Questions and answers - healthy eating

We get lots of questions from parents about how to help their kids eat well. Here’s a selection of some of the most common ones we receive.

We’re never all at home together. My partner and I work different shifts and the kids are both at school now, so it’s really hard to sit down and have an evening meal together. Any advice?

It can be tricky these days to find a time when everyone’s in at the same time - but even if it only happens once or twice a week it’s a start. So perhaps you could find a time that everyone tends to be in, and ask that they make an extra effort to set that time aside each week - maybe a Sunday lunchtime or a Friday night? And then you can use this time to have a big family dinner and make a real occasion of it.

If you can’t eat together, then you can still eat well and have the kids sit up at the table with whoever’s feeding them. One-pot dishes like lasagnes and stews are brilliant for this because you can just make them beforehand and heat up the right sized portion when the next person's ready to eat.

Check out the Change4Life recipe finder for some great simple recipe ideas

I work so it can be difficult to find the time to cook in the week - we often just end up having toast or something in the evenings. I know this isn’t particularly healthy but it’s too late to start cooking from scratch by the time I get home.

Toast with something on top like tomatoes, poached eggs or baked beans isn’t a bad option for teatime - as long as your children are having a cooked meal with veggies for their school dinner.

There are also plenty of shortcuts you can take to good, hot dinners in the week too. You could make a big pot of soup or stew or something like a fish pie at the weekend, so you can just divide it into pots and keep them in the freezer until you need them.

Jacket spuds are also handy for cooking in advance, and pasta dishes with a tinned tomato sauce only take about 10 minutes. Rice is also a fairly quick meal, served with a tin of tomatoes and kidney beans.

I try to get my kids to eat at regular times. But they get so hungry they eat loads of snacks and then they don’t want their dinner. How can I stop them filling up on stuff that isn’t doing them any good?

The first thing to do is bring their evening meal forward by half an hour if you can - then they won’t have to wait so long. But if they’re still claiming they’re starving then make sure you have some snacks prepared which won’t fill them up so much.

Fruit, vegetable sticks and lower fat dips, rice cakes and lower fat yoghurt are good stand-bys. Or try giving them a glass of semi-skimmed milk or 100% pure unsweetened fruit juice - this should fill them up enough to keep them going until dinner is ready.

Find more ideas for healthy snack alternatives.