Do you like rabbit food? Let’s rephrase. Do you like food with no flavor? Not many of us do. So you’ve decided to get healthy by increasing your veggie intake. Suddenly our vegetables turn into rabbit food--raw and with minimal flavor. If you have a palate for raw veggies, consider yourself lucky. The rest of us need help, so keep reading!
Veggies naturally have a bland flavor. So how do we make tasty vegetables? To make food tasty, you need seasoning and fat. Season your veggies with spices, lemon juice, butter or olive oil. For example, if you eat broccoli season with salt and butter. In fact, the butter will less likely affect you because of the high fiber in the broccoli.
Of course eating your veggies is good for you. Vegetables will help you feel full and regulate your bowel movements. It is a low calorie, high fiber food, decreasing hunger and total calories. These benefits are excellent for weight loss and weight maintenance.
Vegetables can help prevent cancers such as prostate, colorectal, lung and breast cancers. People that do not eat enough vegetables consume less essential vitamins (or micronutrients). Less essential vitamins means increased cell damage leading to cancer.
Don’t forget to vary your vegetable intake. Think of rainbows. Vegetables are categorized in color groups, see this table below and remember to eat the rainbow! More colors in your veggie palate means you will eat a variety of vitamins. Additionally, the changes in flavor will keep your food interesting and tasty.
eat the rainbow
FOCUS ON THIS: Veggies are good for you.
Helps with weight loss/maintenance
Prevents cancer
Regulate stools
pillarMD plan: Eat your vegetables!
Eat veggies with every meal (goal ¼ to ½ plate).
If you don’t know how to cook or don’t eat veggies, BE PATIENT. For example, start by picking 1-2 meals out of the week to add/prepare vegetables to your plate. Add 1 additional vegetable in your meal per week each month.
If you eat a lot of vegetables already, venture into new veggie options.
Eat the rainbow.
If you are short on time, prewash/pre pack, plan ahead weekly. Use frozen if you need last minute options. Frozen vegetable nutrition is comparable or higher than fresh options at times. Frozen may not taste as good depending on the vegetable choices.
Make them tasty with seasoning, salt, and don't forget the fats (oils, butter).
Have fun making tasty veggies!!
If you eat meat, cook veggies with your meat for extra flavor.
For more, see our one week plan to increase vegetable intake.