Smash hit

A good way to trick reluctant vegetable eaters is with soups. My six-year-old won’t eat pumpkin, but loves pumpkin soup. A hand-held blender is an essential gadget if you want to feed kids. I keep the food I make for them fast to prepare. There’s nothing worse than a child rejecting a dish you’ve slaved to prepare.

On a budget, look for special offers and scour farmers’ markets. Most children aren’t keen on supermarkets — neither am I — but I take them to open-air markets, where they often pick out items I’d not have chosen. Then they get a brownie as a treat.

My younger son was a picky eater when he was little, refusing most vegetables and protein. When anaemia was diagnosed, we drew a chart of all iron-rich foods, and he was delighted to find that chocolate was on it. I don’t ban any foods, but I restrict them. We bake cakes as a treat and have home-made rice pudding or fruit crumble once or twice a week. The rest of the time we eat mostly fruit and yoghurt as desserts. Last Sunday we had friends to tea and made scones with Cornish clotted cream, jam and strawberries. Then all the children ate a scoop each of vanilla ice-cream.

An exception to the healthy rule is when we fly on long-haul trips; my husband is American so we do this more than many families. I let them have any snack on offer, including caffeine-free fizzy drinks. And they still talk about a holiday in Italy when I let them eat 12 flavours of ice-cream in one day. At children’s parties, I let them eat whatever anyone else is having. But they’ve become quite health-conscious over time on their own.

We’re omniverous. I cook with meat, butter, whole milk. I don’t like reduced fat foods. It’s a small bit of the real thing or not at all.

When they were tiny I started asking my children to chop or grate or pinch salt for me, and they were usually happy to eat what they had helped to prepare. Now they make smoothies, scrambled eggs, toast and vinaigrette dressing.

It’s hard not to be anxious when a child refuses to eat, but it’s a good rule of thumb that they won’t starve themselves. If mine say they don’t want something, I try to say “OK”. I don’t provide an alternative. If they don’t eat any of the main course, they get no dessert. But if they’ve done a reasonable job, that’s fine. (Not that I’m a saint; I do get short-tempered sometimes if they refuse to eat anything at all. I’ll offer them toast, maybe with cheese, but they cannot pick another meal. I’m not running a restaurant.)

They can help themselves to as much fruit as they like, and I try not to worry about my food bills. We buy almost no processed or prepared foods. And I don’t really buy juice, except as a treat. It’s costly, less nutritious than fresh fruit and fills their tummies at mealtimes. I tell my boys they can drink water or milk.

Before we moved to London, we had a garden and grew things. That got the younger one keen on eating his crops. These days, we have strawberry plants on our kitchen table.

My boys eat snacks, but I rarely give them sweets or candy bars. At Granny’s house they get crisps and chocolate bars, which they love. I leave bowls of nuts, dried fruit, crackers and breadsticks on the kitchen table for after school. We got into the habit of stopping at a bakery on our cycle ride back home from school last year, but my then five-year-old was too full at dinner to eat well. So now we pedal home first. Jane's nutritional advice and Sue's recipes