Getting Children To Eat Their Five A Day

Everyone is telling us how important it is to eat five portions of fruit or vegetables a day, but it's not always easy, especially if you have a fussy eater dining with you!  So, here are a few tips to increase your kids to eat more fruit and vegetables.

1. Sprinkle raisins, dried berries or banana on your cereal.  Get your little one to help!
2. Get your children to help choose the fruit for the fruit bowl. Talk about the different colours and then arrange them together.  Keep the bowl somewhere you can all see them.
3. Tinned fruit is handy.  Throw a tin of tomatoes into your shepherd's pie or some sweetcorn in your chicken casserole.
4. Make a meal of it!  Invite friends from nursery to eat with you and your children.  Set it up like a restaurant and make eating a fun, social event.
5. Puree some vegetables and make it into a sauce for pasta.
6. If your children need a snack, cut grapes, cucumber, apple, peppers etc and encourage them to nibble on those.  You can then let them eat vegetable sticks if they are spending some time watching the TV.
7. Make it look nice.  Cut banana into slices and arrange like a flower on a plate.  Make peppers into a star.
8. Pick your own.  In the right season, go out and pick you own vegetables.  Or, grow your own!  Pulling up a carrot or picking a courgette is great fun!
9. Get your little one to cook with you... chop with a blunt knife, stir etc.

Make it fun and tasty because its really worth it in the long run.  Eating plenty of fruit and vegetables is important to maintain a healthy weight, to get all the minerals and vitamins you need.  Plus it can help reduce cancers and heart disease.   And vegetables taste good!