NOW CLOSED Share your thoughts on eating your 5-a-day with innocent and win a £150 Amazon voucher

[TheOtherHelenMumsnet]

We've been asked by innocent, the smoothie makers, to find out how you hit the five portions of fruit and veg a day goal. Do you religiously munch on carrot sticks and apples or do you rustle up more imaginative healthy dishes? Or does the whole thing pass you by and you want to find out how to fit the recommended five portions of fruit and veg into your diet?

innocent want to hear your hints and tips on how to pack the fruit and veg in, whether it's recipe ideas or quick and easy snacks. They'd also love to hear how you go about getting your DCs to eat their 5-a-day - have you emerged victorious from any difficult battles with veg? Do you have any top tips for sneaking fruit and veg into what they eat? What hints/advice can you give other MNers facing the same problems?

Everyone who adds their comments to this thread will be entered into a prize draw to win £150 Amazon vouchers. Your hints and tips may feature on innocent's mini-site on Mumsnet here.

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!
MNHQ

Jaffa cakes is actually one of the basic food groups. Along with chocolate, wine and cheese. Fact.

My children easily have their five a day as they're all big fans of the veggies. It was different when they were little and I did used to have to hide veg. I used to make them a wicked curry with grated carrot, apple and passata slow cooked with coconut milk, a samll spoon of Korma paste, a bit of mango juice, a handful of sultanas, chopped sweet potato and some chopped cooked chicken. Mine really loved it. I also found they were happy to eat fruit if it was chopped up really small with their cheerios or rice crispies.

I have no problem getting everyone to eat fruit; whole, juiced or dried, but asking anyone to eat a vegetable that hasn't been pureed or covered with cheesesauce or mayo seems too much. It takes so long to prepare and causes so many tears that I just don't bother half the time.

We eat a lot fruit in our house - gets quite expensive! - and usually have 2 veg at dinner. Orange juice at breakfast and fruit & veg at school/work means we all get our 5-a-day. I'd prefer to tip the balance towards veg rather than fruit which can be sugary and bad for teeth. I sometimes put a plate of carrot/cucumber sticks and apple/pear slices on a plate in front of the kids when they're watching TV, and they'll happily munch through that absent mindedly.

Manage 3 a day for ds (11) consistently (OJ for breakfast, fruit with his packed lunch, peas with his dinner). Some days he gets 5+ - for example, when I do my "Shepherd's Pie with Hidden Veg" (blitzed onions/leeks/carrots plus a couple of cubes of finely chopped frozen spinach in the mince as well as canned chopped tomatoes or passata and then carrots and/or neeps and/or parsnips in the mash), or we have a nice (homemade) veg soup or he has an Innocent Smoothie with his lunch (which is a treat - as he normally has an ordinary fruit juice carton, which I realsie doesn't count towards his 5 a day as he has already had a glass of OJ) and sometimes he will come and voluntarily take some fruit from the fruit bowl. In summer, he'll eat loads of raspberries and strawberries for pudding - but I don't stretch to that all year round (have my own raspberry canes).

Have discovered he likes cucumber (but not salad ) so will occasionally give him a bowl of cucumber batons/rounds.

For myself, I do try and count my 5 a day - find it harder when I'm on a diet as I do a sort of Atkins diet (ie still with some fruit and veg but heavily concentrated on protein) - but at other times it's easy, as I love bananas, grapes, satsumas..... :)

Have given up trying to ensure that dh gets his 5 a Day. He says he wants to eat more fruit and then complains when I buy more fruit, he doesn't eat it and it ends up going off in the fruit bowl

BTW - I agree with wahwahwah that wine counts towards your 5 a day. It's made from grapes isn't it!

I am lucky in that my DS eats and enjoys most fruit and vegetables (even more lucky considering he is autistic). I tend to make sure he has something with breakfast, lunch and dinner and he eats fruit outside of these times too plus LOVES cucumber and raw carrot.

We are a family of three, mum, dad and toddler, we have an active life and eat healthily but admit we have a takeaway once a month on average. We grow a lot of food and never eat ready meals, every meal is cooked from scratch, even bread!

Toddler was mostly BLW and has a very hearty appetite, she eats fruit and veg happily with no refusal and she attends a vegetarian day nursery which boosts her 5 a day. We don't give full strength fruit juice to our toddler just yet but an innocent smoothie or home blended fruit smoothie frozen was really popular in the summer and when teething. A brilliant way to get toddler to eat veg and fruit was to bake baby muffins, really simple, bake a dozen or so a week and freeze them ready for snacks.

DH and I probably get our five a day from veg rather than fruit. We don't make a big deal of pushing food onto DD, we just have fruit and veg around and we eat it!

My aims when shopping are seasonal and local (except fruit which will never grow in uk such as bananas, so we buy those fairtrade), we are on a budget but I would rather eat less of an item than not have it if that makes sense. We have two vegetarian meals a week as a family and always have one if not two veg with our meat and fish dishes. During the winter I cook mostly stews and casseroles and we use a lot of root vegetables in those (butternut squash, Carrots, swede, potatoes) I bake crumbles with fruit from friends and family (we trade for the veg we grow) and rice puddings which we serve with stewed apple or pear.

Jaffa cakes are yummy too.
But I only had a stray Christmas choc orange left and dinner was hours away.

Now had stir fry with onion, leek, carrot, sweetcorn, mushrooms, courgette and peppers. And carrot soup for lunch. Might grab a class of fruit juice then I can claim 3 ish may be 4.
Never ever manage 5 that means eating fruit not Jaffa cakes for snacks and I find fruit really boring.

Aren't we supposed to favour veg in the fruit / veg balance?

I have found that actually letting my 4 yo have a choice when shopping is the only way he will eat it!

DS loves his innocent smoothies and refuses to drink cheaper inferior brands.
Luckily he likes a number of fruit and veg, and he loves raw chopped carrots - as I do too, hate the cooked ones for some reason! Also something my mum started was giving him a bowl of frozen peas as a snack, sounds weird but he likes them.

My kids are pretty fussy but I manage to get a lot of fruit and veg into them simply by not giving them any other snacks - if they're hungry between meals they can have apples, bananas, satsumas, carrots, cucumber, etc. So they do generally eat five a day.

5-a-day is a made-up number isn't it? As someone said above, marketing genius because it's so much better slogan than just exhorting everyone to "eat more fruit and veg".

The only fruit I like is really sweet, so I don't eat much fruit - if I'm going to eat pure sugar I'll mostly just eat sweets and do it properly. Ditto innocent smoothies (sorry) - if I'm drinking something so sugary I'll go the whole hog and have coke that doesn't even pretend to be healthy. Have discovered blueberry omelettes for breakfast, though, so that's my 1-a-day-at-most on the fruit side.

I like veg and salad more, but rarely buy salad because it comes in massive packs and just goes off in the fridge . I grow it in the summer if I can be bothered but don't eat it much in winter.

Generally have some veg with my dinner - currently having a cauliflower/broccoli phase. I make a lot of spag bol/stew/casserole affairs and they're the most veg-heavy thing I do: onions, tomatoes, at least one other veg, often 2 (mushrooms, carrots, courgettes, peppers) - and half a bush of home-grown herbs (do they count?). Veg can be anything from 0-4, but mostly 0, 1 or 2.

I understand the 5 a day is a made up number, based on what we might attain c.f. any scientific evidence.

We get a weekly (Riverford) veg box. The veg taste so much nicer which means they are more pleasurable to eat. Because they are local and organic it feels like a crime to leave them to go off in the fridge so we often end up having 5 or 6 different veg with our evening meal, and try to come up with new and exciting ways to use them up. For example, tonight we had Jerusalem artichokes in our curry :)

I have just started leaving fruit on the kitchen table and that seems to get eaten more than fruit in a fruit bowl.

And I have a glass of Innocent OJ at breakfast :) (or whichever other high quality OJ is on offer!)

I have bizarre children who actually like broccoli (which I can't stand) and lots of other veg. Possibly they were switched in the hospital. If I'm trying them on something a bit new or exotic at supper I try to serve a known favourite alongside it so I don't have to worry if the new thing is rejected.

We eat broccoli almost every day for dinner - all DCs know they just have to eat it. As they get bigger they seem to like it more. They have an innocent smoothie pouch in their lunch boxes every day. I leave strawberries and/or raspberries out in the morning and they just pick at them. A carrot and houmous is seen as a great for 2 of them. All love apples chopped up for pudding. We don't count 5 but I'm sure they get about 5 each day.

We eat broccoli almost every day for dinner - all DCs know they just have to eat it. As they get bigger they seem to like it more. They have an innocent smoothie pouch in their lunch boxes every day. I leave strawberries and/or raspberries out in the morning and they just pick at them. A carrot and houmous is seen as a great for 2 of them. All love apples chopped up for pudding. We don't count 5 but I'm sure they get about 5 each day.

I am a veggie, so getting my 5 a day isn't usually too much of a problem. I tend to eat more veg than fruit, although love berries on my cereal, and usually have a banana on me. We get through a lot of bananas. I also snack on raw carrots, cucmber and olives. I often have soup for lunch, lthough my DS hates it.

Getting 5 a day into my 3 year old is a different story though. Not because he doesn't like fruit and veg, but more because he always has something better to do than eat, so eats very little. When he is in the mood, I like to try and get as much nutrition into him as I can:

Drop Scones (blend banana into batter, add grated apple or blueberries)
Porridge with raisins in
Veg fritters
Pasta sauce with loads of veg blended in, but mostly tomato (and a bit of apple to talke of the tartness)
Bowl of berries, sliced apple etc to di[p into a bowl of Greek yoghurt and honey.
Veg chopped up in meat balls (DS is 3 and not veggie)
Smoothies (home made or otherwise)
Carrot/banana/apple cake or muffins
He also loves cauliflower and broccolli also olives and cucumber, so I give him these alongside a new food .
Cauliflower cheese, pasta bake etc with added veg
Home made pizza
Dried fruit - I am always on the look out for diiferent ones.

The cost of fresh fruit and veg can be an issue, and I always look on the "Whoops" shelves first. I mostly buy from or local greengrocer - this is cheaper than supermarket, and I can get exactly what I want .I have only just, a couple of weeks ago, discovered that frozen veg is so much cheaper than fresh, and with many veg you don't notice the difference. I

I get DS to help with cooking too; that way he gets allthe undertsanding of food prepertion etc, is more likley to eat something he's made, but he also samples the oingredients, so I leave out little bowls of grapes etc too.

At the moment no problems in getting 5 a day into DS - although he'd prefer it was all expensive berries, he's equally happy with carrots, sprouts etc. The only weird thing is that things that he loves separately won't be tolerated when mixed with other things - so I rarely bother with casseroles or stews these days as they only get poked about the plate.

My best tip is to try cooking things in different ways if they don't like them at first - eg mashed parsnip seems to go down better than roast with DS (and me as well), also grated nutmeg and butter have made mashed swede, which I never liked, into something pretty popular.

I quite like having a bowl of grapefruit for breakfast, grilled tomatoes on toast, a glass of orange juice (though I'm iffy on whether that counts or not, I know they say it does, but I'm never quite convinced) and then maybe an apple too. That's 3 (possibly 4) by the end of breakfast.

I find it much easier in the winter because I will eat lots of tangerines/ satsumas etc. (I can't stand banana).

Added to that, some salad at lunch, and vegetables with dinner, maybe stewed fruit for pudding, and apples for snacks I think I do quite well.

Probably a bit over heavy on the fruit front though, but biting into a carrot isn't quite the same!

Our family used to rarely get five-a-day until we started planning meals in advance and then finding ways to sneak in extra veg. We add peas and broccoli to the pan if cooking pasta or put green beans and carrots into fajita mix. Along with having plenty of fresh fruit in the fridge instead of chocolate, we now mostly get five-a-day!

I have TEN innocent smoothies every day!