Get tips on beefing up the nutritional content of your children's meals from Suzannah Olivier, author of Healthy Food for Happy Kids

In the real world (in which we live!) kids are not going to choose their foods to be perfectly balanced nutritionally. So it helps to have a few ideas up your sleeve to make sure that the content of their meals can be enhanced.

• Add extra vegetables or fruits to recipes at every opportunity or serve as side dishes.
• When you offer a sweet or chocolate for a snack your child is missing out on the opportunity to eat something that has real nutritional value, such as a yoghurt, a small sandwich or some fruit. One way round this is to automatically include these as part of a snack. So offer a cube or two of chocolate alongside a few slices of fruit, or a few crisps with a small sandwich square. This way you avoid the issue of 'deprivation' yet at the same time ensure that there is some balance to the snack.
• A child who is hungry may be more amenable to eating something healthy, so this may be the best time to offer some vegetable soup to start a meal, or some cruditees or salad to munch on while he or she is waiting for the rest of the meal.
• Sneak vegetables into a dish. Vegetables on a plate might be passed over, whereas vegetable or lentil soup, or a vegetable based sauce on pasta may be enjoyed.
• As your child becomes more independent and eats away from home instil one thing into him: to choose just one portion of fruit or a vegetable with each meal. This is the minimum to ensure good health and by keeping the message simple you have a greater chance of it being adhered to.
• Learn to adapt recipes to improve their nutritional content. Many recipes will tolerate having half the flour substituted with wholemeal flour or other grains such as ground oats or buckwheat - it is just a question of experimentation. You can also usually get away with reducing the amount of sugar in a baking recipe by one-third without affecting the quality.
• Replace some sugar with chopped or pureed dried fruit such as dates or raisins, which give good levels of fibre, minerals and antioxidants. You can also add chopped or ground seeds to both savoury and sweet dishes to add a nutty flavour and boost the essential fatty acid, mineral and fibre levels.