What are your top recipes and tips for getting your DCs to eat more fruit and vegetables? Tell Tesco and you could win a £200 voucher NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

Tesco have asked us to find out what Mumsnetters' top tips and recipes are for getting their DCs to eat more fruit and veg.

Here’s what Tesco say, “Studies show that 90% of 7 – 14 year olds do not eat their five-a-day. Our Farm to Fork Trails allow children to touch, smell and taste a wide range of fruit and vegetables - some make fruit kebabs. Parents and Teachers tell us that children are more willing to try new varieties after the visit. We’d love to hear what you’re doing at home to encourage your DCs to eat more fruit and veg.”

So, what are your top tips for getting your DCs to eat fruit and vegetables? Perhaps you hide mushrooms in pasta sauce? Or maybe you have another method for sneaking peas and carrots into meals? Do you have any fail-safe recipes that your DCs love?

Whatever your top recipes and tips are, Tesco would love to hear them!

Everyone who adds their comments to the thread will be entered into a prize draw to win a £200 Tesco voucher.

Please note that any comments posted on this thread may be used by Tesco in further marketing material (anonymously, of course).

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

My children are probably a bit strange because they would rather eat a whole bowl of vegetables than eat the meat or carbs and I get them arguing over who wants the last pieces of broccoli or peas! Also I buy bags and bags of Apples & clementines & boxes of grapes and it all mysteriously vanishes in a couple of days. I try not to complain because I'd rather they ate fruit than sweets. There are a couple of things they aren't so keen on like onion, so if I want to add it into a sauce, then I chop it so finely or blend it into the bolognaise sauce that they don't know it's there and you can do that with anything you want to hide in a tomato based sauce!

I always add lots of chopped up veg to bolonese, shepherds pie and stew. Also I make a big pot of ratatouille, which I then freeze in portions. Dd will eat cherry tomatoes and grapes as snacks, but I also often make a big bowl of fruit salad that she can help herself to.

Try cooking a disliked item another way, as the taste can vary so much

I hide veg in homemade soups, pasta sauce etc. I tried making chocolate courgette cake once, but they noticed the green bits.....

Chopped veg in pasta sauce is good - tomatoes, corgette, onion, peppers.
DS loves my homemade shepherds pie which contains carrots, peas & onion.
He also likes my (mild) chilli which has kidney beans, peppers, tomatoes & onion

Make fruit platters with yoghurt dip. If it looks nice, then ds is far more likely to eat it.

Hide them

I make a great shepherd's pie (also great for stretching leftover lamb) which has blitzed leeks, carrots, onions and chopped spinach in it, as well as a can of chopped tomatoes - and then is topped with mashed potatoes omitted if I'm low carbing mixed with mashed cauliflower and/or parsnip and/or carrots, with some egg and Parmesan. Yummy.

With the cold winter weather we are eating more stews and soups which I pack full of vegetables, a fave of dd (2) is celeriac soup! With some pasta shapes were well away! Also love pancakes with chopped up veggies put in while cooking or ontop with some yog (or squirty cream and princess sparkles for a treat)

My two year old won't eat fruit or vegetables in their own form, so I blitz them up and pop them into mini quiches, make them into fritters, make apple & cheese quesadillas, things like that. Not really hidden, but much more exciting!

I've never struggled before with the kids eating veg but my youngest has suddenly gone off veg. I'm going to have to try some of the 'hidden veg' techniques as all my usual techniques aren't working with her.

She loves to cook and even grows some of her own veg which is usually good enough to get the kids interested in eating the food they've grown and prepared but it's not working at the moment!

Now we're into December, if she eats her veggies, we are rewarding her with her advent calendar. Goodness knows what we'll do when January arrives.

Let your children choose an different fruit or veg at the supermarket and then cut it up and let all the family try it and critique it and give it marks out of 10.

Also let children make some lovely fruity desserts- Eton mess, fruit salad, apple flan, banana bread, lemon cheesecake etc.

My boys are quite good with fruit and veg and do actually like most of them, but to try and get as many as I can into them, you can't beat a good old Cottage Pie, I put everything in there, baked beans, sweetcorn, peas, onion, kidney beans.....the list goes on, and they love it :)

The best thing we've always found is to show DS us eating our vegetables and enjoying them. Sometimes as a treat we will have a nice juicy apple or go for something more exotic like a pineapple.

Ive started giving my kids home made juices and add veg to them. They dont notice when its really chilled.

I hide Veggies and fruits in cakes they are all sugar free. Hide them is sauces that I use for cooking.( it sometime works on my husband too.)

Peas I told my children they are food for the brain and make their brain work faster. Now they love them!

Home made fish pie is a good way to hide veggies.

I leave out fruit on the side and I think because its so visible the kids always ask for it. I also never make a fuss at dinnertime about them eating their veg or not as I think the bigger deal you make of it the less likely they are to eat it. I also pick a big variety of veg to serve so it varies meal to meal and a crinkle cutter might just be the most exciting thing for my kids as they scoff anything cut with it right down.

I grew up eating no vegetables whatsoever and hardly any fruit beyond a banana! I remember hours of sitting at the table as my Mum had backed herself into a corner by saying "You're not leaving this table until you've eaten some vegetables" and me stubbornly refusing. I hated the taste, the texture (usually overcooked and soggy) and the green colour especially. Id heave to eat any.
So when I had kids I decided Id offer and disguise but push no further in the hope they'd come to it in later life (like Ive largely done- as long as nothings soggy lol). So I hid veg in bolognaise and curry, made colourful salads with added sweetness like sweetcorn, sultanas and crunchy garlic croutons, made veggie crutons and dips and fruit milkshakes. I also always had a small but colourful fruit bowl to hand the they didn't need to ask for. Of 5 kids, 4 eat almost everything (even sprouts lol) and the 5th is now trying things at last in his early 20's!
I was also told that someone has to try something 20 times before they really know if they dislike it so I kept retrying things after a gap or present in in a different way than previous try's. Seems to have worked!

Tomato pasta sauce which is actually blended tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots and celery (sometimes courgette and pepper but she's getting wise to that).

If I'm organised enough I cook in advance and put it in the freezer in single portions. I've not been organised for a while though.

My kids dont stop eating fruit and veg. Which isnt a stealth boast, nor as good as it sounds!

I usualy hide veg in mash potatos. Chpped parsnip is easy to hide and kids don't notice ( usually). Chopped carrots added to mash look yummy. In general hiding is a good method for fussy kids.

I am always amazed at the number of children who visit my house who 'don't like any vegetables'. I had three extra (unrelated to each other) kids round for lunch, and I made fish fingers and offered a choice of broccoli, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, or baked beans and the three of them all looked at me like I was mad.

I think it's all about what they are used to. My kids have pretty much always had some form of veg on every meal they have ever eaten (which is why kids meals in restaurants make me cross when they don't offer one) so they expect it and know they are expected to eat what's on their plate.

They have their preferences, which I am fine with, but they know they will be expected to eat the vegetables they have on their plate, which are ones they like. I don't believe in "put a bit on and don't worry if they don't eat it", because I hate waste and it would drive me round the bend to be throwing away perfectly good food every meal. So I give them vegetables I know they like or at least will tolerate and they know they are expected to eat them. I do get them to try new things, but as they all have a reasonable number of veg they will happily eat I don't see the point in making it a battleground. DS (4) wouldn't really choose to eat vegetables, he will always eat his meat and carbs first, but he will eat them because he always has been expected to.

Even a sandwich in our house is always accompanied by cucumber/carrots/celery/tomatoes etc or a cut up apple if nothing else. My daughter(6), if presented with just a sandwich on a plate will ask "Where's the cucumber?"

With fruit, DS(4) will happily eat any fruit, the girls (6 and 8) have ones they like and don't like. I made a rule a long time ago that we always have fruit with breakfast, so they know they will be choosing a cereal and a type of fruit for breakfast. When they stayed overnight at Grandma's the other day and were given cereal for breakfast, when they'd finished, she told them to go and get dressed, and they said, "But we haven't had our fruit yet".

Having said that mine tend towards unhealthier snacks, cereal bars and biscuits, but I don't worry much as I know they have a balanced diet and will have easily had 5-7 portions of fruit and veg in a day.