Great teachers make learning fun. We all know that from our days at school.

And you want your kid to grow into a healthy (vegetable eating and appreciating) adult. But does it seem hard to get them to eat up any, let alone ALL, of their greens? As a mum of two boys, and someone who has worked with thousands of children who are not exactly big veg lovers, my advice is to tap into your inner child, to make a genuine connection with your own kid, and just play with veg. It might sound a bit mad, but I believe this will be your turning point. Here are the reasons why playing veg related games (and learning about the importance of eating veg in a fun way), achieves incredible physical and mental health benefits:

• Playing is the safe way to de-sensitise a kid to things that might scare them- big red tomatoes can be scary if you have only ever eaten them in a sauce. Before a child will put veg near their mouth, they have to feel safe handling it, looking at it, using it.
• Fun activities create opportunities for imparting important information in a relaxed way. What this really means is you can mention facts in passing, admire colours, health benefits, shapes of different veg, which a child will make a note of, and store for later, even if they don’t seem to be paying attention to what you have said.
• One-to-one play time with a parent who is focused on them (leave the phone in another room) will make your child feel happy, special and loved. It will make you feel good, flooding both your systems with feel good chemicals, which will in turn make veg games seem really positive. Making positive memory associations. Win win.
• It creates the perfect opportunity for a parent to ‘role model’ what they are saying. Without expecting or asking a kid to copy, the parent can demonstrate that a beetroot crisp will turn your tongue pink. (And sometimes, a child will copy. But don’t rush this process. Keep your expectations very low. Take pleasure in very small wins. Rome wasn’t built in a day.)

So how do you PLAY with VEG?

Here are a few games to try – tailor them to your child. Some kids love arts and craft (you could paint with veg), others like challenges (memory games!), some need to move and enjoy a sense of adventure (fast paced treasure hunts?)

The only rule is keep it FUN! If it isn’t working, don’t get disheartened. Just try something different on another day. I have not yet met a child who doesn’t love to play – even with veg!

Painting

Painting and printing with veg is great fun. Halve your items.  Broccoli florets, potatoes, celery hearts! You can make beautiful roses with celery hearts- perfect for Mother’s day, and for discovering the more ‘unusual’ essential oil in celery – which actually has a calming effect on the nervous system, and is anti depressant. Just cut them off at about 5 cm from the base, dip in red paint et voila! Be sure to enjoy and inhale the smell with your children, before you paint.

Treasure hunts

Children love treasure hunts. I run them at events, and feel like the pied piper, as I weave a group of 30 kids through the stands and crowds, all hunting for a colourful rainbow sticker which is a clue that something wonderful is hidden there! Like a tin of tomatoes (good for your skin) or a bottle of sunflower oil (good for your brain). Rather than a chocolate egg treasure hunt at Easter, how about trying a veg hunt? Kale crisps, almond butter, popcorn..not all has to be edible (tins, plastic fruit and veg, bottles), but it is fun if something is!

Assault courses

These work really well with active children. The floor is the sea, so they have to clamber over/ under/ through things to avoid falling into it, pick up veg as they go along, and accomplish challenges along the way- like picking up a pumpkin seed with their tongue or balancing a sprout leaf on their nose.

Collages

This is a top technique for a kid who won’t eat a veg. Get them to make a real 3D picture of it? Cabbages are great, pumpkins with real pumpkin seeds stuck on the picture, carrots with real tops stuck on top of the picture of a carrot.

Scenery

I use food to create landscapes. Animal shaped pasta, breadstick enclosures, purple cabbage pond, broccoli and leek trees, rosemary bushes, pea boulders, sweetcorn sand… This stimulates their imagination, and de-sensitises them, and you never know, they might just sneak a bite!

Face plates

You can buy great face plates, but why not use a tortilla wrap to make your own? Cream cheese spread thinly will help everything stick. Then get the kids to make a funny face using cucumber eyes, kale hair, pepper smiles… and after a few photos, they can roll them up, and eat them.

Natasha Gavin

Natasha Gavin has run I Know Why It’s Yum, Mum! for almost ten years. The theatre-in-education company runs 50 minute Rainbow Workshops for children aged 2-6 years, in any childcare setting or in private homes for groups of mums/ childcarers. It also tours primary schools in England and abroad, with a theatrical production and workshops about fruit and veg. It is a social enterprise that operates on a not-for-profit basis. If you are curious about them see: www.iknowwhyitsyummum.com

Adding veggies to your kid’s lunchbox doesn’t have to be tedious. It’s a great way to help your child reach their 5-a-day. Even if your child isn’t a veggie lover (yet!) try to include a small portion of at least one veg in their lunchbox each day. Perseverance pays off and over time your child is much more likely to accept veggies if they have been repeatedly exposed to them.

Here are 5 top tips aimed at adding veg and fun to your child’s lunchbox:

Dipping veggies

If carrot and cucumber sticks day after day don’t entice your child, try adding a tasty dip alongside the crudités for added interest. Hummus, guacamole, sour cream or a simple dollop of soft cheese spread will go well with any veggie sticks for dipping. Place the dips in a small, easy to open, sealable pot alongside the veggie sticks. To save on daily prep time for the veggies themselves, chop plenty at the weekend and keep in a sealed jar with some cold water in it to keep them from drying out – this works really well for carrots!

Veggies on pizzas

Pizza can be a great lunchbox filler. Whether you use shop-bought or make your own pizzas using pitta bread or tortilla wraps, why not add some extra veg to help boost your child’s intake? Sliced tomato, sweetcorn, chopped peppers, and even frozen peas all work well and will give the pizza some appetising colour too.

Veg kebabs

Making vegetables appealing doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Threading chopped vegetable pieces on skewers creates a fun way of exposing your child to vegetables. Raw peppers, cherry tomatoes (halved for the under 5’s), celery, cucumber, raw mushrooms and ready-to-eat beetroot all work well. Have a go at adding some new or unfamiliar veggies alongside ones that your child is already familiar with to increase exposure to new foods. Try our rainbow veggie kebabs, or Jamie Oliver’s Greek veggie kebabs if you want to go a step further and cook some with fun flavours for a new texture and taste.

Fruit and veg salad

Combining veggies with your kid’s favourite fruit in a fruit and veg salad combo can be a great way to expose them to more vegetables and add variety to their lunchbox. Cherry tomatoes, frozen peas, pepper slices, carrot sticks, tinned sweetcorn and sugar snap peas are great ideas for your fruit and veg salad. Why not try mixing pineapple & cucumber as in this salad, or add some strawberries to a spinach and avocado salad as in here to make it sweeter and more appealing to little eyes.

Add veggies or salad items to sandwiches

It might seem obvious but adding veg or salad to the good old sandwich or wrap should not be underestimated. Why not try grated carrot, spinach or lettuce leaves, cucumber or beetroot slices, pepper sticks or tinned sweetcorn alongside your usual fillings such as cheese, ham, hummus or tuna? How great do these crunchy carrot pittas sound?

Ways to up the raw veg

There is so much evidence telling us how great vegetables are for us and how we need to be eating more of them, but it’s not always that easy to do! Using raw veggies can be a quick and tasty way to get your kids to eat more vegetables. Here are some ideas:

Keep them handy

Chop up raw peppers and carrot, keep these in a sealed bag or sealed jar with a little water in the fridge, this way you can grab them for a fast snack or add to lunchboxes.

Offer before tea

After school but before tea can be a time when kids are continuously hungry. Try leaving a platter of raw veg for them to nibble on at snack time – you could think of it as the starter to their meal.

Serve with a dip

It can be tasty and fun to have a dip for those veggies. Hummus, guacamole or a frozen pea and mint dip can be simple, cheap and add another veg portion too.

Be unconventional

Most people stick with carrots, tomatoes, cucumber and perhaps peppers, which will get repetitive after a while. There are so many other options. Try raw broccoli and cauliflower, sugar snap peas, mange tout, baby corn, celery, and mushrooms. You may find your family prefers some veg raw to cooked!

Cut them in different ways

Try offering those veggies in different shapes. If you always cut carrots into rounds, try a stick or just peel and let them have the whole carrot.

No need to waste it

If those raw veggies don’t get eaten then you can always add them to the next meal that you cook, so they don’t need to be wasted.

There are so many reasons to get your kids to eat raw veg: uncooked veg is sweeter, crunchier, more colourful and it’s easier for you (or them) to prepare. Raw veg is also brilliant as a pre-dinner snack or an easy picnic or lunchbox option, and a great way to keep kids busy (and well-tempered) during long car journeys. With a pinch of fun and a dash of imagination, your children will be chomping raw carrots, munching broccoli trees and crunching cucumbers with glee. Here are some deliciously fun ways to get them hooked on raw veg snacks:

• Create “Veg Dib Dabs” by halving cherry tomatoes or cut fingers of cucumbers to be offered with a plate of toasted sesame seeds mixed with a pinch of sea salt.
• Cut up a selection of veg in different colours and encourage your children to create an edible rainbow snack.
• Turn raw veg into an easy pesto – you can pretty much make pesto out of anything. Swap basil for spinach, broccoli, kale, raw podded peas or broad beans. The pesto can be served with pasta or as a dip at snack time.
• Offer them with dip to dunk the veg into. Studies show that kids are more likely to eat veg if they’re served with a dip – and even better if the dip has veg in it, too.
• Pair raw veg with fun patterns and a salad dressing, and get your kids to make veg prints on their plate or a piece of paper, using things like halved broccoli florets to make a scene of trees, halved cauliflower florets for clouds or sheep, slices of raw cabbage for waves of water or landscape horizons, round carrot slices or halved cherry tomatoes for wheels, the cut end of celery for moons or the letter ‘c’… Getting kids to engage with veg positively in any way will increase the chances of them eating it when offered.
• Engage your kids in a friendly celery sword fight. Bite off any broken bits of your sword and encourage your children to do the same. This can also be played with carrots, or asparagus spears.

Not sure what to eat raw? Need some new raw veg ideas to change things up a bit? Try some of these raw veg superheroes next time the kids want a snack:

• Cauliflower
• Cucumber
• Peas
• Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Fennel
• Carrots
• Broccoli
• Avocado
• Red cabbage
• Celery

How to get your gut-loving 30 plant points a week 

We can be creatures of habit and it’s easy to get into a food rut – especially when we’re busy. But upping your plant diversity isn’t about making meals more complicated or expensive. I promise it’s way easier and cheaper than you might think!

You’ve probably heard how important our gut health is to our general health and happiness. Looking after your gut by eating plenty of fibre, and aiming to “eat the rainbow” can help to support a healthy immune system, get on top of gut issues, and more. 

Veg is high in fibre, comes in a variety of colours and types, and keeps your gut happy!

My motto: enjoy 30 plant points a week for a diverse, balanced diet to nourish your gut health. Vegetables are an essential part of this. 

Why the big 30?

The ‘5-a-day’ (or even ‘7-a-day’) rule can be a good place to start – but it doesn’t take into account the trillions of microbes living in our gut. They all need different types of plant foods to flourish.

For good gut health, the goal is diversity. So where has the ‘magic 30’ come from? Fuelled by research that I’ve then tested out in clinic, one of the key studies demonstrated that people who eat at least 30 different plant-based foods a week had more diverse gut microbes than people who ate less than 10. It’s certainly not as black and white as a single number, but in clinic 30 has shown to be an effective target, hence my recommendation for you guys!

And the more diverse plant foods we feed our gut microbes, the more diverse they become and the more ‘skills’ they have to…

• Train our immune cells.
• Increase our resilience to infection.
• Strengthen our gut barrier.
• Communicate with our brain.
• Balance our blood sugar, lower blood fats and help prevent against many diseases.

What counts? All of your fruits, veg, wholegrains, legumes (beans and pulses), nuts and seeds, herbs and spices. 1 portion per point, with herbs and spices getting 1/4 point each.

Variety is key here and there’s no need to get caught up on portions at first – focus on diversity. By having small amounts throughout the week, chances are it’ll add up to enough portions overall. 

Once you’re hitting your diversity goals, that’s when it can be time to start thinking about portions (a full portion is around 80g of veg per serve, or 50g for children, but I certainly don’t recommend weighing your meals – in most cases it’s roughly a handful (adult’s or child’s) which is easier to remember anyway!).

Here’s what 30 plant points can actually look like:

VEG – Tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, pepper, sweetcorn, spinach, potato, onion, peas, carrot, etc

FRUIT  – Grapes, apricot, strawberries, watermelon, blueberries, raspberries, apple, banana, orange, kiwi, etc

GRAINS – Oats, brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat, wholewheat flour, etc

LEGUMES, NUTS & SEEDS – Chickpeas, lentils, tinned beans, pack of seeds, pack of nuts (mixed for extra points!), etc

Good gut health does NOT need to be time-consuming or costly (no expensive supplements here) – simple changes can make a big difference.

How many different plant points have you had this week?

To find out more, head to theguthealthdoctor.com or @theguthealthdoctor

‘Playful’ isn’t necessarily the mood that comes to mind for most parents when talking about helping children to eat more vegetables.  ‘Annoying’, ‘exhausting’ and ‘futile’ is more the vibe around many family dinner tables. Or at least, this is how it was for me and my youngest son when he went through a long phase of refusing anything green (or purple or red, come to that).

But there’s a lot of evidence that when it comes to expanding a child’s horizons with vegetables, playing with your food is much more effective than most other techniques such as cajoling or hiding vegetables in a cake (which sounds like a great idea until you realise that it only reinforces the idea that cake is delicious and vegetables are not). Our grandparents were told never to play with their food.  Yet it is only by playing with food with all of their senses that a child really gets to know it and decides whether it is safe to eat or not.  This is one of the reasons why baby-led weaning can be such an effective way to introduce a child to solid food, because it gives them free rein to experiment with food.

If your kid doesn’t want to eat a vegetable – which is a perfectly natural response – let them know that they are free to smell it or touch it instead – or even lick it and spit it out.  Yes, I know that the spitting part isn’t fun to watch. But I swear, my son’s relationship with vegetables was transformed after I started praising him for licking mushrooms and then spitting them out. All of this ‘playing’ is a way to make the vegetables become as familiar and safe to a child as toys.

There are all kinds of games you can play with vegetables, either at dinner time or in between meals. Next time you cook broccoli, try holding a floret in your hands to see if it looks like a little tree. Or pick different herb leaves and encourage your kid to smell them with your eyes closed. Discuss: what does the mint remind you of?

The first rule of feeding children is that nothing tastes good when it’s eaten in a spirit of coercion and this is where a spirit of play can help because it takes the pressure off both parent and the child. Next time you eat sugar snap peas together, instead of worrying about how many get eaten, try prising one of the pods open and counting the tiny peas inside.  Or instead of asking your child to eat a tomato, just cut it open and take turns describing what you see. Can you see a pretty pattern, a brain or the letter ‘g’? 

The beauty of play is that it is the opposite of pressure. The more a child can tap into their own natural sense of curiosity, the more likely they are – eventually – to try more vegetables. As parents, we are often desperate to get our children to eat the lovingly cooked food we have made (I know I was), but this anxiety can transmit itself to the child without us realising it. Even quite subtle forms of pressure can put a child off their dinner.  A group of researchers in the U.S. found that when children were given vegetable soup and told to ‘finish your soup’, they ended up eating less of the soup than a control group who were given no verbal reminder to finish. Not only this, but the children who had been told to finish their soup seemed to have much more negative feelings about it. Children said things like, ‘Yuck, it’s yellow soup again’. 

TastEd is a new kind of food education based on encouraging children to play with food using all five senses. Children might use their sense of touch to feel the papery skin of an onion or their sense of hearing to listen to the loud crunch of celery. Teachers report that in the TastEd classroom, children dare to try many more foods than they did before. The two golden rules are ‘no one has to try’ and ‘no one has to like’, which make children feel totally free to explore vegetables knowing that they won’t be judged if they dislike something. One Year 2 teacher in Cambridge recently reported that a child who had been receiving specialist dietitian help for over a year and who never usually ate anything at school felt able to try three new vegetables during a TastEd session – and she actually liked them. This is the power of play.

A few ideas for sensory vegetable games to play at home with your child

• Hear: Choose a few different salad vegetables and try to rank them in order of loudness, from loud and crunchy (celery, radish, sugarsnaps) via crunchy and juicy (cucumber) to quiet and soft (spinach leaf, tomato).  If your child is scared to try the vegetables you can try just snapping or tearing them next to your ear.
• Smell: the spice challenge. Get some raw vegetable sticks (e .g. pepper, carrot). Try them dipped in spice such as cumin or cinnamon. How does it taste with your nose pinched and without your nose pinched?
• Touch: Get some old (clean!) socks and bury different vegetables at the bottom (anything you have in the fridge but not too squishy). Take it in turns to feel inside and describe what you feel. How does a courgette feel different from a cucumber?
• Touch: Outside and inside. Choose a few vegetables and explore how they are different on the outside and the inside. For example red pepper, courgette.
• Sight: buy some different coloured versions of the same vegetable e.g. purple and orange carrots. Will they taste different too?
• Taste: Raw and cooked.  Get two versions of the same vegetable e.g. canned sweetcorn and fresh corn and explore how they are different. Which do you prefer and why?

Firstly, I would say it’s fantastic that your children enjoy these fresh, raw veggies and not to worry about incorporating hot vegetables particularly. A few cold veg with a hot meal is totally acceptable to me, if that’s what they enjoy. Secondly, your question makes me wonder whether it’s the texture of cooked and hot veg that your children find challenging.  

Let me explain. In my work at TastEd, where we guide children in exploring fruit and veg using the senses, I have met many children similar in age to your children, who have strong preferences for either hard or soft foods. I would definitely recommend having a gentle chat with your kids about what they like or dislike, but be sure to ask why. Be curious about why they dislike cooked veg. It might be that they just prefer hard, crunchy foods, which is fine once you understand this. 

An approach I use with my own children is to use the senses, as we do in TastEd lessons, as a way to understand everyones’ likes and dislikes. Ask your children what they think a tomato sounds like, or how a carrot feels in their hands. Simply look at a radish and chat about what it reminds you all of. Or if you are serving hot vegetables to the rest of the family, ask them what they think it smells like, get them to try and describe it. 

If your children say they hate something, always ask them why. We rarely give much thought to particular features of food that cause us to reject it. But simply understanding why foods are disliked may give you some clues about your children’s preferences, and even help you find foods similar to your children’s favourites they might enjoy.

Try simply talking about texture

Take some time to explore your own texture preferences as a family and chat about why. I am sure you will discover that you all have different likes and dislikes which is totally normal. We are all different. For example, some people hate the juicy inside of big tomatoes in combination with the hard seeds, whilst many adults never learn to enjoy the squashy, slimey texture of aubergine. 

In your discussion, be curious and ask lots of open questions, such as “what does it remind you of?” “What is it similar to?” or “How does it feel to you?” to help the discussion. For example you could ask:

• Do you prefer the bite of sugar snap peas or the juiciness of tomatoes? Why is that?
• Do you like hard, crunchy foods like celery or soft quiet foods like plums? Can you describe why?
• Which is your favourite vegetable to eat and why? 

Conversations like this can help us to understand why a child refuses certain foods. My own son refused raw carrots in his lunchbox, but after having a similar conversation about texture, we discovered he loves softer foods, so we agreed to a pot of cooked carrots at lunchtime instead. And remember, our taste preferences change throughout our lifetime, and I am sure that your children will grow to love other foods as they get older. 

For lots more ideas about using the senses to explore food with children download TastEd’s Parent guide or visit the parent section of our website for videos and activities and more.

A recent You Gov survey commissioned by Veg Power, the not-for-profit to increase vegetable consumption across the UK, has found that 55% of UK adults are struggling to eat their five a day.¹ This finding supports the latest UK-wide National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) in which only 33% of adults were currently achieving the five a day target.²

Interestingly, the Veg Power survey also found that breakfast is very often overlooked as a meal opportunity to add veg to, with 73% of people surveyed rarely or never eating vegetables for breakfast. With reasons cited as preferring other breakfasts (46%) and a tendency to eat the same thing for breakfast (33%). These findings suggest that breakfast is a missed opportunity for consuming some of our five a day target.

To encourage the British public to reconsider their breakfast choice and help them to meet their five a day target, Veg Power has launched its ‘Breakfast in Colour’ campaign. Look out for its promotional video on social media together with ideas and inspiration to guide people in the creation of easy-to-prepare and colour breakfast dishes. The campaign will be supported on social media by a range of experts and influencers including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall; family food expert and author, Emily Leary (@amummytoo); Triplets in My Kitchen (@triplets_in_my_kitchen); Plant-based and Sustainable Chef, Bettina Campolucci Bordi (@bettinas_kitchen) and Registered Nutritionists, Zoe Griffiths (@zg_nutrition) and Charlotte Radcliffe (@the_nutrition_consultant).

Dan Parker, Chief Executive, Veg Power, commented, “Breakfast is a meal occasion for many in which veg simply just don’t feature. By sharing simple ideas and options to add veg to this meal, we hope the British public will reconsider their breakfast choices and aim for a more colourful and nutritious meal with veg added. Let’s get the message out there that five a day can start at breakfast.”

Rebecca Stevens, Registered Nutritionist, Veg Power said, “Breakfast is an important meal providing an opportunity to fuel and nourish our bodies. However, we can be creatures of habit and time poor in the mornings, resulting in breakfasts being a fairly repetitive affair. By adding some veg, you can cover off some of your five-a-day and  nutritional needs particularly fibre, vitamins and minerals.”

Veg Power has a number of exciting initiatives for the rest of the year, all designed to increase the UK’s veg intake. Look out for #simplesaladbowls launching later this summer.