NOW CLOSED Tell Cathedral City's Chedds your top tips for fussy eaters and win a £100 Space NK voucher!

[KatieBMumsnet]

We've been asked by the folks at Chedds, the kids' cheese snacking brand from Cathedral City, to find out your top tips for fussy eaters.

So, if you've ever had to or thought about how you'd deal with a "fussy eater" - what advice do you give other Mumsnetters with a fussy eater at home? What tips can you share to help make this easier to deal with?
For example, do you sneak carrots into mashed potatoes or disguise peppers in a bolognaise sauce? Do you try to alter the texture, colour or taste of certain foods? Do you make food into smiley faces? How would you get nutritious snacks into lunch boxes or for picnics? Or do you simply ignore the fuss?

Everyone who adds their comments to the thread below will be entered into a prize draw, where one MNer will win a £100 Space NK voucher.

Please note that some of the tips posted here may be published on the Chedds pages on Mumsnet.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

I make hidden veg sauce - onion, garlic, chopped tomatoes (lots), grated carrot, frozen chopped spinach - reduce it in the pan then whizz up with a blender. Freeze or chill for up to a week - use for pasta sauce, pizza bases, soup bases. Dead easy.

With one DC, used to sprinkle cheese on everything.

oh last thing is that it can vary so keep offering things and having them on your own plate and let them try them if they show an interest. my ds now eats prawns that he would have died rather than tried a year ago. he also eats a lot of things (and always has) that most children don't like so do think outside the box and offer all sorts of foods.

Strangely enough I've found with both of mine a sprinkling of cheese on the top of anything (yes, anything!) is enough to get them to try it!
Once they've tried it they'll usually tuck into it without the cheese too (assuming they liked it, that is!)

We play 'Guess what it is' when the fussy one starts moaning about what he's been given. We serve the same meal to him as everyone else (I won't avoid foods the rest of us enjoy), but to get him to hurry up and stop whinging about things we know he will enjoy we make him close his eyes while we fork things into his mouth for him to identify. We have to play as well, and pretend to get things wrong to encourage him to 'win'.

We have managed to 'recover' a few foods that were being lost from his list of acceptable things by doing this and proving to him that he's being silly by not eating things he likes.

My DD has been fussy since she hit 2, she's now 3 and its a mixture of texture, flavours she doesnt like and blatent control.

I give her a portion of whatever we eat, goulash, pasta bake, shepherds pie etc but I hide vegetables in whatever I can. Tomatoes, onions, courgettes, carrots all grated into sauces. I ensure that I always give her the same but try to give her something she likes on the plate as well otherwise the whole plate gets shunned rather than approched with caution. So i may serve the main meal with garlic bread, smiley faces or baked beans, things that she will eat.

She has an aversion to the texture of meat except ham so we often refer to foods with new names, chicken is white ham, root mash is cheesy mash etc and often she is lulled into trying foods.

The key is that without at least trying and attempting to eat it, there is no pudding (fruit, fruit pouch or a yogurt). Often she will tell me she doesnt like something without trying it and then no way to anything else. If I can see she has tried it, and at least eaten the elements that I know she likes then yes she can have a yoghurt etc.

I'm always firm, I never ever make an alternative meal but i try to introduce a variety alongside known favourites. It is slowly working as she wouldnt touch fruit but will now eat grapes, strawberries and apples galore.

Encourage them to help with the meal even if it's just setting the table.

Prepare own sandwiches at lunchtime.

Not offering alternative when food refused.

My DC are both good eaters with occasional fussiness. I try to ignore and just keep offering up other options. So for example if they don't want carrot batons I try roasted, mashed or grated carrot instead. If they don't like sliced turkey breast I prepare turkey meatballs or soup as an alternative. I believe that sometimes it is not the taste alone but texture, smell and general experience.

I do however trust them if they persist in their dislike. DD can smell fenugreek a mile off and I respect that she doesn't like it as an ingredient right now. I offer her the option of trying other dishes with it in and hope that one day she will come to appreciate it in cooking.

Also, if the child has helped in the planting, watering, picking, shopping or preparation of the food I find this helps and makes them more inclined to try.

They eat what they are given generally.

After some battles with ds1, he now knows if he doesn't eat it he has to go a bit hungry.

Helping with the cooking doesn't seem to help. He hated onions even more after chopping them and crying!

I make soups and sauces with hidden veg.

I offer a new veg every now and again along with favorites. Even though I know it may be refused I shove it on the plate and with a bit of coaxing it sometimes gets eaten.

Grate vegetables and cheese on top of everything. Strangely eating grated carrot is more palatable to veg hating DS (tis a textural thing).

my fussy eater top tip.

Don't bother with any of the bribery, hiding, forcing, cajoling, arguing, pleading or stressing.

NONE OF IT WORKS.

your child will either eat what they want, when they want to, or they won't

There - I have now saved millions of hours of stress and anguish over mealtimes. Thanks.

And anyone who says otherwise does not have a genuinely fussy eater.

Cover it all with grated cheese :)
Don't make too much of a fuss about it - my parents never forced me to eat anything I didn't like, and I came round to most foods eventually. Except liver, but that's the devil's own spongy grey shoe leather.

Get the DCs to grow some veg of their own, there's a lot they will eat if they've been waiting till it's "ready".
"ration" veg you want them to try. I have had a class of children clamouring for the last section of raw purple sprouting broccoli after I said they could only have one piece each. I of course relented and let them have a bit more, and next time I brought some in they were really positive about it.

I have started sneaking unexpected healthy additions into muffins eg courgette into chocolate muffins, oats into banana muffins or making cheese muffins to get a bit more protein in. Ds is not too fussy but needs a high calorie diet which is not always made up of the healthiest foods.

If we are having something he might make a fuss about I still serve it up to him but in a small quantity with other foods I know he will eat alongside it. Over time he has decided to give some foods a go, so I don't assume he won't eat it.

The DSs are both fussy and the main thing that has helped has been them having school dinners. We can choose how many they have per week at school and after looking at the menus I can usually find 3 that they should be okay with. Seeing their non-fussy friends eating happily encourages them to do the same and eating food that Mummy hasn't made makes them less fussy!

always have bread.
they wont starve with bread.

also try and understand it. dont be huffy.

I have always taken mine shopping and let them choose some things to put in the trolley; and then encouraged them to help me cook.

DS is much better in the kitchen than DD! He is great at chopping, grating cheese, and making things like fajitas.

They say a new food has to be introduced several times before children will learn to like it. I have explained to mine that their taste buds are constantly changing and that they have to keep trying things in case they like them this time. It sometimes works. :)

Ketchup or grated cheese on top of whatever they don't like works too.

failsafe 'cheezy bean bake'

swede, carrot and potato creamy mash, topped with baked beans and melted cheese, yummy

I let 2 year old DD help me to choose things from the fridge and carry it to the work top. Tonight she chose sausages, potato and mushrooms and peas. Think she's going to like Harvester

Tell my toddler that veg is something else e.g. told him that parsnips were pork and he ate them!!

Dd has always been (and still is, at age 9) very fussy.

Luckily we have found ways round this by offering a dish called 'bitser plate' (When she was little she thought it was called bits-of-plate but never mind...)

Bitser plate consists of lots of finger foods, bits of cheese, sliced sausage, bits of carrot, apple, banana and raisins, a cold sugarsnap pea etc.
We have gradually been able to add things to a bitser plate which she would not eat normally. She used to pick raisins out of buns. I started adding them to her bitser plate without mentioning it, without fuss. She would eventually try them and now eats them happily in buns. The same principle worked for various veg, for instance cooked sweetcorn was a no no but those mini fresh sweetcorns were ok on the bitser plate. A few months later she was eating cooked sweetcorn happily.
Of course this method is not fool proof - she will still refuse to eat any dish containing onions and I cannot add raw onions to a bitser plate...

She is still very fussy. And quite thin. But the rule in the house is that the evening meal offered to you is the only meal there is. You eat as much as you can (and we encourage her to try things) and then there are apples, bananas and yoghurts. So she won't go hungry

Agree with atyourcervix. My DS will not eat pasta with sauce, mashed potato, anything soggy or creamy. He never has. He has no interest in food and if he could take a pill to avoid eating, he would.

He takes vitamin supplements and eats dairy, fruit and carbs every day. Truly fussy eaters don't care about being hungry very much.

I have a huge fusspot, just huge. So I have been learning as we go. I have my top tips that have worked for us and my top don'ts.

Don't
Stress - does no one any good if they are eating something then let them
Cry - yup that did nothing either
Force - no just no

The above did nothing except exacerbate the issue with us.

Ignore smug mothers who tell you their children eat everything. Yup I have a child that does that too, they have both been treated the same, dh and I are the most unfussy people in the world so why do we have a fussy child? It doesn't help to compare like for like.

Do (if it works for you)
Goals - if it means bribery so be it, a sticker chart and goal to work for. This recently worked for us by the sheer fact that dd wanted something and I got the school on board too.

Numbers - 4 bites of something
New things - just smell it, lick it, eat it, just try a little of something new, perhaps once a week.

We have by no means beaten the beast but I can now see a light at the end of the tunnel.

DD2 is a fussy eater but I serve her the same as everyone else and tell her to just leave what she doesn't like. There is no point heaping pressure on her to eat everything on her plate and I refuse to cook separate meals according to her latest fads. As she gets older she does seem to be trying and enjoying more foods.