Only up until a few years ago I actually enjoyed eating my vegetables and throughout my childhood my mum struggled to get me to eat them. My grandparents were keen gardeners with two massive allotments where they would grow their own vegetables from runner beans, carrots, potatoes, beets, parsnips, courgettes – there was nothing that their magical green fingers couldn’t grow and there was always an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables about when I was younger. I ate them, but I would say that I probably tolerated the taste rather than savour it. Now as an adult things are a million times different and I would happily eat a huge bowl of roasted vegetables for dinner.
We all know that we should be eating more vegetables and we all know the reasons why – they are a healthy source of essential minerals and vitamins that our bodies need to work at its optimum best. Many of us struggle to get more vegetables into our diet. This can be especially tricky if you are just getting into the healthier swing of things because after a life of persistently eating pizza and takeaways for dinner, vegetables may seem boring. However, this is further from the truth and here are a few tasty ideas to help you get more veggies into your diet without even trying.
Get them in as early as possible
Vegetables aren’t just for lunch and dinner, but you can also have them at breakfast time too. Try some scrambled eggs with spinach, grated cheddar cheese and tomatoes or an omelette with red peppers, onion and feta cheese. Try and split up your plate into 3 sections – ¼ for protein, ¼ for carbohydrates, ½ for vegetables or salad. Dedicating more of your plate to vegetables and salad ensures that you will get more greens in at meal times.
Super Creamy Apple & Ginger Green Smoothie
Green Smoothies
OK, so I can see you all rolling your eyeballs at the computer screen, but green smoothies are a fantastic way to get more vegetables into your diet. If you love fruit smoothies then you are already on the right track, simply add a handful of spinach, lettuce or kale. When you really start to love them, you can start experimenting with superfood powders for a nutritional boost too.
Disguise vegetables among other foods
This is a trick that I learnt from my Mum and it has helped me get my husband to eat more vegetables. Packing out a chilli con carne, beef ragu, curry or a lentil cottage pie is a great way to disguise the taste of vegetables, so much so that you will hardly know that they are there. Alfie didn’t eat any vegetables when I first met him and I started hiding them in his meals so that he wouldn’t notice and now he eats them without batting an eyelid.
Get your wok on!
Stir fries are the quickest and healthiest ways to get a nutritionally dense meal via vegetables. Rather than ordering a takeaway, make your favourite Chinese meal at home with lots of vegetables and protein like chicken, beef, fish or tofu and serve with rice or noodles for a healthy alternative.
Blend them into a soup
Cooking vegetables by roasting them to emphasise their flavour and then blending them with some stock to make soup is one of the easiest ways to add to the daily veggie count. Soups can be frozen too, so you will always have a healthy and nutritious meal on hand when you’re not in the mood to cook.
So there you go, some easy ideas to get more veggies into your meals without going to any real extra effort. It’s all about baby steps and making small changes at a time, but once you get started you won’t want to stop!
Some great tips here! In the summer months we get a weekly veg box so we live a predominantly vegetarian lifestyle then. I love my veggies but it can be a struggle to get the family to enjoy them as much as I do!
It can be a struggle to get the rest of the family on board, but I quite like the challenge of coming up with new recipe ideas to help them get those veggies in.
Roasting them is one of the best way to make them more appealing in my view – then green smoothies.
Roasting them really helps bring the best out of them flavour wise to me too.
I blend the veg into soups alot. I get a wholle lot in that way. Nice post.
Great post this. I 100% agree about using the wok when you want to maybe have a very veg centric meal!
Absolutely, one of the most easiest ways to get those veggies in!
These are all perfect tips, and the only one I need to work on is having a more savoury breakfast, oops. I just always find an omelette/fritatta a quick lunch or dinner. Green smoothies are fantastic as a quick way to ingest tonnes of vitamins and minerals, and fibre too. I’ve recently been experimenting a bit more with my green smoothies, mainly in making sure they’re really green and very much a good mix of vegetables, leafy greens and a bit of fruit or citrus to be more palatable.
My boyfriend is a bit fussy in regard to what vegetables he’ll eat so I either find stir fry’s or disguising them, as you mention, really great ways of getting in tonnes of vegetables for both of us.
She’s So Lucy
I’m bad at the savoury breakfast thing too, unless I’m having a green smoothie. I’m trying to add some veggies to my scrambnled egg and avocado breakfast that I love and tried roasted tomatoes this morning, yum!
Great tips! I always recommend green smoothies to people, as it really is an easy way to eat some extra veggies and you really can’t taste them.
I love them for getting a nutritious start to my day!
Great tips. I’d love to grow my own veg but considering I can barely keep a single plant alive I’m thinking that might not be wise!!
Haha! I would love a small veggie patch, but I’m the same with you I’m afraid. My gardening fingers are toxic as opposed to green.
I was never good at eating vegetables so the way that worked was when my mum disguised them and honestly I loved them that way. Now as an adult I will say I am better but not as much as I should be though.
I think the disguising them trick is definitely a great way to get those veggies in, especially with children.
These are all great suggestion. I love meals packed with colorful veggies, however, I still cannot get 2 out of 3 of my children to chow down on them. Suggestions?
Glad it’s not just me who has a husband that vegetables have to be hidden from! Men are rubbish veggie eaters!
I love putting greens in smoothies – such an easy way to get them in. When I lived with my parents I used to eat cooked veg with dinner every evening but that sort of slipped since living alone so thank goodness for green smoothies! x
I love vegetables and eat them every which way… These are great tips for folks who need a bit more prodding … and it works. 🙂