Easy Ways to Eat More Vegetables Every Day

Nearly 90% of Americans fall below fruit and vegetable consumption recommendations. Yet eating vegetables is essential to get the nutrients our bodies require to feel energized, function properly and fight disease. Including an abundance of vegetables in our diets can prove challenging, especially if you didn’t grow up eating them regularly or you feel overwhelmed at the idea of chopping, peeling and otherwise prepping them on a busy weeknight.

However, with a little strategy, vegetables can be an enjoyable and easy addition to any meal. Vegetables are a main part of the USDA Dietary Guidelines and a foundation of the Mediterranean Diet. We know from years of experience that eating more vegetables doesn’t require that you eat salads every day, or that you need to eat foods that don’t taste good to you.

Try these simple tips to get more vegetables into your diet:

Start with Small Steps

If you don’t currently eat many vegetables, start today by adding them to meals you already eat. For example:

• Ordering a pizza? Choose a topping like eggplant, peppers, broccoli or artichoke hearts.
• Making a can of soup? Mix in a handful of spinach.
• Need a snack? Buy a bag of mini carrots and dip them in hummus, salsa or guacamole.

Experiment with ways to include at least one vegetable in every meal:

• For breakfast, that might be mashing a sweet potato into porridge or adding peppers and onions to a scrambled egg.
• For lunch, add thin slices of vegetables to a sandwich like tomato, onion, cucumber or grilled zucchini.
• For dinner, buy a bag of frozen riced cauliflower and substitute it for rice or mix it into rice.

Give All Kinds of Vegetables a Try

You should not only taste vegetables you’ve never tried before, but also try vegetables you think you don’t like again. And again. Research tells us that repeated exposure to foods can make us develop a taste for them. Try a vegetable 10 to 20 separate times prepared in various ways and included in a diverse range of dishes. If you still don’t like a particular vegetable after you’ve experimented with it, it’s OK to move on. There’s plenty of other vegetables out there.

Find What Works for You

Taste test your way to the vegetables that you like the best, so you can eat and enjoy them daily.

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Photo Credit: Oksana Kuzmina / Shutterstock.com