Here’s the thing: we all know that we’re supposed to eat more veggies, but when it really comes down to it, it’s kind of difficult to actually follow through. So I scoured the Internet’s abundance of food blogs, and my kitchen’s stack of cookbooks to find 10 tricky ways to eat more veggies. Your mother would be proud.
Sometimes the last thing you want to do after a long day of work or classes is spend an hour washing, peeling, and chopping vegetables. So instead, take an hour or two out of one of your more relaxed days and chop up a whole bunch of veggies to use throughout the week. Put them all together in a big container and when it’s time to cook dinner on Wednesday night, all you have to do is find your veggie bucket and throw in a handful or two. If you’re feeling especially lazy, some grocery stores even carry pre-chopped veggies that you can buy.
Make sure to have a couple bags of frozen veggies in your freezer for quick additions. Although frozen vegetables don’t always taste quite as fresh, they make excellent additions to sauces, pizzas and soups. Frozen vegetables are also great for when you haven’t been to the store to get fresh vegetables recently. Although canned veggies are similarly convenient, they also contain higher amounts of sodium, so be careful to rinse them before use.
On days when you decide to make Ramen noodles or boxed mac and cheese, take a moment to throw in some chopped peppers or whatever other vegetables you have on hand. It’ll make your meal more colorful and healthy, and more filling too!
Maybe you don’t like plain carrots. That’s okay, neither do I. But then I discovered purple carrots, which taste decidedly less carrot-y, and I begrudgingly have become a carrot fan. So don’t hesitate to try new vegetables that you encounter at the grocery store or farmer’s market. You’ll be more motivated to use them, and you might come across a new favorite.
Contrary to what most people believe, vegetables do not have to be mushy lumps served with brown rice and grilled chicken. The Internet is teeming with recipes for kale chips, zucchini fries, and many more variations – an insanely easy way to eat more veggies. Surprisingly, all it takes for many vegetables is a little salt and oven action to make them much more delicious. Bonus: if you accidentally eat a whole tray of kale chips right when the come out of the oven, you can actually feel proud of yourself!
Even the most dedicated health nut can get tired of eating plain vegetables all the time, so trying a new dip with your vegetables helps keep things interesting! Just be careful with high-fat dips, like ranch, because you don’t want to be inadvertently consuming unhealthy fats and additives to counteract the original plan to eat more veggies.
This is an easy way to up your vegetable intake because all you have to do is chop up a few extra peppers, shred a few extra carrots or throw in an extra half cup of frozen peas. I told you it was easy to eat more veggies!
Pasta makes a great backdrop for vegetable additions. Put a handful of spinach in homemade pesto, or augment your canned red sauce with chopped or frozen vegetables. If you’re feeling sneaky, you can add vegetables purees to sauces (like pureed cauliflower in a cream sauce).
Leaving out meat will give you plenty of room to eat more veggies, since you will be forced to make fruits and vegetables the focus of the meal. Additionally, by eating less meat, you are helping reduce your carbon footprint!
The Internet is so full of salad recipes and ideas that you should never have to suffer through another soggy iceberg lettuce salad ever again (unless that’s your thing). Pinterest and Foodgawker are a couple of the many websites that you will be able to find salad inspiration on. For portable salads, try making layered Mason jar salads so they don’t get soggy.
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