It’s best to eat fresh fruit rather than juices as juices lack dietary fibre and they’re not filling. Their acidity can also damage tooth enamel. Dried fruit can stick in the teeth too and is only suitable as an occasional extra.

Some fruit favourites, like apples and bananas, are available for most of the year. Varieties of berries, like blueberries, raspberries and strawberries are best in the warmer months of spring and summer. Autumn and winter is good for kiwifruit, peaches and pears.

What fruit should children eat?

Children should eat fruit in a variety of colours:

• green (like applies and kiwi fruit)
• orange (like oranges and mangoes)
• yellow (like bananas)
• red (like strawberries)
• purple (like blueberries and grapes)

Tips for serving fruit

There are a number of things you can do to serve fruit to your kids to make it a bit more fun:

• Chop up their favourite fruit into a healthy fruit salad.
• Serve fruit with some yoghurt.
• Slice some fruit to add some different flavours to breakfast cereal.

How much fruit a day?

Fruit is a great snack to have on-the-go and easy to pack in a lunchbox.

• 2 to 3-year-olds should be having 1 serve of fruit a day (1 serve is equivalent to 1 medium apple, banana, orange or pear, 2 small apricots, kiwi fruit or plums, or a cup of diced or canned fruit).
• 4 to 8-year-olds need 1 ½ serves a day.
• Everyone over age 9 should be having 2 serves of fruit a day.

Fruit juice (125ml or 1/2 cup) and dried fruit (equivalent to 4 dried apricot halves) is only suitable as an occasional extra.

Five food groups

Read more about the the other 4 of the 5 food groups:

• Vegetables and legumes/beans
• Lean meat, fish, poultry and meat alternatives
• Grains and cereals
• Milk, cheese, yoghurt and dairy alternatives