For as long as I’ve known her, my mom has had a great instinct about nutri­tion. Remem­ber the Five-a-Day cam­paign to get peo­ple to eat at least five dai­ly serv­ings of veg­eta­bles and fruits? That was no prob­lem in my house. My mom always served fruit at break­fast and fruit and car­rots in our lunch box. Din­ner includ­ed a parade of veg­eta­bles and fruit. My mom’s Ger­man upbring­ing called for a meal served in cours­es, first fruit, then a sal­ad, and then our main course plus a cooked veg­etable. (Dessert usu­al­ly was cook­ies.) Plus we drank orange juice with din­ner because we didn’t have milk with a meat meal in our kosher home. There they were, veg­eta­bles and fruits out in the open, and no need to hide them, dis­guise them, or sneak them into foods.

 So I am very con­flict­ed about whether today’s moms and dads should sneak veg­eta­bles and fruits into the foods they make for their kids. On one hand, most of us don’t eat near­ly enough, so why not try what­ev­er tac­tics we can to hit the 4 1/2 cups rec­om­mend­ed in the Dietary Guide­lines? On the oth­er hand, though, why can’t we raise kids who will­ing­ly eat them?

 That said, I was struck by the num­ber of food prod­ucts at ExpoW­est call­ing out that they pro­vide at least a por­tion of a serv­ing of veg­eta­bles or fruit. Here are just a few that I spot­ted, main­ly snack foods, with many more sure­ly to come:

Ruby’s Rock­ets are frozen treats inspired by a mom’s smooth­ies, frozen into kid-friend­ly ice pops. Fla­vors include Orbit Orange, Galaxy Green, and Rock-It Red, each made from pureed fruits and veg­eta­bles with­out added sweet­en­ers.

The Real Deal All Nat­ur­al Snacks has been in the snack food biz for 60+ years. The newest prod­uct, Real! Veg­gie Chips, claims to be made with enough corn and peas to pro­vide 1 1/2 serv­ings of veg­gies in every ounce of chips.  Because the chips are baked, they have less fat and few­er calo­ries than the equiv­a­lent in pota­to chips.

crun­cha ma-me edamame snacks are freeze-dried soy­beans avail­able in five dif­fer­ent fla­vors. They have more pro­tein and fiber than most oth­er snack foods.

My kids, who used to eat frozen veg­eta­bles straight out of the bag, would have loved Crunchies, a line of freeze-dried mixed veg­gies, edamame, and var­i­ous fruits. Each 1.5 ounce bag con­tains the equiv­a­lent of sev­er­al serv­ings of veg­eta­bles or fruit.

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