It's a thankless task trying to introduce a six-year-old stepson to a more varied diet. Raisingkids.co.uk guest expert and super nanny Elaine Addison, offers tips on how to ditch the junk food.

Raisingkids Member's Question
I have a six-year-old stepson who has dreadful eating habits. He will not eat any meat (except chicken nuggets) or vegetables. He eats mostly beans, bread, crisps, and biscuits. Have you any tips for getting him to eat a more varied diet?

Miss Poppy's Reply
Introducing a more healthy diet to your stepson is so important. However it won’t happen overnight and you will need the help and support of your partner along with plenty of patience, imagination and perseverance. The best way at this age is to involve him as much as possible in the purchasing and preparation of food.

Your goal is to introduce as much fresh and unprocessed food as you can. Choose one of his favourite sporting or superhero characters and explain that they have to eat healthily in order to be good at what they do. He needs to understand the connection to entice him to try other foods and understand why you are getting rid of all the junk foods.

Begin by sitting him down and explaining that you are going to play some healthy food games. Ask him his favourite colours and then jot down as many fresh vegetables and fruits you can come up with to match. Then head off to your nearest shop to see how many brightly-coloured vegetables and fruits you can find.

You mentioned that he ate little or no meat. A great way to get children to eat fresh meat, fish and chicken is to skewer it, kebab-style. Cut it up into small cubes and pop it on a skewer and grill it. With lunch and dinner I always tend to offer a selection of colorful crudités such as carrot batons or fresh peas in the pod (children love popping them out). Dips such as hummus (chick pea) and tatziki (yoghurt and cucumber) are excellent sources of nutrition and children love to dip and dunk.

For desserts I stick to fresh fruits and yoghurts most days. As with fresh vegetables you can also skewer fruits and berries and serve then with a yoghurt dip to dunk. To make it more appealing, serve a selection of different fruits and berries in paper cake cases or eggcups along with some muesli, raisons, dried cranberries or chopped apricots. Position them all around a bowl of plain yoghurt so he can create his own flavour yoghurt.

Involve him as much as possible in the preparation and cooking process as children will often eat what they have helped cook.

Bon appetit!

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