How do you make fruit and veg fun to help your children reach their five a day? Share your ideas with Change4Life for a chance to win a £300 voucher NOW CLOSED

[EllieMumsnet]

We all know that fruit or veg is the healthiest option, but it can sometimes be tricky to get your children eating their 5 a day. With that in mind, Change4Life would like to hear about the ways you make fruit and veg fun so your children happily tuck in to the fruit and veg on offer.

Whether you arrange fruit and veg into faces, create fruit kebabs or have other creative ways to make fruit and veg fun - share your tips and ideas below.

Feel free to share images of your creations if you have any!

All who leave a comment below will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

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My kids have always loved fruit so I’ve never needed to be too creative with fruit. Veggies, however I hide in soups and pasta sauces.

Cut them into animal shapes, like apple swans and mango hedgehogs

Meals are almost entirely vegetables and the kids love it!

I love the idea of fun food and love to make pictures out of food or little creative ways like my Apple boat fruit salad! Kids really love it! I find kids also like eating with little picks in bento boxes as it's more fun! Lots of fruit and veggies go down a treat! I also make healthy desserts more interesting like fruit kebabs with dip or my famous fruit tree!

Smoothies! They've been an absolute game changer when it comes to getting fruit, and veg, into the kids. They don't notice the small amount of kale I sneak into their fruit smoothies and they love them.

we make fruit kebabs and in the summer we pick our own fruit.

I always have a fully stocked fruit bowl and prepared veggies for a quick handy snack

Peel and cut into snack size pieces. They refuse a whole spoke but devour when its cut up for the.

Free use of the blender. Chuck it in and mixed with icecream

For toddlers I do try and make fruit and veg more fun (broccoli trees/smiley face fruit etc) but for DS7 we just talk about how important it is to eat and he likes to count how many portions he's had in a day.

My dc love smoothies and so we always use a few different fruits and sometimes veg in them. They also love helping to chop the fruit and veg which gets them involved in snack time. They love cucumber and carrot sticks with hummus and eat peppers like apples, so no creativity required but we do occasionally make colourful plates and shape patterns with the crudites!

I make sure my daughters are introduced to and given the opportunity to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables not just the standard for example apples,pears,bananas,carrot,peas etc.
I buy different fruit each week including peaches,plums,apricots,grapes,pears,apples,bananas,mango,pineapple,satsumas etc.
I encourage my daughters to help make fresh fruit salad for desert for all of us so they are joining in,learning about the fruits and being able to try them.
My daughters are offered fruit each day for snack including when they are at school and nursery. I cut the fruit into slices so they are manageable.
I also include vegetables for snack and cut these into either cubes, chunks or sticks and put them in a bowl with a dip such as hummus,soft cheese etc in the middle.
We also use fruit in cooking such as making banana or raspberry muffins together.
My daughters will always ask for fruit first as a snack and will go straight for this if we eat out. I definetley think it helped introducing them to a wide range of fruit and vegetables when they were younger.

I make sure my daughters are introduced to and given the opportunity to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables not just the standard for example apples,pears,bananas,carrot,peas etc.
I buy different fruit each week including peaches,plums,apricots,grapes,pears,apples,bananas,mango,pineapple,satsumas etc.
I encourage my daughters to help make fresh fruit salad for desert for all of us so they are joining in,learning about the fruits and being able to try them.
My daughters are offered fruit each day for snack including when they are at school and nursery. I cut the fruit into slices so they are manageable.
I also include vegetables for snack and cut these into either cubes, chunks or sticks and put them in a bowl with a dip such as hummus,soft cheese etc in the middle.
We also use fruit in cooking such as making banana or raspberry muffins together.
My daughters will always ask for fruit first as a snack and will go straight for this if we eat out. I definetley think it helped introducing them to a wide range of fruit and vegetables when they were younger.

I make sure my daughters are introduced to and given the opportunity to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables not just the standard for example apples,pears,bananas,carrot,peas etc.
I buy different fruit each week including peaches,plums,apricots,grapes,pears,apples,bananas,mango,pineapple,satsumas etc.
I encourage my daughters to help make fresh fruit salad for desert for all of us so they are joining in,learning about the fruits and being able to try them.
My daughters are offered fruit each day for snack including when they are at school and nursery. I cut the fruit into slices so they are manageable.
I also include vegetables for snack and cut these into either cubes, chunks or sticks and put them in a bowl with a dip such as hummus,soft cheese etc in the middle.
We also use fruit in cooking such as making banana or raspberry muffins together.
My daughters will always ask for fruit first as a snack and will go straight for this if we eat out. I definetley think it helped introducing them to a wide range of fruit and vegetables when they were younger.

We have a reward chart and of he eats 5 a day he gets a star

If we make fruit and veg part of our meals everyday right from the start when we wean our kids, our kids will get used to eating them. If they prepare food and cook with us, and we teach them where fruit and vegetables come from we take away the mystery and fear of trying new things. If we make fruit and veg available to our kids to snack on instead of making it easier to grab junk food they will get used to it. Not all of us like everything but if we try we can always find something our kids like and then we can take it from there. My daughter hated cooked vegetables so I gave her raw veg instead. My son hated apples and oranges so I gave him strawberries and mangoes which he loved. Instead of reaching for a bag of crisps or sweets I always had dried fruit in my bag or carrot sticks for snacks. I didn’t force feed them or bribe them, I just let them try different things till we found things that they liked. As they grow up kids tastes change and mature. My 17yr old daughter still hates lettuce and tomatoes so when we have salad she has raw carrots and raw peppers instead. She has way more than her 5-a-day of the things she likes and tries new things when she wants to. It doesn’t have to be a battle. If your kids hate all veg make cakes and puddings using beetroot, courgettes and carrots. Cook fruit if they don’t like it raw. Give them raw veg if they don’t like it cooked. Who said a roast dinner has to contain boiled carrots and not raw ones. Does it really matter if they don’t like raw apple, bake them or stew them instead. Put grated carrot in a cheese or ham sandwich instead of the usual lettuce or tomato. It only take a little bit of effort and a change in our way of thinking to get our kids eating fruit and veg.

Offer at least one exciting fruit each week alongside obvious candidates like apples and bananas, let them choose when shopping, serve in unexpected places like eggcup forget a giggle, and most importantly eat lots of salad, fruit and veg myself in front of them.

You could always buy a vegetable spiralizer and use things like courgettes, carrots and other long vegetables to place in a salad or use as a substitute of spaghetti

I blend the veg into sauces and make fruit kebabs.

Start the young, and be a good example

For fussy eaters I find most homeade pasta sauces are great for getting all sorts of vegetables eaten. Tasty nutritious and you can put anything into them. Also this can be used for other dishes like lasagne. Easy to make up batches of vegetable sauces and freeze for other things too.

I let my daughter choose which fruit she would like each week for school. She is pretty good and chooses all different fruit. Vegetables have always just been given to her and she doesn't question it.

'Traffic Light' veg was always a favourite with my kids. Sweetcorn, diced red peppers and peas or cubed broccoli or courgette (any green veg basically).

Another favourite was home made vegetable crisps. I've got a little slicing machine and I'd let the kids slice carrots, beetroot, parsnips etc.into very thin slices and then we'd bake them in the oven dried with olive oil and a little sea salt - they were absolutely delicious.

Aside from that I make lots of blended soups using lots of different vegetables, and pasta sauces and vegetable curries.

Never really had a problem getting them to eat fruit in any shape or form. I can't think of a fruit that either of them wouldn't eat to be honest.

We have paper plates with different fruits and vegetables on and my son gets to pick which ones he wants for dinner etc. Giving a choice is always good :)

Luckily my 2 teens would much prefer fruit to sweets. I have more trouble with veg, but by changing meals regularly so that we have different veg certainly helps to stop the moaning!

Fruit is for snacks and veg part of every meal. We grate carrots and add them to sauces and minutely chop onions as these aren't very popular!