Please tell us your ideas for getting children to eat more fruit - you could win £250 in supermarket vouchers

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello.

Do your children like fruit? Do they eat all sorts - or just the regulation daily banana?

ZESPRI Kiwifruit would love to hear your ideas for getting children to eat more fruit - whether your kids only just manage their five a day or are such fruit fiends, they could tell a kiwi from a kumquat at 40 paces.

Everyone who sends in an idea, tip or suggestion will be entered into a prize draw to win £250 in vouchers for a supermarket of their choice.*

Please note that your tips may be published on Mumsnet at a later date.

Thanks and good luck! MNHQ

*Participating supermarkets include Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Morrison, M&S and Waitrose

Grow fruit etc in your garden. My daughter loves picking and eating the berries from the garden.

Go fruit picking in the summer with them and they will probably end up eating their own body weight in raspberries!

Puree the fruit and add it to yogurt, or put it on toast.

Pureeing a new fruit with one you know your child likes can also get them to try new tastes.

Eat it yourself- let them see that you enjoy it too.

Cut up small much more tempting than a large piece.

Try a large variety of fruit and expect them to have a preference for different levels of ripeness just like adults do e.g some people think bananas taste best with brown spots on the skin- to my taste they are over ripe and i would struggle to eat it.

Wash and freeze grapes. A favourite in my house in the summer

Some fruits work well on the BBQ like banana and pineapple.

Make it fun and interesting without pressure. Have different fruits around, a fruit of the week where they can go to the shops and decide which one to try this week is good.

Tell them they aren't allowed it

at devilsadvocaat

With mine, I just eat it myself and MMM oooh my way through the pear/apple/whatever

6 ears prick up (3 dc) and all are clamouring for one within seconds

Sadly, the reverse isn't true (urgh chocolate)

my children have addled my brains.

seriously though, i think veggies are much harder to get into children than fruit.

although sometimes i get ds1 to eat fruit like pear or melon (and cucumber) by telling him it is apple

oh and another thing i find, if i offer ds1 fruit he will say 'no thanks'. however, if i just chop it up and give it to him in a bowl, he'll munch through it.

Tell them they can only have some if they're good! Let them make their own fruit salads. Keep a chart of their 5 a day, so they can see which days they achieve it.

Devilsavocado , mine go for vegetables more than fruit. They like bananas and apples and cherries, but thats all. The list of veg they like is endless! Even sprouts!

Oo, I got my daughter to try something by telling her it was gruffalo crumble. Didn't work because she still hated it though!

I have invented a game where DS closes his eyes and opens his mouth (he is amazingly trusting)...then we pop a piece of food in his mouth and it could be anything - chocolate, blueberry, an olive...the point is for him to enjoy the surprise.

We all do it to each other so he gets to put food in our mouths too, which he loves.

If the food has got a 'skin' I always squeeze it a bit so that the first thing he tastes is the juice. It's also essential to make sure the food is seasonal - so it tastes its best.

As a result he's become much more adventurous about tasting ALL foods, whether or not it's part of the game.

My DS will happily eat bananas, apples, strawberries, pears and pineapples. He has one of those in his packed lunch box for nursery every day and at nursery they have a fruit snack before lunch where they give them something fruity that they haven't got in their packed lunch box so that's at least 2 servings a day.

Anything he is not sure of or hasn't tried before I cut into small pieces so he can help himself and if he likes them he then goes on to eat them whole. Also I just keep trying him with things, the other month he wouldn't eat raisins (are they a fruit? )and then when I came across a pack in the cupboard the other day he ate the whole lot and asked for more!

He happily drinks smoothies if you give them to him with a straw but then I find he'll drink anything if you put a straw with it!

My tip is slightly different as it concerns my autistic son, and autistic kids are often picky eaters who absolutely refuse to try anything new. My technique is this - get the teeniest weeniest bit of a new fruit, say watermelon, and put it next to his favourite food. He does not get to eat his fave food until he's eaten the teeny morsel. Do it again the next day, and the next. Eventually one day he will pick up the (slightly larger) piece of watermelon of his own free will, as he'll have come to like the taste. It did not work with everything (he still loathes tomatoes and cucumber) but he will now eat peach, apricot, pear, orange, apples, plums, watermelon, mango, which means his diet is now a whole lot more varied than it could have been had he been left to his own devices.

sickof - I like it! I have a very very fussy DS. I am going to try this with other things - although he's really not bothered about food at all so should be interesting to see of he eats any of it!

I introduced fruit and veg early. When my children were toddlers I used to cut a piece off e.g. a banana and mutter, "No that's too much," and take some back. I did the same with vegetables when spooning out peas etc. It wasn't long before they were begging for bigger portions!

We also did things like set different fruit in jelly - they really enjoyed doing that particularly if we did different layers with different fruit in each.

sickofsocalledexperts - my DS has Aspergers and he is obsessed with the colour green, so will try most things, so long as they are green. So peas, green beans, runner beans, broccoli, sprouts, raw green pepper, cooked green pepper - its amazing .

At this time of year I make my own smoothies with frozen fruit. The DCs adore them - mango, berries and anything else, also adding fresh fruit too.
I agree that the younger we introduce different tastes to our children the more likely they are to eat a wide range of tastes.

Add fruit to main meals too - don't just have it as a snack or desser!

A typical day for us is:

Porridge made with apple and apricot (B'fast)
Parsnip and pear soup (lunch)
Fruity chicken curry with apple and raisins (Dinner)

Add in a banana as a snack and some strawberries or blueberrys at lunch and that is quite a lot of fruit it think!

My DS will eat 'sports candy' like Sporticus in Lazytown. He wasn't too keen on apples until I told him that Sporticus eats them so he can do all his jumps, flips and press ups.
Pick your own is definately good to get them trynew flavour, strawberries were a face wrinkler until we went and picked our own.
Banana disapears faster if sliced and the sucking in grapes game works well in our house.

Eat fruit in interesting ways - cut a kiwi in half, put it in an egg-cup and eat it with a teaspoon like a boiled egg.

Or cut apple with a fancy cutter.

Encourage children to draw their own fruit shopping list for when you go to the shops. They can pick and bag the fruit then have a tasting session when you get home.
Encourage children to be creative with foodie faces, smoothies, lollies etc etc.

I think the most important thing is that fruit is always visible in your home and that children can see their parents enjoying it (and enjoying the taste of newly tried fruit). Always worked for us,

DEVILSAVOCADO?!

i feel a name change coming on...