NOW CLOSED: Share your tips for getting children to eat their 5-a-day with Mumsnet and Innocent - you could win smoothies for you and your child's entire class

[AnnMumsnet]

As many of you know we have been working with Innocent, the smoothie makers, for a while now and they have now asked us to find out from you how you get on with encouraging your children to have their 5-a-day fruit and veg?

Please share your tips, stories and hints here - everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky winner will win smoothies for you and your children's entire class*. Even if your child willingly eats their 5 (or more!) a day please do share their favourite fruit or veg, how you prepare it or what got them started on eating particular fruit and veg.

Innocent say "We've been making our kids' smoothies for over five years now and in that time, lots of parents have written in to us with their hints and tips on getting healthy stuff into small people. So we've made a handy little guide of our favourite top 10 tips on how to help your kids get their 5-a-day (without having to hide a pineapple ring under their lasagne). Stuff like pea eating competitions, home-made ice lollies, shopping safaris, that sort of thing. But better still, we'd love to know all your hints and tips on how you get your kids to eat fruit and veg".

You can download their guide here

A selection of your tips will be used on the Innocent pages on Mumsnet

Best of luck

MNHQ

• If you win you'll get 5 multiserve cartons for your family and 30-35 individual smoothie kids wedges to cover the class - to be sent in September

My DS is probably hardwired to love fruit and veg, as that was the only thing I craved for during pregnancy.

But it seems to me that if we eat fruit and veg together, he is more likely to request it himself. I keep the fruit bowl full and regularly put a plate of sliced fruit on his little table. I also carry fruit on me when we go out e.g. to Musicbug or the softplay.

I also never say no when he asks for fruit in the shop even if it is quite expensive. This last one is a difficult one though. I would prefer him to eat in season.

I give them crudites with hummous as a starter before the main meal is ready. When they're hungry and that's the only food available they will eat quite a lot of celery, carrot sticks, cucumber and pepper sticks etc.

Agree with not drawing attention to it.

But little extras in our house include - the frozen spinach that comes in little briquettes - added to pasta, stews, omelette - it's just lumpy pesto, DD, honestly!
Ice cream is a summer staple and that's fine with me. But it is routinely served with fruit. And thus the whole thing is an enjoyable treat rather than having to eat the fruit and having ice cream as a treat.
DD loves those fruit yoyos that claim they have 1 of 5 a day in - if I'm concerned, or she's constipated, I add one or two of those in.
She loved smoothies til she was 3, at 4.7 she now won't have them at all but is eating well and growing like a weed so I am not fussing :)

I hide veg in my cooking eg I tend to whizz veg in a blender when making lasagne and sheperds pie etc. My girls also love juice so I juice a lot of fruit too.

We have our own pear tree which seems to encourage them to eat pears (but only from our tree picked by them)!

I bake a lot and decorate the cakes with fruit which my girls will happily eat, altho my youngest has declared she hates all fruit except strawberries, raspberries and cherries!

Frowns at the mumsnetter who pays her dc to eat veg.

Making our own smoothies, milkshakes, fruit only ice lollies all helps.

Cutting fruit seems less of a challenge than eating a whole apple/orange or whatever.

Also fruit with yummy yoghurt.

Vegetables: my dcs all love anything raw!! They've always eaten all vegetables.

Bribery.

One of my three is very difficult, particularly with fruit, and I have got him to try new stuff by strategies like "you can have one smartie for every cherry you eat - but only once we have finished". He often discovers that he quite likes the new fruit!

Free access to the fruit bowl. No access to the snack cupboard less than 1h before meals. If they are genuinely hungry, they will eat the fruit.

I have always made a point of never saying 'eat up your veg'. Everything on their plates has to be eaten equally, I have never highlighted the fact that veg is healthy and good for you and that crisps (for example) aren't. That way no one food is made out to be special and there hasn't been a battle of wills at the dinner table.

Often thinking out of the box is the way to go, for example:

Guacamole instead of just avocado
Hummus with veg sticks (2 portions just there)
Frozen grapes and melon balls
Sweet potato chips
Eton mess with strawbs, raspberries and blueberries

I also don't hide veg, but I do think of meals were it is incorporated:

Celery, carrot, mushrooms and toms in a bolognaise sauce
Potato, toms, asparagus, peppers in an egg tortilla/frittata
Sweetcorn, mushrooms, chopped toms and pineapple on pizza

My DS is 2.5

We have an allotment and so our DS is chief planter and picker. He eats most of what we grow- especially soft fruits, peas, beans. Watching something grow from planting is quite exciting.

We often give veg raw and as a starter, as well as in main meal.

Veg and Fruit are snacks he can have as much of as he would like, we have 3 fruit bowls and all in easy reach.

We shop together and sometimes DS has a clipboard with food pictures on it he has to go and get.

We all eat the same meals as a family, at the table with no TV/Music. We talk about our days.

We go to garden centres, parks, farms and often talk about living things, growing things.

Within reason DS helps prepare meals too, especially pizza toppings, salad selections, yogurt toppings.

I do "Carrot" soup. They loooove carrots, so eat it with gusto. As long as there are enough carrots in it to make it orange, I can get anything up to about 7 veg in it - celery, peppers, courgettes, apple that's gone soft, tomatoes (which they otherwise hate) etc etc.

Put loads of veg in cottage pie/bolognese sauce

Big plate of raw fruit and veg cut into sticks with cheese etc and hoummus or guacamole

Smoothies (although DD1 is allergic to banana)

Fruit juice lollies

Involving them in growing our own - we are doing strawbs, rasps, blackcurrants, greengages, cucumbers, tomatoes, courgettes, beans etc. DD1 is in charge of the strawberries this year.

We quite often have fruit for pudding - sometimes we will have meringue/ icecream with fresh fruit or sauce made with home grown blackcurrants. Sometimes a couple of big mangoes, or fresh pineapple, or bowl of cherries.

As they get older, cooking with them.

Fruitbabs - lovely fruit on wodden skewers - they love it!!

"I bet you can't eat 5 of those carrot (or whatever) sticks!!!" Works every time!

Homemade smoothies, banana, milk honey....strawberry, milk, yogurt, whatever.......

I boil down fruit with a little bit of water to make it into a puree and pour it on pancakes, rice pudding or icecream. This works really well with apples and berries.
My daughter especially loves it on its own.

Ask them to choose at the greengrocers. You'd be surprised what DD (3.5) goes for- stuff I don't have the foggiest how to prepare. Or indeed if I like it!
If she chooses it, pays for it, carries it home and helps prepare it, she tends to eat it. Not always, but tends to try a bit at least. It makes it a game rather than standing there bellowing "EAT IT!"

Soup is the easiest way.

Mine have to have fruit before dessert at teatime.

We are growing peas and blueberries and tomatoes and that helps too.

DD2 was convinced for years that those fruit winder sweets counted as one of her 5 a day!

I don't have any trouble getting mine to eat their five a day as they all eat a lot of fruit and don't mind veg. However i find putting lots of veg in a shepherds pie or casserole works well although DD1 always picks out cooked tomato.
DS2 sometimes eats 4 apples in a day, and at this time of year we get though a punnet of nectarines in about 48 seconds

Help the kids Grow some easier stuff at home, even cress or mung beans & help them cook/ prepare the food too; if possible along with other veg. They aren't as inclined to be repulsed by something they've made themselves.

Add v small amounts of 'new taste' veg to their favourite meals preferably in a sauce so they become gradually used to them.

Best of all treat fruit as a treat not a chore that has to be taken 5 times a day; fruit salad, cherries etc are all dessert choices in our house & the kids love eating it. I think a lot of kids are brought up to think that something is a less tasty option if it's healthy & it should be enjoyed.

Don't make a meal of it, just put it out and eat it yourself. We actually have the problem of stopping our DD eating fruit as she would eat it all day if she could.

Some days she loves mushrooms, other days she won't touch them. We just let her get on with it and, as a pp said, on average she will get her 5 a day but it might be spread over several days. We don't make out veg to be 'special' or different, it's just food.

We have never given 'baby food', she has always eaten exactly what we eat, spinach, broccoli and asparagus are very popular in our househole.

My tip is to start with a healthy breakfast. If the children have a piece of fruit (or bowl of chopped up fruit), wholemeal bread or wholemeal cereal and glass of juice/smoothie, they'll be well on their way to five a day...

I think it's wrong to hide vegetables in other foods in the hope that children won't notice. Surely children need to learn from a young age about the lovely variety of healthy food available to them. If you hide it and then they discover it, it could well make them more fussy about what they eat and they'll be searching their bowls/plates for the yucky stuff.

I know it's easier said than done and I, myself, struggled for years trying to get my DD to eat vegetables (fruit was never a problem) but now she's 11 she understands about healty eating and how a balanced diet is necessary to one's well being.

I generally hide it so I am reasured she has eaten veg but will always offer veg portions also. Your right though. DD has refused whole meals due to her finding a bit of red pepper in her meal.

For some reason, people always eat more fruit if you first chop it up, vary it a bit (eg blueberries with peach) and put it on a nice plate for them - husbands and children!

I also swear by my Jamie Oliver hidden vegetable sauce recipe - a blended up tom sauce with hidden courgettes, red pepper, onions, carrots and pumpkin, all cooked up with lots of oregano. You can put it on pasta, with grated cheese, or have it as soup with crusty bread and butter, or put it in a mince dish instead of normal tomato sauce.

As one of my two children is autistic, getting fruit and veg in was really hard at the start, but these two tips have really helped.

seedless I totally agree about endlessly hiding/pureeing veg in other food. I do pretty much the opposite and tell DD exactly what is on her plate, or what I'm offering her to taste. I put the food on the spoon and say "courgette" or whatever and then she can tell me if she doesn't like it or not. Things I do blend into sauces are spinach because I don't think it tastes great by itself and carrots sometimes as she's not a fan of them cooked in chunks.

Have banged on about this elsewhere but I also bought my DD a special knife for children from pampered chef and I think it's been utterly brilliant. She has her own chopping board and she pretty much gets a bit of whatever I'm chopping for supper to cut up on her own. She almost always tastes what she's chopping and as a result is utterly unfazed by herbs, green pepper, celery (the latter 2 I rarely eat raw on their own except in salads with other bits) etc

She uses a funpod to stand in and chops away right next to me.

She is very good about her veg and about trying new foods generally.

my ds2 who3 4.7 eats all fruit i buy he loves most veg too at school snack time they have a choice and my son always picks fruit hes like a fruit bad now cant remember the last time i bought him some sweets

*bat

my son munches a carrot around the supermarket - by the time we're at the checkout it's eaten so technically I suppose it's shoplifting...
I cook peas and broccoli into any pasta I make and smother in pasta sauce
I treat blueberries and strawberries etc as sweets..always use them as treats and as rewards
add berries into ice cream and yogurts, smoothies etc
mashed strawberries if a bit overripe and freeze into lollies
funny faces with veggies
baby veg - eg baby carrots, potatoes, sweetcorn for a mini- dinner what the grown ups eat the full size versions
add extra veg sliced onto top of pizza before cooking
offer side salad everytime they have a sandwich
try different fruit veg each week.. eg cress/ butternut squash/ the different melons
finally - ants on a log celery filled with peanut butter dotted with raisins