I’m all about making food fun for kids these days because it helps fussy or picky eaters break down their fear of new foods (neophobia), it encourages children to be adventurous with their diet and it creates a whole new environment around food.

Taking food away from the table and interacting with it in a relaxed, non-threatening environment can help children to start learning about foods through their senses of touch, sight and smell slowly building up to accepting them and then tasting them.

And let’s face it - this is something the big food companies have known for a long time by using characters like Tony the Tiger on boxes of Kelloggs Frosties since the 1950’s. There’s fun characters on Petit Filous and Paw Patrol on Yoplait yoghurts. And then there’s the biggest distributor of toys in the world, McDonalds, who include a toy with every Happy Meal.

While this activity is purely marketing-led in the bid to sell more and more processed food to un-suspecting families, it does help to make the children excited about the food and want to eat it.

So let’s try that trick with foods that are not coming out of a factory laden with preservatives, E numbers and sugar. Let’s try making whole foods fun!

Here’s some ways you can make real, whole food fun for your children :

1. food art - colourful fruit and veg lend themselves brilliantly to art. Search google for food art and you will find an insane amount of information on ways you can make art out of food. Some of these are intricate and must take hours and some are more basic. Keep it simple and make a food rainbow, using lots of different coloured fruit and veg or up your game and make one of the cute ideas from my favourite food art influencer, Food Bites

2. Pea racing - why not make a game out of food you have at home. Set the kids up on the floor to do races with peas - use straws so they blow further. Frozen peas are better for this. Set up obstacles they have to crawl under or around and give them lots of peas to experiment with. Yes, your floor will get messy but everything kids do is messy! Then serve peas in their meal that night and talk about playing with them!

3. shopping - when you take your little ones shopping, give them their own shopping list. Make it more challenging depending on the age of your children:

e.g.. age 3-5 find a carrot, a potato and an apple

age 6-8 find 2 different types of apples, two colours of tomato and the biggest onion.

age 9-11 find 3 fruits and veggies that come from Ireland, find out where the sugar snap peas come from and find the names of 5 different types of apples

4. chopstick challenge - chop up bits and pieces of fruits and veggies (whatever you have on hand) and see if the kids can pick up the food and feed you or a sibling/friend with it. Make it a game by timing each other!

5. blind tasting - I have done this with hundreds of children and it never fails to get them excited! Again, chop up a number of different fruits and veggies. You can also include things like cereal, cold pasta, bits of cracker, dried fruit. Don’t put anything nasty in there as you’ll never get your kids to trust you! I always use radish as it’s a tricky one for kids (and adults!) to figure out.

Make sure your food is small to avoid choking.

6. food games and books - seek out games and books that have a positive message about food or feature healthy foods. I love the game Curious Gastronaut as it encourages children to explore the world of food by making cool food experiments. And there’s some good board games suggestions here. My blog on food books is here

7. cooking - it’s the ultimate way to make food fun! It allows children to interact with food, chop it, peel it, measure it, mix it and then eat what they’ve made! Don’t focus all your time in the kitchen on making cookies and buns - children also love to help make the dinner. You can get safe knives and peelers for kids here and check out my online cooking classes here.

I have created an online resource (coming soon) designed for preschoolers to show them how much fun food can be - keep your eyes peeled!