Including vegetables in your diet is really important. Vegetables are very rich in nutrients and antioxidants, improve your health and help fight disease . In addition, they are beneficial for weight control due to their low calorie content.
Health authorities around the world recommend that adults eat several servings of vegetables a day , but this can be difficult for many people. Some find it uncomfortable to eat vegetables, while others are just not sure how to prepare them palatable.
Here are some delicious ways to include vegetables in your diet and enjoy eating them.
How to include vegetables in your diet
Vegetable soup
Soups are a great way to consume multiple amounts of vegetables at once. You can make the vegetables the base for mashing and add spices, such as tomato soup. In addition, it is quite easy to cook vegetables in soups based on broth or cream.
You can even add a small amount of additional vegetables, such as broccoli, to soups. It’s a great way to increase your intake of fiber, vitamins, and minerals. A vegetable soup with broccoli contains 1/2 cup (78 grams) of broccoli per serving, this provides a significant amount of vitamin K, vitamin C and vitamin A.
Zucchini lasagna
Another creative way to eat more veggies is by making zucchini lasagna. Traditional lasagna is a pasta-based dish made with layers of layers of lasagna with sauce, cheese, and meat. It is tasty, but it is also very high in carbohydrates.
A great way to make this delicious dish to be lower in carbohydrates and more nutrients is to replace the layers of lasagna with strips of zucchini.
Zucchini is a rich source of B vitamins and vitamin C, as well as minerals and fiber. This zucchini lasagna recipe is pretty simple to make by combining zucchini with ground beef, cheese, and a variety of other veggies.
Experiment with vegetable noodles
Vegetable noodles are easy to make and a great way to get more greens in your diet. They are also an excellent low-carb substitute for carbohydrate-rich foods, such as pasta.
They are made by inserting vegetables into a spiralizer, which processes them into noodles. You can use a spiralizer for almost any type of vegetable. They are commonly used for zucchini, carrots, and sweet potatoes.
Once the “noodles” are prepared, they can be consumed as pasta and combined with sauces, other vegetables or meat.
Here are some veggie noodle recipes for you to try:
- Spaghetti and zucchini meatballs
- Simple roasted sweet potato noodles
- Carrot noodles with peanut sauce
Adding vegetables to sauces
Adding additional vegetables to your sauces is a perfect and unique way to include vegetables in your diet.
While cooking the sauce, like the marinara sauce, simply add a few vegetables of your choice to the mix, such as chopped onions, carrots, spinach, or bell peppers. You can also puree certain vegetables with seasonings and turn them into sauces.
Here are some examples of salsa recipes that incorporate additional vegetables:
- Pumpkin sauce with sage
- Spinach cream sauce
- Creamy carrot sauce
Making a cauliflower pizza crust
Cauliflower is extremely versatile, and there are many ways to include it in your diet.
One of the ways to include vegetables in your diet is to replace the regular flour-based pizza crust with a cauliflower crust , which is made by combining cauliflower with eggs, almond flour, and some seasonings. You can then add your own ingredients, such as fresh vegetables, tomato sauce, and cheese.
Substituting the cauliflower pizza crust for the flour crust is a great way to enjoy the delicious taste of pizza, while reducing carbohydrate and calorie intake.
A 100-gram cup of cauliflower contains just 5 grams of carbohydrates and 25 calories, plus plenty of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants – nutrients that flour pizza crusts lack.
Mix with smoothies
Smoothies are a very refreshing breakfast and liquid. They are usually made by combining fruit with ice, milk, or water in a blender. However, you can also add vegetables to smoothies without changing the flavor drastically.
Fresh, leafy greens can be included in common smoothies , such as kale, which you can combine with mango, peaches, ginger, and a few other flavorings.
Adding spinach and / or kale to smoothies is an easy way to get more nutrients. Just 1 cup of 30 grams of spinach contains 181% of your daily needs for vitamin K and 56% for vitamin A. The same serving of kale provides 206% of your daily needs for vitamin A, 134% vitamin C and 684% for vitamin K (4, 5).
Additionally, zucchini, squash, beets, and sweet potatoes work well with smoothies, which you can try with the following recipes:
- Zucchini Blueberry Smoothie
- Orange smoothie with sweet potatoes
- Pumpkin smoothie
- Spinach, carrot and apple smoothie.
We hope that with these ways to include vegetables in your diet you have increased your consumption of vegetables to obtain more essential nutrients and have energy throughout the day.
