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

cook and bake together seems to encourage kids to make better choices with food

Encourage them to help in the kitchen.
Talk about food.
Fruit and veggie sticks as snacks with hummus for snacks

When they were little I used to do Mash Mountains with Broccoli Trees and Gravy Lake. Miss those days...

We make scenes out of food. The kids forget that they're not keen on things if they look appealing

I make flapjacks for the kids, and fill them with nuts, whole grains and fruit, the kids both devour them.

I mix the ingredients every time so it's never exactly the same.

Mini buffets with lots of protein options, ham, eggs, chicken tikka bites, plus veg crudités, sliced fruit & a slice of bread of butter. This is ds's favourite option, always polishes off lots of healthy food & enjoys making his own choices from each section.

In my life, two things work. Constant exposure and a bit of rivalry/ or copying each other.
Exposing the children to healthy food all the time is the key, it is beneficial even in longer term if not seem to be beneficial now or in the immediate future. Also seeing their peers / friends eating healthy fruit and veg encourages them to try.

My child has always been a very fussy eater. I was too. I found out we are what's called supertasters in which our taste buds are extremely sensitive and the sensation we get from certain foods and drinks are magnified. Slightly bitter food someone can eat comfortably, tastes like strong acid to us, we have very strong dislikes and we are cautious trying / liking new foods. It's a condition, it's bad but that's the way it is unfortunately. Have to live with it. My mother had a lot of patience and time as well as steely determination not to give into my tears at mealtimes, I had to eat whatever she cooked for all of us which was healthy balanced meals with lots of fresh vegetables and quality meat. As a result I grew up eating good variety under the circumstances even though I used to pick and eat only bits of the meal she cooked . By constant exposure, when I became a grown up I started loving some of those vegetables i was constantly given-but-not-enjoyed-when-i-was-small.

As for my child : I have a very stressful job, i work and commute longer hours and I am a softie and have no energy left at the end of the day. I know, it's bad. So I wasn't trying to give my child new veg as good as my mum did but, my child learnt to try new foods and to like them by seeing other children eat them, in childminder's house copying other children / competing with them. Thankfully I had a wonderful childminder who feed my child variety of fresh fruits, home - cooked meals. One example I love courgettes. I used to hate it when I was a child. Being exposed to it all my life by my mother, when I was in my late teens, I started liking and then loving them. But the same circle started with my child not wanting it, not touching it. In childminder's house she tried once and liked it. She eats courgette now.
So I would say keep giving veg in different ways and they'll get used to it at some point. And introduce a bit of competition with their friends especially good friends who eat well.

We have a chart on the wall to write down fruit and veg. Can get very competitive!

Definitely cooking together and making soup. They love sweet potato soup so I add lentils carrot and celery into it.

Lots of veg in sauces like spag Bol

Fruit for puddings - have lots of nice stuff like berries and melon on offer - more appealing than an apple!

Picky lunches rather than a sandwich - veg sticks, fruit and crackers and cheese goes down well.

Let them choose a tea once a week, Friday is kids choice and they always pick something like pizza or chicken nuggets which I don't mind if the other 6 nights have been healthier.

We sometimes Make our own chicken nuggets with fresh chicken
and crushed cornflakes too.

ive found the best way is to involve the children in choosing and preparing foods. Yes it can be a faff in the supermarket, not to mention expensive. It can also be a faff int eh kitchen and messy too but it is one of the only things that has encouraged a diversity in tastes for my children.

Oh that and saying "you can't say you don't like it is you haven't tried it"

I always make soup - my daughter loves it and it contains so many veggies, definitely covers at least 3 portions of her five-a-day

Simple things like telling my kids they're having a 'picnic' instead of a lunch that would've contained the same things always helps.

We have dinosaur bread cutters that are quite fun.

We cook together. I try to not cook separate meals for the kids and just serve them what we have. Make sure they get to understand flavour. I also don't demonise any food. They know treats are treats. No drinks in house apart from water and milk. Probably try to watch the sugar if anything but other than that we enjoy real butter and full fat milk.

Our kids eat really healthily probably because a watch us- they love colourful food like salads.
We have veggies and dips a lot which they love. Plus, they're involved in making meals, which helps!
We also eat a lot of soups, and again, our older daughter loves to eat make an eat vegetable soup..
Pretty much, we don't have snacks.. so far, they love healthy food! We're very lucky..

I usually just grate vegetables if a recoiled states to chop them as then my children can't find 'chunks' of them in their food.

Dd1 likes to help with cooking - soup, pizzas, casserole etc anything she can easily get involved with. Helps to then serve something she's made and talk through how she was involved/what we added!

Our dc are still only little but we let them help with rood prep, they can cut up mushrooms, tear up peppers and so on. It does seem to help.

I find that giving them a choice for fruit and vegetables makes it easier for them to try healthier foods :)

Also, if my daughter has helped cook her meal she is 100% more likely going to eat it. Let them learn about their food and get their hands really stuck in!

My younger daughter is still at the stage where she'll eat anything but the elder one (nearly 4) now has Opinions. She will happily eat meat and fish, so no worries about protein. And she's keen on things like apple, blueberry and strawberry, but veg is a real problem. She has recently decided she hates tomato sauce, which was my go-to option for hiding veg, and she's gone off soup too. So now I am trying just putting veg on her plate at every meal time and insisting she has to at least try it if she wants a yoghurt. But she doesn't have to finish it: I try to avoid power struggles over food, I have bad memories of sitting over my plate for hours as a kid, not being allowed down till I tried some noxious item. I figure as long as I keep offering veg, she'll get the hang of it in the end!

I weaned mine on 'real' food that always included fruit & vegetables - I wanted them to eat as we did as soon as they were old enough. They have never had any fads or phases where they wouldn't eat stuff. I accept that I have been probably quite lucky with both of them - but always believed that food wasn't something to be played with, just something to be encouraged and enjoyed. They love to help me prepare & cook - and I do think this helps. Kids are more interested in trying and eating something they have made. My 10 year old now says going out for a meal is his favourite thing to do as a family!

I use cookie cutters and shape cutters to make interesting shapes out of food, I've also used sand moulds to make fish/boat shapes out of rice. It's fun to make little pictures out of food for dinner. They are all good fruit and veg eaters now although they've had fads from time to time.

I have never had this issue with DD2. She's a vegetable and fruit fanatic. She's the child that puts 18 packets of broccoli in the trolley while my back is turned.

She is completely different from DD1 and DSD1 and DSD2, none of whom particularly love anything healthy despite my wonderful cooking.

I make ice cream fruit sundaes in the summer, one of the short water cones and layer with fruit, ice cream and strawberry sauce up to the top. They always go down well with all of them.

Sadly I am resigned to them picking onion out of spag bol or moaning that they don't like cooked carrots.

DD1 will eat peppers and carrots raw but my two DSD's just won't attempt anything.

Is there a link between Soreen and healthy eating? Last time I looked it was packed with sugar.

I do the normal hiding veg and fruit in crumbles and lasagna but I also allow my girls to have a list of 5 foods they do not like - this cannot change all the time! then everything else they have to try and eat some of even if they don't love it - unless its on the don't like list they have to eat it - it dos seem to work for us as they know what to expect and get to not eat their most hated foods!

Our tips:
Healthy balance - some fruit/veg and some treats every day
We grate 'hated' veg into all sorts of dishes to hide it- make all own pasta sauces, blitz
Dips to go with crudites work well
Finely chopped veg in frittata or cheesy savoury muffins
Top your own pizzas
Kids love raisins so we bake with them a lot, I put ither dried fruit in too that they don't notice