Do you have trouble incorporating vegetables into your diet?

 By Sophia McDermott, Lifestyle Coach & Fitness Expert. 

Most of us know that adding vegetables into your diet is an essential part of our health. We know that veggies contain loads of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants, fiber and other good stuff that keeps us healthy. Some of us hate veggies, however, so eating them regularly can be challenging. 

Here are 5 ways that you can get your veggies daily in in an easy way:

1. Make veggie-based soups

Soups are an excellent way to consume multiple servings of vegetables at once.

You can make veggies the “base” by pureeing them and adding spices, such as in this broccoli spinach quinoa soup.

Furthermore, it’s simple to cook veggies into broth- or cream-based soups.

Adding even a small number of extra veggies, such as broccoli, to soups is a great way to increase your intake of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Here are a few other veggie-based soup recipes for you to try:

    Ribollita

    Kitchen sink soup

    Green papaya fish soup

    Kale, tomato, and white bean soup

    Pho packed with spinach and bok choy

2. Try zucchini lasagna

Another creative way to eat more veggies is by making pasta-free zucchini lasagna.

Traditional lasagna is a pasta-based dish made by layering lasagna noodles with sauce, cheese, and meat. It’s tasty, but it’s also typically very high in carbs and doesn’t come with veggies automatically.

A great way to prepare this delicious dish so that it has a lower carb content and more nutrients is to replace the lasagna noodles with strips of zucchini.

Zucchini is a rich source of B vitamins and vitamin C, in addition to trace minerals and fiber .

Take your favorite lasagna recipe and replace those noodles with strips of zucchini sliced with a vegetable peeler. Tip: Salt the zucchini, let it sit for 15 minutes, and pat it dry with a paper towel to draw out the extra water.

3. Experiment with veggie noodles

Veggie noodles are easy to make, and a great way to get more veggies in your eating plan. They’re also an excellent low carb substitute for high carb foods, such as pasta.

They’re made by inserting vegetables into a spiralizer, which processes them into noodle-like shapes. You can also:

    shred them

    slice them with a mandoline

    just cut them up as you please

You can use a spiralizer for almost any type of vegetable. They’re commonly used for zucchini, carrots, spaghetti squash, and sweet potatoes, all of which come packed with extra nutrients.

Once the “noodles” are made, they can be consumed just like pasta and combined with sauces, other vegetables, or meat.

Here are some veggie noodle recipes for you to try:

    Spaghetti squash in white wine and mushroom sauce

    Zoodles with lentil bolognese

    Peanut-chicken zoodles

4. Add veggies to sauces

Adding extra vegetables to your sauces and dressings is a sneaky way to increase your veggie intake, especially if you have picky kids.

While you’re cooking sauces, such as marinara sauce, simply add some veggies and herbs of your choice to the mix, such as chopped onions, carrots, bell peppers, and leafy greens like spinach.

Pureeing roasted root vegetables can make for rich sauces with an Alfredo-like feel. Think carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, turnips, purple yam, beets, and kohlrabi.

Try making pesto with roasted beets for the most vibrant dish ever.

5. Make a cauliflower pizza crust

Cauliflower is extremely versatile. You can rice it, roast it, stick it in a stew, puree it for silky goodness, and make it into a pizza crust.

Replacing a regular, flour-based pizza crust with a cauliflower crust is as easy as combining finely chopped and drained cauliflower with eggs, almond flour, and some seasonings.

You can then add your own toppings, such as fresh veggies, tomato sauce, and cheese.

A cup (100 grams) of cauliflower contains only about 5 grams of carbs and 26 calories, in addition to lots of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants

Therefore, whatever the age, it is worth thinking about alternatives to enjoy these healthy foods in the best way. See some of them:

Insert the food in preparations of dishes that you like very much;

Trying the same food more than once, in different preparations;

Add leaves and vegetables to pizzas, sandwiches, omelettes, etc;

Combine leaves and fruits in the preparation of juices. Ex: kale and pineapple.

This food group has a large amount of essential vitamins and nutrients for the proper functioning of your body, bringing energy and vitality when consumed frequently.

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

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/13-ways-to-add-fruits-and-vegetables-to-your-diet