Florida grapefruit want your healthy eating tips and grapefruit recipes. There's £300 up for grabs (plus £100 for your child's school/nursery)

[Carriemumsnet]

Florida grapefruit want to know your top tips on getting your children to eat their five a day and indeed managing to eat five a day yourself. This could be in the form of a great recipe a top tip, even a song or nursery rhyme your child has learnt at school or nursery - anything that helps encourage folks to eat more fruit and veg. (If you're adding a recipe add it to MN recipes and just post the link here - as we have above).

Florida grapefruit will be choosing their favourite contributions and one lucky winner will win £300 along with £100 for their child's school.

Quick plug for the humble grapefruit - half a grapefruit provides 100% of the recommended daily intake of vitamin C, and a whole grapefruit represents not one but two of your five-a-day fruit and veg intake.

Plug over - thanks and good luck

MNHQ

i know that the whole five a day thing is a pile of crap.
thank oyu.

encourage your children to grow their own.

Create their initial letter out of cotton wool, dampen, pour on cress seeds, stick on window sill and keep moist.

IME you can grow pretty much any veg in a tub in the smallets garden. EG you can grow peas/beans in flower tubs, as long as the growing plants are supported by cane. If no garden, lettuces and edible leaves can be grown on window sill.
Children are more likely to try something they have helped grow.

I'm not keen on grapefruit, but here is my top healthy eating tip:

1. Cut up, or peel and portion fruit such as apples, pears, satsumas, carrots, cucumber etc. I find DS will eat loads more that way, whereas a whole apple for example is usually nibbled around and wasted. (*)

1. Give them something healthy to start a meal when they are absolutely starving. e.g. carrot sticks or celery. They will then associate those foods with a real pleasure in eating, and contimue to enjoy them another time.

(*)(well actually it's not wasted, cos I peel off the bitten bits and proceed to step one above)

I thought 5 a day was the minimum and that actually we were supposed to have more than 5

My top tip fwiw is to have a fruit banquet/princess party/pirate party - whatever will float your child's boat. Nice plates, "goblets" , candles if you have them, dressing up and lots of chopped up fruit - ideally some they've chosen with you to try for the first time. Someone did this for my eldest dd when she was about 3 and on a playdate - and she loved it and has been a fruit feind ever since, including grapefruit, which I find amazing as I wasn't over keen as a child. I obviously didn't do as well with my next two who weren't as into banquets and are strict apple pear and grape fans, with the odd banana, but hey you can't win 'em all.

whoops - there go my 5 posts a day will get MNHQ to delete a couple

There's no such word as contimue is there? I've aucght ir from DS' quirky words: emenies, aminals, ternimal. etc,.

OFGS now I can't type caught or it

I find that eating grapefruit (or indeed anything else) instantly makes it irresistible to DS. This is doubly so if it's a grapefruit (or anything else) that I have been really looking forward to and/or saving for that particular moment.

I used to eat half a grapefruit for breakfast everyday when I was a teenager. I love grapefruit.
My DC's don't like it much though. They tried grapefruit juice this week and didn't like that either.
But then I eat lemons too so maybe I have a bitter fruit loving gene which I didn't pass on.

There's my useless thread contribution.

My 2.5 DS calls grapes his treasure.....I let him hunt for other pieces so he gets to have fun and as he found it ends up keeping it and eating up as his treat.

Also the fruit bowl is alway accessiable....and I never refuse a request for fruit.

Grapefruit is disgusting.

however i have recently discovered tha freezing grapes and strawberries is fabulous. even DD2 will hold a frozen grape.

she won't eat it but it's a step forwards i feel.

oh yy, frozen grapes are unbelievably nice!

My children eat fruit and drink fruit juices no trouble at all, but I worry that all the natural sugars and acids will have a negative effect on their teeth. Its vegetables that I have to get creative with by hiding them in their meals

Grapefruit & citrus salad dressing This goes great with a green salad and some grilled fish.

I used to make 'sausages' out of mash and mashed sweet potato, with peas and sweetcorn hidden in the middle. I rolled the 'mashages' in egg and breadcrumbs and shallow fried them to get a nice crunchy coating. They were always thrilled to find the secret veg - but never actually ate them

I used to use pureed carrot in tomato-sauced based things like spahetti hoops too.

I was queen of hiding stuff. Always got rumbled though...

We sing the following song about fruit and veg which the children enjoy (sung to the same tune as Hickory Dickory Dock):

Apples, bananas and beans
Carrots, grapefruit and peas
I eat five each day
To grow strong and play
Can I have some more ?Strawberries? please!

(in the last line, the children can shout out their favourite fruit or veg in place of ?strawberries?)

Mine's an easy peasy fruit salad here

My ds is autistic and has an obsession with numbers and shapes.

If we were trying to get him to eat his grapefruit we'd say:

'can you eat the grapefruit square (4 segments)?

or simply

'can you eat 6 gratefruit segments?' at which point he will usually negotiate upwards and say '10?'

Works with veg too.

We all add fruit to cereal or porridge for breakfast in our house. Baby has pureed apple or pear with baby porridge, toddler likes raisins on shreddies, I like raspberries (tip - frozen ones much cheaper) on porridge, my husband likes blueberries or raisins on shreddies or unsweetened muesli.

i have grapefruit whith crumbled weetabix on top and some yogart yummy ds2 hates grapfruit tho

Oh divine breakfast treat - pink grapefruit with the tiniest pinch of brown sugar sprinkled over a few minutes before you eat it - delish. And grapefruit juice is made a zillion times nicer if mixed half-and-half with orange or pineapple juice.

Healthy eating-wise, offer fruit or chunks/sticks of veg as snacks from weaning - if they don't know different they're less resistant! Also instead of sweetened yoghurts a big pot of plain or greek yoghurt mixed with fresh fruit goes down really well