Everyone knows that eating a proper amount of vegetables is super important for your health. Veggies offer so many unbeatable benefits, like enhancing your health, warding off diseases, and helping with weight control.
Health authorities suggest that both children and adults should eat several servings of vegetables each day. Not just one serving at dinner! If you’re like most people though, incorporating more than one serving of vegetables each day is pretty difficult. Plus, cooking vegetables the same ordinary way can get old very fast. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to make this goal more attainable and prevent you and your family from getting sick of eating veggies.
Here are 8 easy ways to eat more vegetables each day.
1. Blend Them Into Smoothies
Smoothies are a great way to easily ingest lots of vegetables! By having a simple smoothie for breakfast or a quick snack, you can definitely increase your daily intake of vegetables. They are refreshing, highly nourishing, and taste wonderful!
There are tons of delicious smoothie recipes online that are high in both fruits and vegetables. For example, green smoothies especially, which usually contain kale or other leafy greens, along with different kinds of fruit, are just one of the highly nutritious smoothies that are very tasty. Other examples include a blueberry zucchini smoothie, a carrot and orange smoothie, or an avocado pineapple smoothie.
We challenge you to try to drink more nutritious smoothies! There are several recipes online to easily incorporate more veggies into your diet.
2. Cook More Veggie Soups
Soups are the perfect place to combine lots of vegetables together into a delicious meal. Veggies can easily be added to broth- and cream-based soups, or pureed to create the base of a soup. For example, onions, peppers, mushrooms, carrots, and other vegetables can be added to lots of broth-based soups, like your ordinary chicken soup. Or, you can puree tomatoes, onions, and garlic to create a base for a tomato-based soup. The possibilities are endless when it comes to incorporating veggies into soups, and there are lots of recipes online that can help! So, browse a few recipes on the web for a delicious and easy dinner that contains lots of veggies!
3. Add a Side Salad Whenever Possible
Adding a side salad to your meals is a super simple way to add some more leafy greens and other vegetables to your diet. Just think, adding a simple salad to your lunch and dinner provides at least two more servings of vegetables each day. There are several options of pre-washed greens available at most grocery stores that can easily and quickly be turned into a salad. Just add a few toppings, like a boiled egg and cheese, along with a nice dressing, and you’re good to go! Or, for an even simpler option, most grocery stores even offer premade salads that come with everything you need. All you have to do is mix the ingredients together, and you’ll have an easy and delicious salad!
4. Use Veggies as Wraps or Buns
Instead of using a typical bun or tortilla shell, try substituting them with vegetables. For example, you can replace both a flour wrap and hotdog or burger bun with lettuce. Not only is this a great low-carb option, but it also adds more veggies to your diet. Other great substitutions are sliced sweet potatoes, sliced eggplant, sliced zucchini, and portobello mushroom caps. Trust us, with the proper seasoning, these substitutions taste just as great, if not better, than the typical bun!
5. Use Veggies as Noodles
Veggie noodles are very delicious and very easy to make. They’re a perfect way to eliminate some unnecessary carbs from your diet in favor of nutritious veggies. And, when eaten just like pasta, you can barely tell the difference!
The most common vegetables used for veggie noodles are zucchini, sweet potato, carrots, and butternut squash. There are several helpful kitchen tools out there, like a spiralizer, that can convert almost any type of vegetable into noodles. Once they are made, they can be combined with sauces, vegetables, and meat just like a typical pasta, except much more nutritious. So, order yourself a spiralizer or other similar tool, and start creating your very own nutritious veggie pastas!
6. Try Cauliflower Pizza
Who doesn’t love pizza? Most people try to limit their intake of this delicious meal, but did you know you can make pizza much healthier? All you need is cauliflower!
Instead of your typical flour-based pizza crust, simply substitute it with a cauliflower crust. There are several recipes for a cauliflower crust online, but most of them are as simple as combining cauliflower, eggs, almond flour, and seasonings. Once the crust is made, you can add even more fresh veggies on top, like peppers and onions, along with some tomato sauce and cheese. Throw it in the oven, and you have a nutrient-rich, healthy pizza!
7. Make More Vegetarian Dishes
A quick Google search will reveal countless vegetarian dishes that are packed with nutritious and delicious vegetables. Even if you just have a random vegetable at home, there is sure to be a recipe online that uses that particular vegetable. The vegetarian community has gotten quite creative, too, so you’ll be surprised at what you find and how yummy the meals are! Here’s just a short list of some of our favorite veggie dishes, all of which offer a generous portion of vegetables:
- Stuffed bell peppers
- Veggie meatloaf
- Veggie burgers
- Veggie kebabs
- Cauliflower rice
- Zucchini lasagna
8. Try More Veggie Snacks
Instead of turning to your favorite chips (we know, that’s difficult at times), there are several quick and easy veggie snacks you can try! Here’s some we suggest:
- Carrots or cucumbers dipped in hummus
- Celery dipped in peanut butter
- Homemade sweet potato chips or kale chips
- Avocado toast
There’s several more ideas you can find on online, so create a Pinterest board and start saving some veggie snack recipes! You’ll significantly boost your veggie intake and your health!
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