From new parents to experienced nannies (or even those of us with picky partners), we all know too well that fussy eaters are difficult to cater for, and you can find yourself at your wits end trying to introduce new foods, flavours and recipes.
Whether you’re trying to work more fruit and veg into your family’s diet or simply expand a child’s horizons beyond pain au chocolate and fish fingers, we’ve collated some of our top tips and favourite recipes to help you navigate the palettes of even the fussiest eaters...
Tip #1 Disguise Healthy Foods In Treats
Breakfast Donuts
These Breakfast Donuts from Jamie Oliver are a great place to start; vibrant in colour, packed full of nutrients and antioxidant rich blueberries and a dash of honey for sweetness. There’s not many children that will pass up the opportunity to start the day off with donuts!
Double Chocolate Zuccini Muffins
On that note, our second disguised treat is Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins. These are a great breakfast, snack or dessert recipe if you’re keen to get more greens into your child’s diet as the taste and texture is masked by dark chocolate and the natural moisture from courgettes keeps the sponge from drying out.
banana bread
Our third hidden fruit recipe is everyone’s favourite lockdown bake; banana bread. This one from BBC Good Food replaces caster sugar with agave nectar and additional banana so is a great one if you still want that sweetness but want to limit refined sugar intake.
chocolate and avocado mousse.
And finally is the chocolate and avocado mousse. It has all the richness, sweetness and creamy texture that you’d want in a traditional mousse, but without refined sugar or dairy and it has a great balance of healthy fats through the avocado and coconut milk. Don’t knock this one until you’ve tried it as it’s surprisingly delicious and you’d never know the difference.
Tip #2 Get The Children Involved
Another great way to get kids more interested in new foods is to include them in the process of grocery shopping and meal preparation. This needn’t be a laborious task or a chore; you can engage them in a supermarket by setting scavenger hunts, writing the shopping lists or even helping create recipes which they’ll then make.
This study shows that children who help prepare their own meals consume approximately 24.4% more calories - here’s some of our favourite child-friendly recipes to help them get more hands on (and more forks in)!
homemade mini-pizza
Dough is always a crowd pleaser - it’s always so hands on and playful. Try this homemade mini-pizza recipe and get the children involved along every step of the way; from mixing and kneading the dough to adorning their pizza with their favourite toppings (sweetcorn, peppers, mushrooms, ham etc) this will really get their creative juices flowing an conjure up some excitement when dinner is served. This recipe is also a great option to keep the kids entertained if they have friends to play.
Kebab Skewers
Another tasty option for a DIY-meal is kebabs. Simply put a selection of pre-chopped ingredients into dishes (i.e. peppers, tomatoes, chicken, halloumi) and let the children decide what they want to put on their skewers. Of course, we’d recommend wooden kebab sticks as they’re a little more child friendly and you can soak them in water beforehand to stop them from burning under an oven or grill. And if you feel the skewers are lacking in colour or veggies, you can always slide a couple more onto the ends of the skewers on the sly before cooking!
Tip #3 Play With Your Food
Our final tip is to incorporate fruits and vegetables in a fun way, using natural colourings to your advantage. Some of the most nutrient and vitamin dense food are also naturally very colourful, which children love. Through bursts of colour and playful names, foods can suddenly become much more exciting, appealing and adventurous to otherwise picky eaters.
Monster Smoothie
A monster smoothie is always a crowd pleaser. Made with spinach, this smoothie has a wonderfully vibrant green hue but none of the dreaded vegetable taste. It’s high in vitamin K and you can mask the flavour with additions of banana or mango (fresh or frozen) to add sweetness and make this a delicious drink to squeeze in some of the recommended 5 a day.
Toasted Popeye Bread
Keeping with the spinach theme is this fabulous breakfast recipe from Jamie Oliver, Toasted Popeye Bread. A clever twist on an eggs on toast, this recipe whizzes together spinach, egg, ham and some other delicious ingredients to create an amazing, natural green colour that is unconventional but will definitely get the children excited for breakfast!
While there may not be a simple fix or a stand-alone food or cuisine that has proven to be full proof against fussy eaters, there are certainly methods and tricks you can use to make children more open to trying new flavours and, frankly, make everyone’s lives a bit easier.