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

[harimo]

We grow our own veggies - only way I can persuade DS that I'm not trying to poison him!!

My top tip is to hide fruit in other food - so they have loads in porridge for breakfast and I often hide an apple in beef puree (little one is only 8 months old)

[honeybunmum]

My kids and their friends love it when I do fruit kebabs, you can put anything on it and they find it really easy to eat as they hold the skewer (no sticky hands or slippery chunks falling off spoons)
We also do lots of smoothies, they enjoy chucking in the fruit, natural yoghurt and milk then blitzing it all up.
Yummmmmmmmmmmmmy

[mathanxiety]

[victoria48]

I try not to make too big a deal out of it with my toddler. He loves fresh fruit juice so he always starts the day with 1 of his 5. I always offer him a piece of fruit after a meal and if he gets hungry between. He does quite well and so do I but I am a natural veggie and salad lover so I don't have to put much effort in.

I grow potatos, carrots and strawberries in the garden too so he likes helping me water and pick those.

[MamaG]

fruit kebabs.

Kids LOVE fruit kjebabs

[MamaG]

you can hide TONS of veg in home made pasta sauce

passata as base and add onion, courgette, carrot, mushrooms, garlic, broccoli etc and WHIZZ

it's stays red and they don't realise they're eating a ton of veg

[MayorNaze]

ditto MamaG but with pizza. then you can also hide veg under the cheese

[AvadaKedavra]

I love grapefruits but DH isn't allowed them as they react with his medication, shame as he loves them too.

I haven't got a recipe of my own for this but my friend makes grapefruit marmalade and it is delicious, much nicer than normal marmalde, much more zingy. I once made grapefruit marmalade muffins with it

Healthy eating tip for children - remember that their 5 a day portion sizes are half the adult size

[RockinSockBunnies]

We make smoothies here - blend whatever fruit we happen to have (bananas, strawberries, raspberries, apply juice, orange juice) and DD will drink it down. She adores fruit salad and will devour bowfuls of it, though isn't quite so keen on simply eating an apple or a banana on its own, though she will if there's nothing else.

Making fruit faces on Weetabix was popular when she was younger. Ditto making vegetable faces.

Raw veggies (carrots, cucumber) always goes down well with houmous.

Also, making vegetable soup and then blending it means that it's more likely to be eaten.

[feedthegoat]

Fruit and Veg is about the only thing ds is not fussy with!

He does like to help plant seeds and pick his own fruit and vegetable. He ate raw peas by the handful last summer.

We usually have fruit on his cereals at breakfast too. Strawberries and blueberries are a favourite for this.

I also let him decide how he'd like to eat them. For instance, he loves carrots raw but isn't keen on them cooked. I leave his raw if that is what he asks for. As long as he eats them, that is all that matters.

[FairyFay]

I think getting kids involved in growing fruit and veg is the best way to encourage them to eat it. My DCs have planted various fruit and veg in containers and are excited each time they see a new shoot or leaf.

[TabithaTwitchet]

I absolutely LOVE grapefruit, especially juice (the other week when DH was away 2 night on business I managed to drink 3 litres of Florida Pink Grapefruit juice ) - think I may be a bit addicted, as even when I had really bad heartburn in pregnancy I couldn't stop drinking it, until DH stepped in and forbade it... also went on a grapefruit binge in the early days of breastfeeding and gave poor little DD an upset stomach.

Anyway with fruit and veg I:

Cut them up into very small pieces, especially if it is something new, much easier to try a tiny bit if it is cut up like that.

Try and have a wide range of different colours on the plate to make it look pretty - this has also had the educational side affect of making DD learn her colours

Bring a toy to the table, which will tell DD how much it likes whichever vegetable is on her plate, and suggest she tries it (this works very well, but I am trying not to overuse it)

[reetnproper]

We find that letting our girls help prepare tea usually results in them eating it all up, so we just make sure that we have at least 5 veg (not including tatties)with most dinners.

They're also the official 'tasters' for all the veg ingredients that can be eaten raw and when I'm doing a salad, I'll do them each a salad tasting bowl with slices of peppers, cucumbers, carrots, raw mushrooms, grapes and tomatoes. Whatever I'm using pretty much.

Generally, we all eat the same meal, together as a family anyway and so getting my 5 a day isn't a problem either.

[mandycr]

i have just started to grow our own veg sorry should have said we are growing our own veg my 8yr and 2yr old love getting there hands dirty planting bulbs and seeing wat comes out, and because they made them i let them help in the kitchen too chopping and peeling (closely supervised of course) they love it i see them sneeking a quick taste when they think am not lookin it certainly has helped them with regards to trying more veg and they love it, the digging the watering, the pruning and weeding and not forgetting looking for worms u cant get better than that.

[geordieminx]

5 a day tomato sauce added to recipe section

[MaryBS]

I make a game out of it... I prepare some fruit/veg (mine eat things like raw broccoli), and say "I'll just leave those there while I go over here and do this..." and when I return its gone, and I have children with hamster cheeks! I then make a point of saying "well I'm SURE I left this here... and I was SO looking forward to eating it..." and I have 2 children giggling about how they've "got one over on Mummy"

[WowOoo]

I have, along with other female memebrs of my family had half a grapefruit for breakfast as long as I can remember. I rarely get colds.

Our Christmas special: Cut grapefruit in half, cut around edge so it's ready to eat. Then soak with some port, Marsala wine or sherry, sprinkle on some brown sugar and leave til Christmas morning. The sugar goes all crispy.Yum!

[Katisha]

I struggle with DS1 and 5 a day as he is not keen on many fruit or veg. However giving him fruit juice at breakfast (before cleaning teeth) and bunging some dried fruit in his packed lunch with an apple gets us up to three. Then we do battle with broccoli and carrots later in the day. But not always. So I give him a vitamin tablet because it makes me feel better, if not him...

Anyway - grapefruit - cut into halves, do the thing where you put a knife round the segments to loosen, sprinkly with brown sugar, cinnamon and a bit of butter and grill. Lovely!

[badgermum]

Put chunks of fresh fruit on a wooden skewer with a marshmallow in the middle, my kids love eating fruit that way.

[CurtainTwitcher]

we make pizzas with hidden veg in the tomato puree mix.
Fruit kebabs
add fruit to cereal in morning or custard and bananas for a pudding.

[mustrunmore]

hmmm smoothies

[DaisyBella]

I offer my kids 'Fruit Salad' as a special treat (especialy at breakfast). I chop up a variety of different fruits (I even chop the grapes) - I then present it in a 'fancy' banana split bowl and then give them each a cake fork to eat it with. They love this - it is colourful and they enjoy the novelty of eating their fruit with a fork. Served alongside a fruity yoghurt or fromage frais it is a fab alternative to cereal (which can get a bit boring every day). It is also a great kick start to the day with having all that fruit first thing.

[mustrunmore]

The kids love having sliced fruit and raspberry compote type thing as a dip! Looks really vivid too, if you use slices of apple/pear/banana to dip into bright red gunk. (just make sure the bananas not too squishy).

Oo, and we do 'pudding pizza'... shortcrust circle base, bit of honey or jam, then chop fruit in amusing/interesting shapes and decorate! Can either precook the base so he fruit is fresh, or make it more like an open tart and cook after glazing with a bit of sugar water.

[mustrunmore]

Why are red grapefruit so mauch nicer than normal ones?