Ladies' Room

Cheat your way to five-a-day

Finding the time to fit five daily portions of fruit and veg into our hectic lifestyles can often seem like a chore.

But trying to convince your kids to eat their greens can easily escalate into a full-scale riot.

There is however, a sneaky way around this. Here's 10 ways to serve your kids a healthy diet without them ever suspecting a thing.

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10 ways to sneak five-a-day

1. Make your own pizzas. Make a sauce out of cooked tomatoes, peppers, carrots and a smidgen of broccoli and spread over a pizza base. Grate some cheese and then ask the kids to help you make a face out of veggie toppings (mushrooms, peppers, etc).

2. Blend together a banana, a handful of strawberries and some orange juice, then add crushed ice to create a cool fruit smoothie. Tined or frozen fruit is fine to use, too.

3. Rather than topping ice-cream with sugar-laden syrups, make a sweet sauce out of frozen and defrosted summer fruits.

4. If your kids refuse to touch swede or parsnip, try mashing a little of both into mashed potato and they'll never know.

5. Make healthy ice lollies by pouring fresh fruit juice or fruit smoothies into lolly moulds.

6. When it comes to giving your kids desserts, ditch the doughnuts and go back to basics. Serve your youngsters traditional puddings that are packed with fruity goodness, such as apple pie or rhubarb crumble and custard.

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7. Top burgers with a fresh tomato salsa. Mix chopped tomatoes and red onion with coriander, parsley, lime juice and olive-oil.

8. Homemade vegetable soup is easy to make. Fry an onion and leek in olive oil, add vegetable stock, chopped swede, carrot, peas and potato. If they won't go for the lumps, puree until smooth.

9. Most kids love eating with their fingers, so give them carrot and celery sticks or toasted strips of tortilla bread with vitamin-packed fresh tomato salsa, hummus or guacamole.

10. As an alternative to sweets, give your children strawberries or other fruits dipped in melted chocolate. Try Humdingers Dipping Chocolate in a handy microwaveable pot (1.79 from Sainsbury's).

Source: Daily Mirror