17 Brilliant Ways to Increase Your Vegetable Consumption

It is important to include veggies in your meals. Veggies are high in nutrients and antioxidants, which improve your health and contribute to the prevention of illness.

They are also suitable for weight loss due to their low-calorie content.

According to health authorities throughout the world, adults must take multiple servings of vegetables daily, although this might be challenging for certain individuals.

Some people find eating veggies unpleasant, while others are uncertain how to cook them in a delicious style.

We’ll go through some creative ways to integrate veggies into your diet, so you never grow tired of them.

Source - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health - Harvard University

Make soups with vegetables

Soups are a great way to get numerous servings of veggies in at once.

Veggies may be used as the “base" by pureeing them and seasoning them, like in this broccoli spinach quinoa soup.

It’s also easy to include vegetables in broth- or cream-based soups.

Adding even a tiny amount of extra vegetables to soups, such as broccoli, is an excellent way to increase your fibre, vitamins, and minerals diet.

Here are some more veggie-based soup ideas to try:

Ribollita
Kitchen sink soup
Green papaya fish soup
Kale, tomato, and white bean soup
Pho packed with spinach and bok choy

Make a zucchini lasagna

Making pasta-free zucchini lasagna is another inventive approach to consuming more vegetables.

Traditional lasagna is a pasta dish composed of layers of lasagna noodles, sauce, cheese, and meat. It’s yummy, but it’s also often too high in carbohydrates and doesn’t come with vegetables by default.

Replace the lasagna noodles with zucchini strips to make this delectable meal lower in carbs and higher in nutrients.

Zucchini is high in B vitamins and vitamin C, trace minerals, and fibre.

Replace the noodles in your favourite lasagna recipe with strips of zucchini cut with a vegetable peeler. Tip: Salt the zucchini, set it aside for 15 minutes, then wipe it dry with a paper towel to remove excess moisture.

Experiment with different types of veggie noodles

Veggie noodles are a quick and simple method to include more vegetables in your diet. They’re also a great low-carb option for high-carb products like spaghetti.

They’re created by placing veggies through a spiraliser, which turns them into noodle-like patterns. You may also shred them, slice them with a mandoline, or chop them up as you like.

Almost any vegetable can be spiralised with a spiraliser. They’re typically utilised for vegetables like zucchini, carrots, spaghetti squash, and sweet potatoes, which are high in nutrients.

When the “noodles" are ready, they may be eaten like spaghetti with sauces, other vegetables, or meat.

Here are some recipes for vegetarian noodle soup to try:

Spaghetti squash in white wine and mushroom sauce
Zoodles with lentil bolognese
Peanut-chicken zoodles

Include vegetables in sauces

Adding more veggies to sauces and dressings is a subtle way to up your veggie consumption, particularly if you have fussy children.

While sauces, such as marinara sauce, are simmering, add your favourite vegetables and herbs to the mix, like chopped onions, carrots, bell peppers, and leafy greens spinach.

Roasted root vegetables may be pureed to create creamy sauces with an Alfredo-like texture. Carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, turnips, purple yam, beets, and kohlrabi are just a few examples.

For the most brilliant dinner imaginable, make pesto with roasted beets.

Make a pizza crust out of cauliflower

Cauliflower is incredibly adaptable. You can rice it, roast it, add it to a stew, purée it for silky smoothness, and use it to create a pizza crust.

It’s as simple as mixing finely chopped and drained cauliflower with eggs, almond flour, and spices to make a cauliflower crust instead of a normal, flour-based pizza crust.

After that, you can add your toppings, such as fresh vegetables, tomato sauce, and cheese.

Cauliflower provides just approximately 5 grammes of carbohydrates and 26 calories per cup (100 grammes) and a lot of fibre, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

Blend into smoothies

Smoothies are a great way to start the day or as a snack. Green smoothies, in particular, are renowned for concealing a plethora of leafy greens in fruit containers.

They’re often produced by blending fruit with ice, milk, or water in a blender. However, you can add vegetables to smoothies without sacrificing flavour.

Fresh, leafy greens are popular smoothie ingredients, as shown in this recipe, blends kale with blueberries, bananas, and cucumber.

One loosely packed cup (25 grammes) of spinach provides more than a full day’s worth of vitamin K and half of the daily recommended intake of vitamin A.

The same quantity of kale also contains significant vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin K levels.

Frozen zucchini, pumpkin, beets, avocado, and sweet potatoes work wonderfully in smoothies. Here are a few to get you started:

Acai green smoothie
Pineapple, banana, and green avocado smoothie

Add vegetables to casseroles

Including other vegetables in casseroles is an effective strategy to enhance your vegetable consumption. They provide thickness, texture, and flavour all at once.

Meats are often combined with vegetables, cheese, potatoes, and grain in casseroles, such as rice or pasta. As one would anticipate, traditional casseroles are heavy in refined carbohydrates and calories.

They’re trendy over the holidays, when veggies may be overlooked in favour of other foods.

Fortunately, you may minimise the calories and carbohydrates in your casseroles by substituting vegetables for the grains, such as broccoli, mushrooms, celery, or carrots. A healthy green bean casserole is very well-known and popular.

1 cup of raw green beans includes 33 micrograms (mcg) of folate, a necessary B vitamin, in addition to a sufficient amount of vitamins and minerals.

Make a vegetable omelette

Omelettes are a quick and simple method to get more vegetables into your diet. In addition, eggs are high in nutrients.

In a skillet, cook some beaten eggs with a tiny bit of butter or oil, then wrap them over a filling that often contains cheese, meat, veggies, or a mixture of the three.

Any vegetable tastes wonderful in omelettes, and you can pack a lot of nutrients into them. Common ingredients include spinach, onions, scallions, bok choy, bell peppers, and tomatoes. Here are a few to get you started:

Spinach, goat cheese, and chorizo omelette
Moringa omelette
Waffle omelette with tomatoes and peppers
Vegan chickpea omelette

Make savoury oatmeal

Oatmeal does not have to be sweet. Savoury oatmeal may help you get more vegetables in your morning.

While it’s delicious with fresh fruit, raisins, or cinnamon, you can also add eggs, spices, and various vegetables.

This savoury oatmeal dish combines mushrooms and kale for a filling and warming snack.

We already know that kale is nutritious, but mushrooms are as well. They contain a lot of protein, vitamin D, and vitamin B12. They are an excellent supplement to a plant-based diet.

Consider a lettuce wrap or a veggie bun

Using lettuce as a wrap or certain vegetables as buns instead of tortillas and bread is an excellent way to consume more vegetables.

Lettuce wraps can be used in various cuisines, but they are most often utilised to create low carb sandwiches and bunless burgers.

Many vegetables, including portobello mushroom caps, sliced sweet potatoes, divided red or yellow peppers, tomato halves, and sliced eggplant, make great buns.

Lettuce wraps and vegetable buns are simple ways to save calories since one lettuce leaf provides just one calorie. Refined bread contains far more calories.

With lettuce wraps and vegetable buns, here are a few good starting points:

Chickpea taco lettuce wraps
Paleo lettuce wrap
BLT lettuce wrap
Portobello mushroom bruschetta

Grilled Vegetable Kebabs

Veggie kebabs have a bunch of flavours on a stick that’s perfect for a party.

To create them, thread chopped veggies onto skewers and roast them on a grill or barbeque.

Kebabs can be made with bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, and tomatoes. Try these Cajun-style shrimp and bell pepper kebabs with as many vegetables as you prefer.

Switch to veggie burgers

Veggie burgers are a simple substitute for heavier meat patties and can be topped with additional veggies.

Vegetables, eggs, nuts or nut flours, and spices can be combined to make veggie burger patties. Sweet potatoes and black beans are also often utilised to prepare vegetable burgers.

It’s worth noting that not all meatless burgers are loaded with vegetables. Check the labels to see if there are any that include vegetables as the critical element.

You can take these recipes a step further by enveloping your veggie burger in a lettuce wrap rather than a bun.

Toss some vegetables into the tuna salad

Tuna (or chicken or salmon) salad is often created by combining tuna with mayonnaise, but any chopped vegetable may be added to boost the flavour and nutritious value.

Common ingredients include onions, carrots, cucumber, spinach, and herbs. Cucumbers, grape tomatoes, olives, red peppers, artichokes, shallots, plus parsley are among the main ingredients in this Mediterranean tuna salad.

Stuff some bell peppers with cheese

Stuffed bell peppers are produced by filling split bell peppers with cooked meat, beans, rice, and spices then baking them.

Layers of cream cheese, sliced chicken or turkey, and spices may be added for a cold meal if you want them raw and crunchy.

Bell peppers are high in vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamins A and C.

You can boost the nutritional value of stuffed bell peppers by adding more vegetables. Add some onions, spinach, or riced cauliflower to this Italian-style stuffed pepper dish.

Mix vegetables into guacamole

Guacamole is an avocado-based dip created by mashing ripe avocados with sea salt, lemon or lime juice, garlic, and other ingredients. However, you do not have to stop there.

When mixed with guacamole, a variety of veggies can miraculously taste delicious. Bell peppers, tomatoes, garlic, and onions are all good picks. Guacamole also goes well with salads and baked sweet or white potatoes.

This kale guacamole recipe includes fresh greens, cilantro, and salsa verde.

Combine vegetables and meatloaf

Meatloaf can also serve as a way to eat additional veggies. It’s often cooked with ground beef and other ingredients, including eggs, breadcrumbs, and tomato sauce. It is then shaped into a loaf, from which it derives its name.

Meatloaf can be made with almost any sort of chopped vegetable, including onions, bell peppers, carrots, zucchini, and greens like spinach.

You can also create a “meatloaf" made entirely of vegetables, such as chickpeas, carrots, onions, and celery. Chickpeas can be the replacement of the meat while remaining hearty.

Cook cauliflower rice

Cauliflower rice is prepared by pounding cauliflower florets into fine granules in a food processor. You can then use it to replace conventional rice, either uncooked or cooked. It thickens stews and soups and acts as a basis for other meals.

Cauliflower rice has fewer carbohydrates than conventional rice, with just 5 grammes per cup compared to 53 grammes in a cup of white rice.

Cauliflower also contains a lot of vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, and potassium.

Remember that you can also “rice" various veggies such as broccoli, beets, carrots, zucchini, and sweet potatoes.

The Bottom Line

There are numerous ways to include veggies in ordinary foods. Some, like spinach, can be added to dishes without much drama and provide extra colour and flavour in unexpected ways (like beets and sweet potatoes).

Adding vegetables to a portion of food is fantastic, but vegetables can also serve as the star of a dish, like sandwich bread or rice.

If you don’t like a particular vegetable that you’ve only eaten boiled, try roasting it. Many individuals who dislike cooked Brussels sprouts fall in love with roasted or sautéed sprouts.

Making vegetables a regular part of your diet can significantly boost your intake of fibre, minerals, and antioxidants.

Sources

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/17-ways-to-eat-more-veggies

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17 Brilliant Ways to Increase Your Vegetable Consumption