Have you got the formula for persuading children to eat all the healthy foods you cook for them? Please tell us! Please…

No, in all seriousness, convincing kids of the merits of fruit’n’veg can be a struggle sometimes. Yummiloo Rainbow Power is a new iPhone and iPad app that aims to help, with a mixture of entertainment and light education.

It’s the work of app developer Yummico and publisher Night & Day Studios, and stars a collection of cute ‘Yum Yum’ characters preparing for their Rainbow carnival.

How? Well, that’s where your kids come in. The app involves gathering fruit and vegetables from a virtual garden, dragging them into the right-coloured buckets, while dragging rotten food into a compost bin.

Fill the Yum Yums’ Rainbow Machine up, and the carnival kicks off. But along the way, children will have been read the names of the various foodstuffs, while (hopefully) absorbing information on the “cycle of planting, growth, harvesting, decomposition and replanting”.

We’ve been playing with the app this morning, and it’s fun. Bright and colourful, with a choice of two control modes – tapping or dragging – to suit different ages. Every so often, a “snack attack” happens, where they have to shovel food into a Yum Yum’s mouth before resuming their collecting duties.

According to the app, this is just the “first installment in a food adventure series” starring the Yum Yums, with the overall goal of persuading pre-schoolers that eating a “rainbow of different coloured foods” means more than just scoffing a packet of Haribo.

Yummiloo Rainbow Power costs 69p on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, although this is a launch-week price, so it’ll be more expensive once that week elapses.