Encouraging young children to eat more fruit and vegetables can be hard work and very frustrating.  It often makes parents or grandparents resort to bribing or forcing them to eat their greens.

Meal times need not be so difficult.  There are some simple things you can do to encourage children to eat a variety of fruit and vegetables as part of their daily diet.

If your child will not eat vegetables on their own, create things like a vegetable sauce for pasta.  Use vegetables such as carrots, mushrooms and red peppers blended into a sauce. 

Make a vegetable soup.  Use any left over vegetables chopped up and boil them altogether.  Add a vegetable stock cube or a small can of vegetable soup for flavouring and to thicken up.  Process the whole lot until it is an appealing consistency.  Children will be getting many vegetables at once without knowing what they are eating.  Soup can be made at any time and you do not have to wait until the cold winter months to give your child a nourishing meal full of goodness.

Pureed vegetables can be used in sauces for pasta or spooned over mashed potato.  Fruit can also be pureed to pour over puddings, added to natural yogurt or mixed in milk for a milkshake.

Make up little goodie bags of mixed dried fruit to pack into lunch box's or to take on outings and picnics.  Raw vegetables are generally preferred to cooked ones and children usually like finger food.  Cut up a selection of vegetables such as carrots, celery, broccoli and serve with home made dips.

Try making fruit bags for lunch box's or picnics.  Include grapes chopped apple and small pieces of oranges.

Try making 'Traffic Light Fruit Salad'  which consists of strawberries, kiwi fruit, yellow melon, yellow plums and mango (when fruit in season).  Chop fruit very small. Tinned or fresh fruit can be used for this salad.  Try experimenting with different fruits and vegetables in the same colours.

Put a chopped pear, clementine, banana or any fruit in a blender with 3-4 fluid oz of milk and a tablespoon of natural yoghurt and make a smoothie.  If you don't have a blender, use soft fruits like bananas or strawberries which are easy to mash.

Children can not resist ice lollipops.  Try pouring fruit smoothies, fresh fruit juice or pureed fresh fruits into ice lolly moulds and freeze them.