Colourful kids – get the family to Eat in Colour

Colour makes food more appealing to everyone, especially children, helping overcome fears that family and children ‘don’t like’ fresh fruit and vegetables. With so many different colours, flavours and textures there are bound to be several that appeal to everyone.

Children are particularly keen to eat more healthily when they learn about nutrition in school. Kids know that body shape and appearance and fitness for sport are all linked to what they eat. So adding more colour with more fresh food at home will help them meet their goals and be like their sporting heroes.

• Start early - feed your baby puréed and mashed fruit and vegetables from 4 months and offer your toddler lots of different fruit and vegetables
• Lead by example - what you eat will influence what your kids like to eat
• Find foods that your kids already like eating such as; smoothies, muffins, yogurts etc. and find recipes that allow you to add fruit and vegetables to them
• Let your kids pick the fruit and vegetables they want to eat when you go shopping
• Let your child help you prepare meals
• Make mealtimes fun and don't try to force your kids to eat things they don't want to
• Keep trying - you might have to offer a small tablespoon size portion of green beans 10-15 times before your child will give it a go
• Start small - it needn’t be much to start with - for toddlers, a serving of vegetables may be as small as a tablespoon per year of age and half a piece of fresh fruit. Older kids should eat 1 whole fruit, a small handful of cooked vegetables or large handful of raw vegetables to count as a serving
• Try dried fruit instead of chocolate and other sweets
• Add fruit pieces in with yoghurt or serve them with a dip
• Create fruit kebabs - They're fun to make and a great way to get kids to try more than one variety
• Invent new fruit smoothie recipes together
• Offer fruit salad with a mix of watermelon, grapes, strawberries etc. as a pudding
• Make a snack mix with raisins and nuts
• Add chopped fruit, especially berries and bananas, to your child's cereal
• Mix in chopped fruit with their jelly
• What the eye doesn’t see! - camouflage vegetables in other foods, like chopping up and mixing vegetables in pasta sauces, lasagne, casseroles, soups etc. or adding vegetable toppings to pizzas
• Offer chopped vegetables with a dip, like mayonnaise
• Serve vegetables as a stir-fry