Please advise! Ill too much - what are your super-healthy family food ideas?

[sunnyeastermorning]

Before I had the kids I was really really rarely ill - several winters without colds, strong, fairly fit etc. etc.

Now it feels as if I succumb to everything, and the children and DH (though not as feeble as me) don't seem to fight things off as I think they should.

So I want to spend this half term on a real super-healthy-eating drive, and I need ideas.

Where we're starting from: 2-cook family of 5 (kids 8, 6, 3), don't really buy any 'ready meal' type stuff, but do buy bread, sausages, pasta, pesto, yoghurt - that sort of 'made' stuff.

Weekdays:

Breakfast: rotates between muesli, porridge (with fruit), and boiled eggs and toast

Lunch: not going to worry about weekday lunches (kids at school; DH and I either eat leftovers/toast/fruit at home, or something out)

Dinner: quite often cook twice, and am bored to tears of the stuff we generally eat - it's generally some sort of stew or curry (meat/ lentil/ beans/sausages) with potatoes/brown rice/white rice (if in massive hurry), with 2 green vegetables (large portions); pasta pesto once a week; stir fry. Then fruit, and sometimes natural yoghurt; cake or home made if we've got it (varies - maybe twice a week)

Weekend: all in for most meals. Want easy low-stress low-mess lunches, happy to cook more for dinner (often with aim of generating leftovers to be eaten up during the week)

Food fusses:
DS1 won't eat fish or lamb, and objects to anything other than chicken breast or beef mince. Could eat a whole head of broccoli, loves beans, lentils etc. Big eater.
DD not such a big eater. Not keen on fish either. Just eats less than DSs, so I'd like to make sure that what she does eat 'counts'
DS2 human dustbin
DH and me: mostly veggie, but really like delicious meat and fish. I don't think pasta is a food, but the rest love it.

Ideas, please! Budget not really an issue, but time/mess/faff is.

Bumping this in the selfish hope that there will be more ideas posted.

I am interested that some people are finding supplements helpful. We have been plagued by colds since Feb and was just thinking today that maybe we should all be taking vitamins.

Your diet does sound pretty good already! I do things like, hidden veg sauces where you put every thing from peas mushrooms or soup is another good one to get extra pulses grains and veg in your diet. I have a Facebook page with all the recipes on for free. I do budget cooking for fussy children!
www.facebook.com/budgetfoodmummy

Well since I've been eating fruit on an empty stomach and cut right down on caffiene and dairy I haven't been ill at all (and I used to have tonsillitis a LOT).

I also follow the Hay diet which is not combining heavy protein with carbs at the same meal (so a salad sandwich is fine but a meat burger is not).

I find that giving the dcs a lovely plate of fruit when they're hungry, rather than biscuits and crisps, after school or whenever, works very well for their health, and they can make faces out of the cut up fruit if they're old enough to cut it up themselves or you do it for them. The same goes for the adults without the faces of course