Share your tricks for encouraging kids to eat healthily with Soreen - chance to win a £300 voucher NOW CLOSED

[EmmaMumsnet]

Behind every child's balanced diet is a healthy portion of creativity, and Soreen want to find out about all the imaginative ways in which you jazz up healthy foods to make them more appealing for your DCs.

Here’s what Soreen has to say: “At Soreen we created our individually wrapped lunchbox loaves to feature our malt loaf character, in order to keep lunchtime and snack time healthy but exciting for young children. We’re always trying to come up with new ways to help children make heathier choices and would love to hear how you do this with your DCs.”

So how do you make healthier food choices more fun? Do you fashion food into faces? Draw smiles on bananas and egg shells? Or even blend fruit and vegetables to hide them completely?

Share your creative ways of making healthy eating more fun below and you will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

We make sure they see us eating fresh fruit and vegetables -like raw carrots - as it makes them ask for them.
We invent stories about food - broccoli pieces are giants' trees and beans beanstalks
We link food to their favourite stories. I.e. Rebecca Rabbit eats carrots

Make fruit and veg into pictures - some of the pret-a-manger photos are great - recreating them often goes down well!

Mashing root veg together always goes down well too!

Keep offering and don't make a big deal out of what they do/don't eat.

I blend a lot of veg into bolognaise.

Mostly though, whilst the veg DD likes is limited, I ask, does it matter? It would be better if she liked a wider range but right now she doesn't so I give her the stuff I know she'll eat.

I've made sure that they always have access to fruit and veg that they like. Grapes are a lot more expensive than pears for instance, but if they'll happily eat grapes and wouldn't eat the pears then it would be false economy to do otherwise.

Also, the DC have '3 course meals': Main meal, fruit, then something 'sweet'. The main meal will have vegetables in it.
It took some work to get them to eat vegetables (they would never eat the beautifully hand carved vegetables I made them ) but we did it by giving them stars if they ate their 5-a-day and having a rule that they had to try food at least 8 times before they could say they didn't like it.

We also let them find ways that they can tolerate something. So, DD has to roll her peas through ketchup to eat them, but I figure that's better than not eating peas at all.

I will serve them something they do not like to eat when I have other family and friends and with encouragement for others they will always try the food and then not mind eating it from there on!!

Mine have always eaten a wide variety of foods as we weaned them on the same stuff we were eating

That hasn't stopped them having fussy phases, DS1 refused to eat broccoli for 4 months when he was about 4, DD has suddenly gone off raisins etc

Things I have done to get them to eat a new food or a food they aren't fussed on is
Cut pepper into little flower shapes with an icing cutter
Blend cauliflower cheeses into a sauce to top a pasta bake
Finely chop mushrooms, peppers and onions into chilli
Do half normal and half sweet potato mash

I've got a reward chart for trying new things, even if it's just a little taste - she's at that tricky age! We write on the chart what she's eaten, too.

I always made little fuss over food and just served the chilsren the same as the adults. Nowadays I try to 'sneak' healthy items into other foods - add blended veg. to sauces, put seeds and dried fruit into anything I can get away with! Cherry tomatoes cut up into quarters with everything. etc

Trying to have a greater proportion of healthier foods around. Letting them help to make food at home and to buy the ingredients. Having an interest in different fruits and vegetables definitely helps.

Well it seems I've just accidentally discovered a trick.
We're stuck in the madness of virtually back to back after school
activities. So I've packed a car picnic to stave off hunger. DD (7) has just wolfed down a ton of wholewheat pasta and veg salad, a boiled egg and fruit eaten with a little plastic spoon (far more fun than a regular spoon!). She said it was an exciting meal.

I try and get my children to cook and bake with me. They are much more likely to try a meal if they have made it. Also get them to try some of the raw food. I try and let them choose a dinner they like once a week.

We have a family veg/fruit/herb patch which is fun, gets everyone outside in the fresh air, and encourages them to eat what they've grown!

We eat together. Every day. Every meal. We eat the same things and always have done.

We make up a story and talk about the healthy food as energy and unhealthy food as baddies. We then cook together and they choose the Veg and fruit.

To make sure I know they are getting all their recommended veg portions in one hit. I make a lovely soup, packed full of goodness.
They then have crusty bread which they make little 'croutons' with to jazz it up.
A thick, hearty, healthy soup ticks all the boxes (can't miss the crusty bread too though!)

When my children were younger I used to use dinosaur sandwich cutter to make lovely looking healthy sandwiches for their lunches. I also used to give them a compartmental lunchbox so that I could small amounts of healthy food in the 6 sections of the lunchbox. It looked appealing and my children loved it.

We meal plan, shop and cook together. My toddlers love to choose the fruit and veg when we go shopping sometimes they can be insistent on random veggies that weve not had before which throws me a challenge but thats more favourable than arguing with a 2 and 3 year old in the shop
We mix things up a bit instead of plain mash i occasionally mash the potatoes with broccoli to make green monster mash, to turn shepherds pie into dinosaur pie i use sweetcorn in the mince and gravy (sweetcorn = dinosaur teeth) and then top with swede/turnip and potato mash.
Sweet potato mashed with normal potatoes makes a lovely creamy orange mash.
I try not to hide veggies but rename them or use them differently, i prefer them in plain sight. Baby corn are space rockets, sprouts are shouts and everyone likes a shout etc.
I dont make a fuss either if they dont eat them i just keep offering, we all eat at the table so they see everyone else eating and that seems to be encouragement enough at times. I do slightly adapt meals so there is always something that everyone will eat on the plate so no one goes hungry.

We are vegetarians so my lot are pretty good at eating fruit and vegetables. Pulses and nuts can be surprisingly easy to get kids to eat, like lentils mixed in bolognese, chickpeas are great cooked in the oven with chilli seeds put in a bowl see them disappear, cashews in a stir fry, pistachios go down well.

We play variations on the same game where I pretend to look away or be distracted while the DC quickly gobble some food. I then look back at the plate, amazed that some food has been eaten and they pretend that a pigeon / cat / fairy etc has actually stolen the food. They find this hilarious. Every. Single. Day.

The fruit bowl is always open for them to have.

I try and incorporate veg into things I know the kids will eat (e.g. macaroni cheese), and having pudding is always conditional on having at least tried everything from the main course. I'm not sure that's approved parenting, but often the big challenge is getting them past turning their noses up at something they claim they don't like, when actually if they get as far as putting it in their mouths they discover it's not so bad after all.

we try to lead by example so if we want a snack we try to choose a healthy one - so they see us eating them. H can be quite fussy abut trying new things so I make up stories with her fave characters about the food before we have it lol- did you guys know that Elsa loves sliced peppers? That Sheriffe Callie really likes to try different fish and that Belle loves mixed fruit salad!!!!

We also d food prepping and cooking together - very simple things like making ice cubes up and popping grapes or other bits in the water before it frezes to put in drinks, ripping up spinach, stirring the pot etc

My kids definitely love themed food things in lunchboxes or even at the dinner table. This was a packed lunch we did with the '3 bears' theme. They love anything served in little containers too to make it more fun like the silicone cupcake cases with berries, chunks of cheese or chopped up veg in it.

Anything they can do to get involved also makes it more fun for them. So for example sometimes i put a bit of butter separately in my sons yumbox lunchbox and a little kids plastic knife so he can butter his own bread as part of his packed lunch fun.

The kids know they can snack on fruit or raw veg (e.g. Carrots/cherry tomatoes/peppers) relatively unrestricted and to encourage them choosing these we've always kept them within reach low down in the fridge whereas less healthy things are less visible/accessible. Also just educating them about why it's important to eat healthily and the 'science' of what different foods do in our bodies makes it interesting and worthwhile, so there are fewer objections about the good stuff when it isn't a 'favourite'.