So those of you that actually manage to get 5 a day into your dc please could you share your secrets

[MilaMae]

Please!!!!!

Did A Karmel with my 3 (4 year old twins and a 3 year old), always given massive amounts of fruit and veg, healthy diet not much meat etc. DP and I are adventurous eaters, love food etc.

2 of the dc eat like us, most things, one of the twins is really fussy. We always eat together and I never serve any alternatives if it isn't eaten we don't make a fuss but they go hungry. Fussy twin goes to bed hungry I'm sure most nights

Anyway although the fussy twin eats realatively healthy food he won't try anything new,loves junk(no idea why as he doesn't get it that often) and refuses anything green. Consequently we're now down to peas and sweetcorn on the veg front (peas are rapidly travelling onto the yuk list too).

Some days he loves any fruit, other days something is temporarily dis-liked. The other 2 now and again go through phases when a fruit or veg is temporarily dis-liked. So when I serve meals you can guarantee one of them leaves one of the veg/fruit.

The upshot is although I always serve 5 a day most days I'm starting to realise they never actually eat 5, especially fussy twin (we never call him fussy btw I'm just using it for speed on here).

So those of you with 5 a day eating kids how on earth do you manage it?????

charmander, surely popcorn doesn't count towards the 5-a-day. Corn is a grain.

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Put dried fruit on weetabix/porridge.

Pureed root veg, watered down mixed with Bisto powder (Nany makes the best gravy, so DGD says.)

Homemade Veg soup, Pureed, wedges of toast to dip in.

Bananas in little pita breads, 2 mins in the microwave, then toasted. (Mindees love these as after school snack)

Toasted cheese and onion Sandwiches made with the green bit off scallions. Cooled and cut into small triangles.

Roasted Veg, mixed in cheese sauce and put on pasta.

I give mine a snack plate with every meal. So he has a salad with everything. It's always tomatoes, cucumber,olives and ham or cheese
He then has fruit
He then has cake or ice cream etc
He has to eat some fruit before the treats

well if sweetcorn counts then so should popcorn - it is just dried sweetcorn that is exploded!
We have a duck that makes our sweetcorn - as one of my class said last week when i tooki it to school - it looks like the duck is throwing up popcorn! Everyone still ate it.

Sorry, just read that back.
Obviously it is not a real duck, but a machine made to look like. My class said it sounded like a hairdrier, which is fair comment as it is a bit like one, so i had to stress that they were not to go home and expt with any hairdriers and corn

Well i have just googled and the 5 a day website says that popcorn is too processed to count, so i stand corrected. Anyway it tastes nice, and is low in sugar and salt so we will carry on eating it.

Hmm, you have a point charmander. Popcorn and sweetcorn are the same thing, just in different forms. I bet popcorn isn't on the 'approved' 5-a-day list though.

Oh, x-posted

No problems with dd1 (aged 6.2) but since the only veg dd2 (2.2) will eat in recognisable form (ie. not made into a pasta sauce) is carrot it it sometime difficult - Ohh I lie, she likes tomatos and cucumber. She is changable with her fruit as well. Loves apple currently and will eat grapes. Has a love/hate affair with bananas and pears and will occasionally eat kiwi fruite if dd1 is having!! Frustrating in the extreme from a shopping perspective!!! Must confess of buying Organix fruit bars which she loves and figure they must count for something. She also loves 'alphabetti spagetti' and apparently there is 1 serving in the tomatoe sauce?

No problems with dd1 (aged 6.2) but since the only veg dd2 (2.2) will eat in recognisable form (ie. not made into a pasta sauce) is carrot it it sometime difficult - Ohh I lie, she likes tomatos and cucumber. She is changable with her fruit as well. Loves apple currently and will eat grapes. Has a love/hate affair with bananas and pears and will occasionally eat kiwi fruite if dd1 is having!! Frustrating in the extreme from a shopping perspective!!! Must confess of buying Organix fruit bars which she loves and figure they must count for something. She also loves 'alphabetti spagetti' and apparently there is 1 serving in the tomatoe sauce?

i worry about how much i think about corn - i keep wanting to do a lesson with my science club on the different ways you can get it e.g. polenta, popcorn, on the cob, baby ones, creamed, frozen, tinned. Not sure what they point of the lesson would be.
I really need to get out more!

mine do, actually more like 10

but I think they may just be freaks who LIKE veg

we do stuff like them helping cook, choosing / growing novel veg (oooh the excitement ) but I suspect that this only broadens their horizons a bit really, they are quite adventurous.

One thing I've noticed, a lot of kids do go through this phase, about ooooh 2-4ish were they are very very picky, and gradually it gets better from there...

ds1 (8) given half the chance will only eat fruit and veg but ds2 (3) is a true carnivor (?sp). I try to space the fruit and veg throughout the day so a cut apple with breakfast. Somthing with lunch etc.

He loves dried apricots and other dried fruit (guess they are sweet tasting)
we also juice at breakfast time - he makes his own and chooses his own fruit. I let him choose his own fruit in his basket when shopping - he loves avocado from doing this.
He loves making his own pizza and choosing the toppings.

Al labour intensive but easier than the tanturms in the long run

iirc fruit juice only counts as one portion, as does dried fruit?

might be wrong though. anyway they taste nice and get kids used to fruit tastes which is pretty important imo.

You're right fillyjonk, only one portion of fruit juice counts towards the 5-a-day.
A friend told me baked beans count. Is this true? i didn't believe her.
I don't really understand why potatoes don't count. Do you think it's to stop people counting a bag of chips towards their 5-a-day?

Weegle, that book sounds v interesting and basically my philosophy (grown from being a VERY fussy and stubborn child with big control issues ).

We have our daughter's play cooker next to the veg trolley so she is always playing with, and naming vegetables. No pressure to eat it whatsoever, just encouraging a happy familiarity and joy in food, and so far she does seems to be wanting to try things...

At 2yo she eats a huge variety of foods - but is still very much a toddler so is v random in how much she eats/what she goes for first/decides to leave today . We did BLW - although I didn't realise that;s what we were doing until after we started . I know this doesn't help OP, but I do think it helps if kids have an element of control over what they eat from their plate, especially in the early years where they are learning about control.

DD went through this - she's still reluctant to eat loads of veg but will now try stuff.

I second the 'just keep offering it' technique. For the last year I've been putting a tablespoon of organic mixed veg with butter on her plate with her potato/rice and meat/fish and she largely has studiously ignored it, but around Christmas she began to eat peas and green beans, now will also have the carrots and sweetcorn too without much prompting (as opposed to the tearful shrieking I used to get to take them off the plate now mummy!).

Cucumber slices - 4 thick ones is apparently 1 portion for a toddler and she will happily hoover these up if I put them at the side of a sandwich for a 'treat' .

When she was being really picky I found that mashed ripe avocado with a spoonful of crème fraiche and a tiny squeeze of garlic purée (dd has loved garlic and garlic bread since she could gum) or else shop-bought guacamole, with a few bread sticks and carrot sticks to dip in were popular and a good way of getting healthy fats and nutrients in.

I spread it out throughout the day so for example for his lunch ds1 will have a cheese spread sandwich, ham, cubes of cheese cucumber, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and grapes all on the same plate so he's had 4 fruit and veg before he's even had his night time meal which usually contains 2-3 veg. It looks pretty when cut up and laid out on the plate buffet style so he chooses what to eat first and inivatably eats the lot.

Our night time meal is stuff like spag bol in which I put 6 veg in, or fish fingers, with mashed potato, broccoli, carrots and butter beans, pizza and salad we've discovered the dc's love mayonaise so we give them that and they love dipping the salad in it and this is a brill source of omega 3 as well.

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I know Cod but I have to do something that makes me feel like i'm a decent parent considering the rest of the time I follow the benign neglect school of thought.

like ledodgy jsut space it out
after cereal mine tend to have fruit, mid mornign fruit and A biscuit..lol
Lunch time salad on side of sandwiches or pitta pizza type stuff with hidden veg, evening meal has either salad or veg with it.