Sometimes, quite often if I'm honest, I worry that my kids eat too much junk. My son loves ice cream and chocolate milk and my daughter will attempt to eat anything she can get her hands on. Added to this I worry (like a lot of parents) that my kids don't eat enough. My generation, and my parents', was brought up to eat what was on the plate, and eat all of it but some days my son will eat less than his baby sister, other days he'll eat more than I do.

Recently though, Boyo (my darling three-and-a-half-year-old) was diagnosed with a distended bowel, related to his Ehlers Danlos, and I've had to keep a food diary. I've also been picking the brains of friends, paediatricians and (in one case) a random person in the super market, as to how to get kids to eat and eat well.

So the questions of the day are:

How much food should kids be eating?

How can we make them eat it?

How can we cut out the bad stuff without them noticing?

I have a few ideas.

My first bright idea was to learn my son's and daughter's eating habits.

My daughter, at ten months old but the equivalent of an eight monther, has days when she only wants Mummy milk and days when she wants to eat her body weight in rice and veg, so with her I just have to go with the flow.

After a week of the food journal it finally hit home to me that my son likes to eat in the morning, not at night.

Why has it taken me three years to figure this out?

And on the days when we didn't make time for him to eat enough breakfast he was a pretty unhappy child.

I've learnt too that Boyo needs a couple of different elements to make food appetising.

One, he needs it to look nice.

Two, he needs me (or someone else) to join him while he eats.

Three, he needs it to be at the right temperature.

Four, all food is better when it has a story.

Five, he needs to be involved in the creation process.

He is, as my mum would say, a bit artistic, so porridge in the morning involves him helping me to measure out the oats; me sitting and eating my porridge with him; the porridge being just above room temperature; the blue berries being asteroids hitting the porridge moon and the plate and spoon needing to be the “right” plate and spoon.

When I do this he eats and he eats well.

This is, three or four mornings a week, preceded by a tub of yoghurt. Fruit, toast and milk are also part of breakfast which is quickly followed by morning tea, elevenses and lunch. He usually slows down at that point. Afternoon tea is a casual affair and dinner can be half hearted.

Our paediatrician said this was fine, if it works for us and as long as the food he's getting is healthy.

So, is it?

I'm still not sure.

Time for another confession. I've been snooping. When we go to the shops I've been peaking into other people's trolleys. I've been worried that my son is eating junk. (Earlier this week I went out to lunch with my mum and the kids menu in the restaurant was a choice of nuggets and chips or mac and cheese. We got the nuggets and I slipped my son half my salad. I still felt dreadful.) Some weeks we buy tiny teddies. Then I saw what was going into the trolleys of other families. Chips and lollies and fizzy drinks and processed meats and frozen meals. Not a single lonely piece of fruit. I try to tell myself that maybe they go down to the green grocer for their fruit and veg, after all, we quite often go half and half, depending on the specials and the quality. But somehow I doubt it.

I try to imagine a life without fruit...

My husband, when he reads this, will roll his eyes. After all, he doesn't eat nearly as much fruit as I'd like him to. But if we didn't have fruit, I don't know what we'd do.

Boyo is obsessed with fruit!

Today he ate over half a punnet of blue berries, a banana, an apple, a pear, a nectarine and some grapes. For veg he had baby spinach, home grown tomatoes, and pumpkin. Other days he's obsessed with broccoli and peas but mostly it's fruit.

I've been to parties and seen parents tell their kids off for scoffing the fruit instead of the chips.

Their reason was that fruit will give their kids runny bowels.

We don't have that issue. Trust me.

I looked up to see what a child of three should be eating, sure enough, my boy gets an A+ for his fruit and veg but the food journal has showed me that he really doesn't eat meat unless it's in the form of his Nana's meatballs.

I worried. (I'm good at that.)

Everyone kept telling me it was weird that my son would rather eat a zucchini sausage than a pork one. I then had a bright idea. People can voice their opinions but I don't have to listen. Our paed says that a kid of three can get away with one serve of meat a week! As long as he has beans, nuts, eggs, milk and such. He also suggested that because of my son's muscle weakness he may have been put off meat when he was younger because it was tiring to chew.

So the good news is that Boyo is getting enough and is getting the right stuff. But sometimes I want him to eat dinner. And sometimes his reluctance isn't about lack of appetite, it's about being distracted or me forgetting the five steps mentioned above.

I've been working on making his food more interesting. I know, we've all seen those nauseatingly cheerful kids cook books that tell us the way to get kids to eat their food is to make it fun. I've rolled my eyes at them along with everyone else and as yet I haven't turned to them for help. I'm not going for fun, I'm going for interesting.

Any ideas?

Last week I made mushroom cap boats filled with risotto and baby spinach with roasted pumpkin and the pasta island with broccoli forest. Sometimes Boyo is a rocket and his dinner is his rocket fuel. Other times he's a whale shark and we have to tickle his gills to open his mouth to get the food in, it all depends on how willing he is (and yes, tickling a whale sharks gills will make it open its mouth).

I need to take more photos and would love to hear other people's interesting food ideas.

Happy feeding!

Ta!