Want to eat more vegetables… but don’t know what to do with them?
Granted, the same salads can get real old, real quick. These 10 tips will have you eating more vegetables than you ever thought possible (even veggie haters won’t be able to resist!).
1. Front-load your breakfast.
“Front-loading” is a concept we came up with when writing our I Quit Sugar: Healthy Breakfast Cookbook. Instead of choosing refined carbs and empty calories, make sure you get a couple of serves of vegetables in there, like grilled tomatoes or kale pancakes.
You won’t have to worry about overloading on veg at dinner to meet your daily requirements, and you’ll start your day on the right foot.
2. Drink green smoothies.
You’d probably struggle to eat two cups of raw spinach, but when blended in a smoothie it goes down like a treat. Whiz up with healthy fats like coconut oil, almond butter or a little avocado to help your body absorb the nutrients even better.
3. Meet your new BFF: zucchini.
If you have fussy kids (or just don’t really like vegetables yourself), mild-tasting zucchini is the perfect place to start. Grated zucchini bulks up smoothies, fritters, frittatas, bread, soups, pasta sauces and even cakes… and you’ll never know it’s in there!
4. Add a handful of peas.
This trick comes from Sarah, who was recently spilling the, er, peas on her kitchen habits to The Guardian.
“Everything tastes better with frozen peas. They add instant sweetness and a lovely sprinkle of colour to a lot of meals. I cook in “layers”, adding bits where I see a gap. If a meal needs more bulk or visual excitement, a handful of peas at the end can save it.”
5. Upgrade your bread.
While there’s nothing wrong with a slice of sourdough here and there, store-bought bread isn’t the most nutritionally dense food. So we make our own with whole ingredients – and throw a few veggies in there to boot.
6. Put it on a kebab.
It’s just more fun to eat food off a stick, right? We find that marinated veggies on a kebab tend to please even the fussiest veg haters. Especially when paired with a little chicken or haloumi.
7. Soup-up your soups.
There’s a reason you eat soup when you’re sick – it’s just so damn nutritious. Hide veggies in silky sweet blends like pumpkin soup, add a handful of lentils to stews or wilt a bunch of greens just before you serve a broth. To see how it’s done, this pot has 13 serves of veg!
8. Swap chips for veggie dips.
Instead of digging into that packet of cheese puffs, save yourself some additives and cut up some veggies to snack on (carrots, cucumbers and celery all work well). Serve with hummus or guacamole for even more veggies.
9. Be a spinach magician.
If you’re looking for nutritional density, spinach is the way to go. Just dump a bag of baby spinach into a pot with olive oil and watch as… POOF! It shrinks down to nothing, making it perfect for adding to pastas or frittatas for particularly fussy kids.
10. And… bake brownies?
Yes! From sweet potato to zucchini to beetroot to chickpea, you can hide so many vegetables in brownies (and it makes them all the fudgier). Of course, this isn’t how we’d get all our daily serves, but it is a great way to add more nutrition to dessert.
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