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

I LOVE making recipes with sneaky, hidden healthy food in them! I never tell DC or DH that they're funky with special hidden ingredients until AFTER they've eaten one (or two!). I haven't had one recipe experience that they haven't liked yet.

Some examples of recent creative endeavours have been my black bean brownies, avocado chocolate pudding and cauliflower egg fried rice :)

My two children love eating fruit and I usually just let them take a piece and eat it straight from the fruit bowl. My eldest has recently started asking me to make 'fruit salads' which is basically just two or three different types of fruit chopped up in a bowl. They seem to think this is a real treat

I have a fussy toddler though I find letting her get involved in the food we make, whether it's popping the broccoli florets into the pan or cracking the eggs and mixing them, tends to encourage her to eat the meal (or at least try it. We really need to get her into a wider variety of foods though so I'm also looking for inspiration here too! It is so disheartening to spend ages cooking for her to just push it away and say no, so I tend to stick with out 'safe' foods at the minute.

When she's s enough to understand I plan on educating her about nutrients and why the right foods are so important and good for us. For now I guess it's just about making food fun!

I think my children have copied how I eat and make choices. My eldest sounded exactly like me when we were at a restaurant recently. We talk about food a lot - nutrients, balance, health pros and cons.
When possible we'll cook together. My kids suggest ideas for weekly meal plan also. I was told that my meal last night should have had some sweetcorn as there wasn't enough colourful veg for example!

I draw faces on the fruit in the lunch box!
We also give some foods different names, calling them 'yellow peas' instead of sweet corn makes them more willing to try it. :)

Coulourful fun looking packaging!! - when taking out family children I have often 4 & 6 I offered a snack and gave them grapes and raisins in a bright polka dot paper bag and I had the same. They wouldn't normally accept that and 'don't like raisins' but ate the whole lot bc they liked the bag!!

If my children are being fussy I just tell them it is Soreen and they eat it. It really is that simple.

Cheese-soreen
Roast dinner-soreen
Fish pie-soreen.

This works every time... you should try

From early weaning I introduced both of my children to a variety of flavours and tastes, fruits,vegetables, meat,fish etc. They would then have
Vegetable sticks and fruit as finger food for snacks and at meal times. As they've got older (4 years and 3 years), I encourage the children to help me make meals, we make home made pizza where I will buy toppings that they will cut up themselves and make their own pizza for tea, we make home made fruit salads,fruit muffins, such as raspberry,banana,blueberry etc, not only do they love cooking and are confident in doing so and knowing what to do they will always eat the fruit and vegetables on their plate first and both prefer a bowl of fruit or cucumber sticks, tomatoes,pepper etc for snacks rather than chocolate, biscuits etc.

I've tried to make sure my DD has been exposed to a variety of flavours throughout her life and I will ensure she knows how to cook and prepare meals as she grows up. Then she can make her own choices but what she wants to put in her body, healthy or not

I make an effort to offer fruit and veg with meals but otherwise don't cajole or do anything fancy.
Sometimes I actually reduce the veg in a recipe till they get a taste for it.
School dinners from preschool age have really helped widen the range of foods my two will eat.

my boys always eat better & are more adventurous when they get involved making their own meals and moreso growing it! They have their own veggie patch to experiment with and help bake and cook meals. Soreen banana ice cream was very popular!

We talk about the 5 a day fruit and veg and get the kids doing mini quizzes on what food s healthy

My 18 month DS will eat anything as long as I 'feed' it to his Bing toy first. Bing is a very noisy, enthusiastic eater and particularly enjoys broccoli!

Plate of chopped up fruit/veg on the table whilst I'm cooking tea

My son loves fruit but there are very few veg that I can get him to eat. I'm afraid to say the only thing that works is hiding the veg; liquidising it into soup, putting veg into the food processor to chop it very small for spag Bol, shepherds pie etc.
It's all good and well to say that you shouldn't have to hide veg etc but despite us being a very healthy family and cooking everything from scratch sometimes a child just won't eat it and I don't want mealtimes to become a battle. I think you're a very lucky person if just saying 'veg makes you poo' gets your kids to eat it!

I always eat with my son so he enjoyd the experience more. He is a great eater and on the odd occasion if he doesnt look like he is enjoying it I will have a bite and he tends to find it funny and continues to eat. When I introudce new foods I always make hings colourful and exciting. I tend to find its textures that are a problem like peppers or mushrooms and I will soften them a bit in the blender a bit and let him dip some brown bread soldiers into the food paste down the gullet it goes until he screams for more. I make it fun. I perservere with changing its texture and dont take it away and its always worked. I have done this since 4 months and he happily eats everything.

I 've never said to my kids ''you wont like that'', they try everything (with the exception of really hot chilli)
I try to find different colored fruit and veg in ethnic shops and they try that too.

Luckily my kids eat lots of fruit and veg but we involve them in cooking as much as possible so they can see us using fresh and quality ingredients. We also do 'dipping' lunches or desserts - raw veg sticks and crackers with a choice of dips, or a fruit platter with different yoghurt flavours to dip.

We make funny faces with the food on our plate.
Any meal that we can't do that with is the favourite of her friend/ ballet teacher or a recipient from mr tumble!!

When my children were tiny I would put vegetables on their plates, mutter to myself "That's too much, you can't have that much," and take some off again. I ended up with children who would beg for more vegetables - which of course I reluctantly agreed to.

We have always all eaten every meal together at the table. Everyone eats the same things (apart from DH and DD eating bread containing gluten) - I adapted all recipes to glutenfree so we could all eat the same. We were fortunate that eating never became an issue. We have done the "making faces" from food, cooking together etc. but we did it because it was fun, not because there was an issue.

We have picnics sometimes with DD's toys. So her dolls get to join in whatever we're eating. DD wants them to "eat" their food and obviously they need a bit of help from her!

Keep the fruit bowl stocked up, and in sight. Model eating salads and fruit as snacks and invite them to join in. Involve the children in preparing the food, they are more likely to eat their creations. Allow them to experiment with fruits and salads, make their own smoothies with their choice of fruits.

in summer we make our own frozen yogurt and fruit splodges. basically spoon blobs of yog onto parchment and plop on small chunks of fruit . pop into the freezer until hard. then enjoy!

I've been telling my DD (4) for ages that "David" - now "Theresa" says she has to eat at least 5 different fruits and veg per day 😁Works well especially when the PM is on the telly and I can remind her! Sometimes we count what she's had towards the end of the day and if we are short, I can offer her alternatives to make them up. She loves counting at the moment which helps!

I've been lucky in that both my girls will happily eat anything and everything but I think that letting your children help you (if possible) to make meals and snacks will encourage them to eat more. My eldest loves helping mummy and daddy in the kitchen :)