Share your tips for getting your children eating healthily with Little Yeos

[EllieMumsnet]

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Trying to get your children to eat healthily is a battle that many parents will inevitably face; from weaning onto solid foods, to dinner times through to pack lunches and beyond. There is a lot of information and recipes out there on what the best methods/techniques are to get your child to start eating healthily and how to incorporate nutritious food into their meals. With that being said Little Yeos would love to know any recommendations, recipes, techniques or experiences of getting your child to eat healthily.

Here’s what Little Yeos have to say: We’d love to hear your top tips for children’s healthy eating. Here are some examples to get you started:

Weaning:
What are your tips for weaning your child onto healthy food?
Do you find that your child prefers sweeter foods or more varied flavours?

Doing the weekly food shop:
Do you find it easy to find healthy snacks for your child?
Do you find nutrients labels on foods in supermarkets are clear?

Meal times:
Do you have any favourite healthy tips or recipes that work for your family?
What are your favourite healthy swaps?

Whatever your recommendations, thoughts or experiences when it comes to getting your child to eat healthily, share them on the thread below and you’ll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!
MNHQ

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

if they haven't tried it they don't know it exists yet right? so keep the sweet treats hidden

It's always healthy options at home.
We do allow them to have unhealthier things when we are eating out because we don't do it very often. At home it's you eat what you're given or you go hungry.
Also seeing people eating vegetables, the youngest now has an obsession with brussel sprouts because their aunt loves them. They were eating everyone's around the table and still can't get enough!

i make sure i eat lots of healthy food (at least when the kids are around) so i am leading by example and also, mash it up! mashing up veg with the help of the kids makes it fun and they seem to eat it then

We love fruits and vegetables, so it's hard for our DD not to really, as a majority of our meals are made up of vegetables. I also put vegetables into bolognese, sauces and we make our own lollies and freeze them using fruit from the blender. We try and talk about eating healthy and why we need fruits and vegetables. Generally, I think we've been very lucky. But it's a if you don't eat it, you go hungry in our house!

It's important to add variety early on. It's easy to move quickly to convenience foods, but I find I have to set the example myself. We all make the effort to eat vegetables and fruit, not just pushing them onto the children. We have treats, but that's what they are a treat.

lots of fresh fruit and veg

Let them help with food preparation and start them eating fruit and vegetables from an early age.

We try to ensure that dd has at least two pieces of fruit a day at home,- she normally eats two at school also.

Make it fun. A little of everything in moderation, no food is forbidden but access is restricted. Want a chocolate biscuit for breakfast, fine, but it's the only one so the rest of the day it's healthier choices.
I have a (nearly)four year old and an 8 year old with asd. They cook with me, they don't like mushrooms (what they mean is they don't like the texture) so one is my official mushroom washer and blitzer and we chop them up very small to go into sauces. Veggies are given crazy silly names (courgette was green trunkalunka last week) so when it went into the dinner became wiggly trunkalunka (spaghetti with a veggie sauce). It's easy for my kids to suddenly decide "I don't like courgettes I'm not eating it" and getting an argumentative mood at the table that leads to a stressful battle of will, much harder to say "I don't like wiggly trunkalunka" without laughing and having fun. I admire parents who say they give their kids nothing but brown rice and raw veg and their children will eat it because they don't mess around. Doesn't work for us, we've found making it all fun takes the stress out and gives our kids a positive attitude to food most of the time we also have a two bite rule, two bites before you can really declare you don't like something but when we introduce new food/ recipies there is always accompanying veg that they do like that they must eat instead.

I've always managed to get fruit, vegetables and salads down my lil boy by arranging them into a smiley face on the plate. It works a treat

My DC are much happier to eat things when they help themselves so we often put the food in the middle of the table and they fill their own plates. Favourites are filling taco shells or wraps with chilcken/mince plus salad and veggies or plain pasta with a choice of cheese or tomato sauce, meatballs/chicken and cheese.

Start as you mean to go on. I get so frustrated when I see very young children in buggies with an icecream or sweets when they aren't old enough to heve even asked! Food shouldn't be used as a substitute for parenting effort.

Baby-led weaning was great for us- started with veggies and so DS didn't seem to develop too much of a sweet tooth.

Home cooked food, with veg in every meal. Processed foods are limited. Only ever gave DS water or milk to drink. Now if we go out, fruit juice is a special treat for him (better for his teeth, if nothing else!)

Aslo, it's up to parents to set a positive example. We eat dinner as a family most nights and all have the same food.

Maybe I just got really lucky with DS, bu even now, his snack of choice is cucumber, carrot sticks or fruit (although he's developed a passion for jaffa cakes so...)

Fruit as a treat. Fruit ice lollies made with natural yoghurt, honey, passion fruit and pineapple. Start fruit and veg as part of weaning. Absolutely no fizzy drinks. Get your kids involved in cooking from scratch, load up on veg in things like lasagne, spag bol. Chunky soups are great in winter time. My little ones love a big chunky minestrone with loads of veg and pasta. Of course give kids a treat at the weekend, on holidays etc but moderate it

Let’s be real, there’s no one size fits all answer to this, for me I would say go with variety until you find good healthy foods that your kids actually like. I don’t buy processed ready meals, but always make fresh and that way you can make it as healthy as possible and cram in some veggies etc. All kids love fruit so fruit as dessert is great although expensive but at least we now have the options of wonkey fruits. I also think it’s very important to approach a meal without telling the child in advance you might not like this but I want you to try it etc, just lead by example saying yum as you eat yours. X

I check labels which is why my children do have Little Yeos, rather than cheaper but more sugary yogurts.

Pudding is only yogurt and fruit.

I put veg that they don’t like (mushrooms!) in the food processor so I can hide them in the food! Similar to lentils - healthy and money saving way to bulk food out. They still eat it!

A good way is to provide youngs one a mix of fruit and veg in bits and pieces like a "thali" mixed with nuts. So you can have carrots, berries, nuts, squash but in little bits.

Avoid sugar drinks and sweets

Plenty of fresh vegetables, salad etc. Olivia is quite good as she loves her veggies & salad so it's not a problem. No fizzy drinks allowed, mainly water & pure fruit juice

one way of getting fussy eaters to eat a variety of fruit is to put various chopped fruit on a plate and give the kids a skewer to load with fruit, they enjoy filling it up and eating the lot

Use fun shaped biscuit cutters on healthy food to make eating healthy fun.

I agree with involving them with cooking. We found that they love dishes they have prepared or helped to make. I gave our DCs tasters of our dinners when they were babies and it did seem to encourage a taste for different foods.

We don't prohibit any foods at all. But we do talk about what is healthy and what isn't and how it could make us feel or affect our body if we have too much unhealthy food.

We don't make a big thing of eating dinner, it's there as an option ,there is no treat for eating.. It's just dinner, if they don't want what I serve they can have cereal or toast. Their choice!

I don't make a big deal out of eating fruit and vegetables. It's a food group that is a part of everyday life.
DD just eats them because she understands that they come as part of whatever meal has been served.

I always have fresh fruit salad available at breakfast (easily accessible to help yourself) as well as cereal, toast, pancakes, yoghurt... and I always have a big bowl of salad on the table when I serve lunch and dinner. She sees me/my dad/the family helping themselves and tucking in so she does too. No one says 'come on eat your fruit/veg' we talk about things completely unrelated to food/eating when we have meals.

Absolutely nothing is restricted in my house though. Crisps/sweets/biscuits/dessert pots are always within reach if DD fancies a snack, but so are breadsticks, mini cheeses, deli meat and fruit. She chooses what she wants and self-regulates really well.

I have a really blasé attitude to food and I think, because I am so calm, it's rubbed off on DD and she realises that meals/eating healthily are nothing worth battling about.

If you don't buy it they can't eat it simple really