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

Everyone eats the same and we all eat together. Everything is healthy and home made and, occasionally, at the weekends, we make a cake or scones. They eat pretty much everything but I don't stress if they hate something - one hates banana, the other won't eat salad leaves. They eat plenty of other stuff. We didn't do BLW (was it invented a decade ago?) but they have always eaten roughly what we do.

Don't make a fuss
Include fruit or vegetables with all main meals
Encourage whole family to help prepare and cook meals
Lead by example
Don't let mealtimes become a battlefield
Use seasonings, herbs, sauces to add flavour
Make meals bright, colourful and tasty
Ignore leftovers, don't pass comment
Re-introduce refused fruit & veg after a few days
Roast, steam, stir fry veg, don't just boil it
Encourage children to help with food shopping
Talk about where vegetables come from
Encourage children to choose recipes from a recipe book

We are quite lucky in that DD eats a fair amount of veg willingly. I have always offered her peas as a snack so she will ask for them. She doesn't realise she isn't meant to like them!

I do add extra veg to pasta sauce. Stir fries and fajitas are good for adding shredded spinach to.

I make a big pan of ratatouille and then purée it for pasta sauce. He'll wolf it down with grated cheese on top. It's good knowing he's eating aubergine, peppers, courgettes, celery and whatever else I can find, in it!

DD still prefers veg mashed, so that's how we do it, just keep offering larger pieces regularly as well. She likes fruit but also good to have it in juice or dried (such as yo-yos)

I get them involved in the preparing of the meal if they have helped chopped the carrots or peeled the potato. Made the fruit salad etc they eat without any fuss at all. & always seem very proud of themselves that they "made" that part of our dinner. Plus it's a bonus for me as it's fun to cook with them I enjoy it x

We lie about the effects of veggies and then let DS overhear DH and I arguing if we'll let him have them!

Such as, "no Daddy, don't give DS red peppers! Red peppers make you as fast as Lightening McQueen, I won't be able to keep up with him tomorrow." (Que DS scoffing them).

Also, parsnips give you rocket trumps, spinach gives you super strength, cucumber gives you super stinky trumps (theme developing), carrots let you see in the dark - so you can stay up late, courgettes are like cucumbers but more powerful ("oh no! We'll not be able to breathe").

'Spaghetti' made of peeled then very finely sliced courgette is a favourite here. Served with lots of cheese and salt and pepper. Yum.

Start young and keep going! DS will eat anything, DD won't touch fruit and has even gone off juice now.

I get organix fruit pots and put a few spoonfuls into dds yoghurt. can only do a certain amount otherwise she catches on and won't be having it.

also i blend veggies into her pasta sauce - when she will eat it. shes the fussiest eater ever.

I make a selection of veg curries (mild), blended veggies hidden in a home made tomato sauce. Homemade pizza is great for introducing slightly "exotic" veg to Ds. Frozen berries mushed into yoghurt always goes down a treat too. Ds loves the tastes of fruit and veg (apart from banana) but seems to struggle with some textures

When dd was quite little I gave her one of those small bags of sugar snap peas. I'm sure it was the crinkly noisy packet that tempted her to try them.

Also, fruit only for snacks. It might be a sliced up apple, strawberries in season, some dried fruit, a cake with lots of fruit (mine love a raspberry and apple cake, for example) or a milkshake with added fresh fruit.

fruit kebabs, my three get really excited when there on the menu. They help make them and we pick a new exotic fruit to try each week

I do a great veg sauce that DS thinks is just tomato! But it's got courgette, pepper etc. A stick blender is brilliant.

I also sometimes steam frozen fillets (cheaper) of salmon or cod, and flake them into the sauce - DS will wolf down pasta no matter what sauce is on it so he doesn't notice.

I don't have any issues getting them to eat fruit, they love it, DD especially - so that's what they have for a snack. Veg is harder though especially with DS.

Cutting stuff up helps when they are pushed for time. A whole apple in the lunchbox comes back uneaten despite DD adoring them - she's desperate to get out and play, so she doesn't bother. Instead she gets one pot of chopped fruit and one pot of chopped veg.

Get the children involved in the preparation of the food. If they cook it, they are much more likely to want to eat it.

Always eating the same meal as at the same time as your children so that you lead by example.

My children love cucumber with roule cheese on. They eat celery with it on too, when they aren't normally big fans of celery.

I slow cook big batches of meals and freeze them. Lots of vegetables can be hidden in slow cooked sauces. For example, finely chopped onion and mushrooms, grated carrot, celery plus lots of garlic (which they love) in spaghetti bolognese.

Blended vegetable soups (they love courgette, mint and yoghurt, or fennel, lemon and toasted almonds for example), vegetable quiches with inverted proportions of veg to egg (so 800gr of spinach for 2 eggs and 75 grams of ricotta), spinach ravioli, lots of vegetable pasta sauces (eg garlic, broccoli and almond).

Also raw grated carrot with lemon and raw very thinly sliced fennel served either with oil and lemon and orange or lemon, Parmesan and oil. And curried vegetables with yoghurt.

But tbh they really like vegetables, most if our meals are veg-only and kids love them. They do not like boiled vegetables, but neither do we.

let them choose the veg they want in the grocers and then they can also prepare it and cook it - never had a problem with DS not eating vegetables he had prepared himself
Plus also have fruit/veg freely available to eat when they want and also eat them yourself, best way to get them to eat healthy stuff is to lead by example.

My kids like mild curries and I don't think they notice spinach, chickpeas etc added to them.
Fruit in jelly or homemade icecream made with fruit and greek yoghurt
tempura veg is lovely and good for harder sells like cauliflower
I think ginger in soup, along with something sweet like parsnip can mask stronger tasting veg like broccolli that they might object to.
make it yourself pizza and wraps with chicken and various salad bits is good

Never offer them a non veg alternative. That way they are always choosing a vegetable. e.g. You need to choose 3 vegetables for your supper. Would you like broccoli or cauliflower? Courgettes or red cabbage? etc.

I grate carrot into spaghetti bolognaise , even my 16 year old dd hasn't noticed.

The DC and I are vegetarian, and DS2 would appear to exemplify the notion that leading by example is the key. He loves his veg, eats tonnes of them, and thinks the portion sizes in the 5-a-day recommendations are far too small. However, smugness is averted by virtue of having had DS1 first. He would quite happily have existed on cheese, pasta and beans, and had to have home made soups smuggled past him to get enough vegetables. I struggled with that a bit but never made a big deal of it, and now as a 20-year-old student, he'll eat any veg. Long as it's cheap, anyway.

I don't like "hiding" vegetables but for fussy 3yo DD particularly need must so I do make pesto out of basil and spinach and blend veg into pasta sauce BUT I also serve up veg at every meal, also big believer in lead by example.

Her brother is brilliant and at least tries everything - and has just got into soup so now I can get even more down him. But he'll also happily choose to eat carrots, broccoli, sweet corn, peas and squash

I alternate between putting veg mixed up with other food or laying it all out seperately. In the next few weeks we'll be starting the same process with DD that we did with DS - giving her a choice of food on her plate so she can't get down until she's tried everything. And we just keep on offering....

Fruit thank god isn't a problem!

Serve up a variety of colours and palatable looking food. Place it in front of them and don't comment - whether they eat it, try it, or ignore it. Remove it without comment. When you take away the potential control and they see you eating and enjoying a variety of foods, they will want to try it too. The less attention you Give it, the less it will be a problem!

But if you do want to boost veg intake, blitzing some in pasta sauce or delicious homemade soups works a treat! Also raw carrots go down much better than cooked carrots.
Trying exotic interesting fruit like dragon fruit also encourages it and makes it more exciting!