's seemingly immune to all peer pressure from nursery/friends/family and it doesn't matter how much he sees his friends scoffing fruit there is nothing that will change his mind. He just hates fruit. Even hated it as a baby..

It's a texture thing with DS - he hates slimy food. Doesn't like sweets either, no jelly, no haribo (odd child).

Fine with me - I'd rather he ate veg anyway :)

Maybe it's when they get a little older... DS has always eaten well, although the odd child won't touch avocados. Maybe once they start mixing more and more and more children they will try other foods. it is a law that children will eat whatever is given to them by another child or it's mum. Even if it is very healthy or complete crap. I have to say that as an adult, there is some food that I think I probably wouldn't have given a second try of I had them for the first time - pasta, coffee, dark chocolate...

I would probably go the long route and ask them to choose fruit in the shops and ask them to put it nicely in the bowl at home, then leave it at that. Every time you pass it, say yummy yummy and pick up a piece of fruit and eat it without offering in to the little 'un. If its a big deal they can sense it! It is another Law that children what what you have and want it even more if you don't offer it to them.

Ours have a portion of what we had the night before. Generally very quick and easy.

They love casseroles/roast/curry/thai noodles/fish pie etc. I think this would provide a more 'interesting' diet as your list seems a bit bland to me - but then DH and i are foodies so we love to have lots of flavourful foods

Good ideas, but none of that will work with DS (believe me, I've tried it all).
Even friends offering it doesn't do anything.

Maybe once he starts school, but I'm not getting my hopes up
He's finally started eating veg (totally of his own doing, nothing to do with me) and picking what he wants to eat. He's always been an exceptionally picky eater and tbh the only approach that has ever worked is totally ignoring it. Offer it, but I no longer care what gets eaten and what doesn't - that seems to have done the trick.

If the tomato and basil sauce is out of a bottle then all meals (if you include salad cream) involve processed foods.

How about a fresh piece of meat/chicken drumstick/fish + pots + veg, very quick and no effort.

Melon? How can you not like melon? Yum.

I often cook separately for the DC. I'm lucky as they eat most things, but pasta is easy and you can make a quick sauce by cooking some veg with the pasta and then either make a cheese sauce with butter, flour, milk, cheese (you can do it while the pasta is cooking) and add some ham or tuna, use some Philadelphia in milk or a bit of garlic, olive oil and passata. The cheap/value smoked salmon trimming are easy to chuck in the Philadelphia 'sauce'.

I also just put some carrot/celery/cucumber/pepper sticks and/or some cherry tomatoes or apple slices if I feel lazy, then fruit and maybe a yoghurt after.

Risottos can be fairly fast and easy to make too.

As for not eating things, I have always just stuck whatever on my children's plates, even if they say they don't like it. They know I like them to try it, but they don't have to, I just don't make a big deal of it. They all try everything eventually, although it took 6 years of frequent offerings before DS 1 ate scrambled egg.... .