How to get kiddies to eat fruit
Not too long ago, I was talking to one of my co-workers about teaching children to make healthy food choices from an early age. She was telling me about how, despite her creative efforts to get her children to eat fruits and vegetables, they always come home from school requesting the latest and greatest packaged processed snack that their friends brought for lunch.
Hmm. A dilemma indeed. I’ve seen a few attempts to combat this recently. One is in the grocery store, where you might have noticed small bags of pre-sliced apples or chopped celery and carrot sticks with dip, sealed with a sticker of a smiling cartoon character. I don’t have kiddies of my own, so I’m not really in a position to say whether or not this type of marketing actually has been effective. But just as I expected, these pre-sliced snacks cost more than their regular, full-sized and un-Disney-fied versions. Sure they may be more convenient and look a little more fun, but I don’t think parents should have to pay more for prepared fruits and veggies when you can make healthy food fun at home yourself.
Case in point: Combine one of these….
….with some pineapple, honeydew, and cantaloupe melon….
And voila!
Like I said, there are no kids in my house – well, except for me I suppose. I like to play with my food (and if it’s veggies we’re talking about, you can bet I’ll try to incorporate my spiralizer) so rather than stopping at fun shapes, I busted out a few skewers too. About 10 minutes later….
Fruit kabobs!
But wait, there’s more! As a kid, I remember my aunt always making the most delicious fruit dip from Fluffernutter (oh how my tastebuds have changed!) and a few other ingredients that I can’t remember. Rather than using the famous Fluff (which contains corn syrup, sugar syrup, and dyes), I made a healthier dip by blending together some frozen berries, a touch of vanilla, and plain Greek yogurt. For an extra boost, I also stirred in about 1 tsp of Progressive Nutritionals’ PhytoBerry, which is my favourite highly-concentrated powdered antioxidant supplement. It makes plain yogurt taste divine and is chock-full of fabulousness thanks to acai berries other high ORAC value fruits.
Provided your skewers aren’t too sharp (and you could cut the ends off if you have really little kids), this is a really easy snack to let them help out with. If you’ve got a little more time, here’s another one of my summer favourites:
I was allllllll about the popsicles last summer, and they were one of my go-to snacks when I was growing up. Did you know that popsicles were an accidental discovery back in 1905? According to this source:
The Popsicle was invented by an 11 year who kept it secret for 18 years. The inventor was Frank Epperson who, in 1905, left a mixture of powdered soda and water out on the porch, which contained a stir stick. That night, temperatures in San Francisco reached a record low. When he woke the next morning, he discovered that it had frozen to the stir stick, creating a fruit flavored ice treat that he humbly named the epsicle. 18 years later he patented it and called it the Popsicle.
Popsicle Pete was one of my besties when I was younger, but the classic popsicle isn’t exactly bursting with nutritional goodness. How can we fix this? You could blend fruit smoothie-style, or just stuff it straight into popsicle molds. Last summer I posted a recipe with full instructions, but here’s a quick visual demo.
Chopping the fruit…
… and stuffing the popsicle molds…
I try to fill them until there’s about 1cm left at the top, and smush in a little more just to fill up as many gaps as I can. Then, I top them up with iced green tea. Normally it’s a fruit flavoured one, but any iced tea will work. Since the fruit is already sweet, there’s no need to add a sugary juice.
Plunk the sticks in, and freeze for about 6 hours…
Run them under hot water, and you’ve got a lovely delicious and nutritious popsicle!
If you’re a parent looking for ways to help your kids get all the vitamins and nutritional goodies they need (without having to fight a battle with them when doing so), check out these links:
- 20 best snacks for kids from Parents.com – fruit and cheese kabobs, peanut butter and raspberry popsicles, yam-and-jam muffins… there are some creative ones here!
- 22 healthy kids snacks from Parenting.com – I’m especially intrigued by the ‘Healthy Whoopie Pies’ made with beets!
- Lunch ideas for toddlers from Parenting.com
- 8 more healthy ideas from Redbook.com, including homemade granola bars
So tell me…
- What snacks did you enjoy as a kid? Was nutrition as we think of it today as big of a deal to your parents as it is to you now?
- If you have children, do you have any creative ways to sneak fruits and veggies into their meals?
LOVE the colours in your frozen fruit popsicles, angela!
as children, we LOVED freezies in the summer…but they were a treat, and an exception, not the rule for snacktime. other snacks: homemade cookies (NEVER store-bought!) cut up apple (i liked it with pb, still true to this day!).
i agree that it’s great to promote fruit and veg to kids via using disney characters etc – anything to get kids to eat healthy food – but we shouldn’t have to pay more, unfortunately.
my nieces are really good about enjoying fruit and veg – i think because my brother and sil started that trend right from day one.
we could use popsicles this week – gonna be hot!!
That’s great that your brother and sister in law have taught them the value of healthy foods from an early age. I have every intention of doing the same some day when I have kids. I had an awesome childhood, but nutrition often wasn’t the focus of snacks! And yes, definitely glad I’ve got these fruit popsicles in my freezer right now… it’s meant to be 33 tomorrow!
Fun! I was never one of those kids – my Mom always made eating vegetables fun and exciting. Often, I’d be the one in school eating all of my veggie sticks before my dunkaroos just because I knew they were good for me. Although… those dunkaroos did taste pretty good, too
Hahah! Well I was that kid next to you who ate the Dunkaroos first, and more specifically, all the cookies in the packet, then all the icing with a single swipe of my finger!
Forget kids! I want to try those! Those popsicles look amazing!
My favourite snack as a kid was apples topped with peanut butter!
This is so creative! My mom was always really conscious about not buying overly processed foods. Especially none of the “popular” snacks all my friends were eating. At the time, it frustrated me, but now I am really thankful! Diabetes runs in my family on both sides and now I realize she was just protecting us from getting the disease. A few gushers and fruit roll ups are definitely not worth a lifetime of pricks and needles! Thank you, Mom!! My favorite snacks were fresh fruits, cheese on toast and peanut butter on crackers.
Great tips Angela! When I was a nanny, the lady I worked for always encouraged me to make the kids vegetables and fruits exciting to eat, because they didn’t always love eating them. I was happy to oblige
It was fun coming up with creative ways to get them to eat healthy items.
That’s cool that you used to be a nanny, Lisa! I bet you came up with lots of tricks for sneaking fruits and veggies into the kids’ meals. I used to do a lot of babysitting and recently came across a few recipes for edible peanut butter Play-Doh. I bet that would have gone over well!
LOVE love this post! I need to make those popsicles for Adam (and myself, of course
)! I love that you filled them with iced green tea! I think I may use the Tazo Passion Fruit blend. Yum!
Also, cutting fruit with cookie cutters? Amazing. Putting them on skewers? Adorable. Hello, kids party idea.
Mmm yes that’d be an awesome tea to use! I love getting it iced at Starbucks – it’s so full of flavour and doesn’t really even need sweetener!
What great ideas! I want some of those skewers for myself, they look so good. My kids are a little fussy, and older now so harder to convince! But apples and peanut butter are always a big hit even now.
I love that you don’t make the fruit into a smoothie type texture before making the popsicle.
That’s how I used to make them, but when I realized that this method means you don’t have to clean a blender, I was sold!
When I was growing up, nutrition was definitely not as important as it is today. My family always had junk food in the house, Doritos, Chips Deluxe Cookies, Oatmeal Cream Pies…not good!
Such a cute idea to make eating healthy FUN for kids!
Hehe our pantry was filled with some of those things too.. and don’t even get me going on the Pizza Pops!
Can I tell you how genius those popsicles are! My little man is becoming a picky eater and not wanting to eat the fruits he once gobbled up, but he cannot resist a popsicle. Thanks for the idea!
No problem Sylvia! I hope he enjoys them!
Ahh- my nephew is also going thru this phase…. However he is now hooked on the banana smeared with pb and rolled in a little granola creation i make for him! Frozen grapes are also popular.
Great ideas! And pictures! I love all things fruit, and being able to get the kids to eat them too is a great tool to learn!
Check out my latest recipe @ bakingblissful.blogspot.com
This is such a great idea!! I have no problem eating fruits or veggies, but eating fruit in fun shapes like stars would be awesome! And I love the popsicle idea- so natural and healthy!
we made the fruit’sicles yesterday.
they rocked!!
wahooo! happy to hear it!
[...] shaped food gets my vote! Angela at Eat Spin Run Repeat posted a fun post full of suggestions to help you get your kids to eat fruit. I wish I’d had some of these ideas when my kids were young! As it is, I may use some of them [...]