How to Eat More Vegetables

We all know that we “should” eat a lot of vegetables, but for the vast majority of us, this is a lot easier said than done. In this post, I’m showing you how to eat more vegetables by sharing my top tips for simple and practical ways to include more vegetables into your diet.

Why It’s Important to Eat Your Veggies

Before jumping into my tips to show you how to eat more vegetables, I want to share why you need to do this in the first place. There are many, many reasons why it’s important to eat a sufficient amount of vegetables on a regular basis, including:

1. Vegetables are nutrient-dense: vegetables are a rich source of a variety of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients our bodies need to function. And, because nature knows what she’s doing, the combination of the nutrients contained in vegetables often makes them well absorbed and well utilized by bodies. For example, one cup of broccoli contains protein, vitamin B6, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, potassium, and trace amounts of a ton of other nutrients. That’s a lot of bang for your buck!

2. Vegetables contain prebiotics: vegetables not only feed you, they also feed the billions of bacteria that live in your gut microbiome and play essential roles such as digesting your food, helping with nutrient absorption, supporting your immune system, and even regulating your mood and mental well-being. Vegetables are a great source of prebiotics: natural fibres that feed our gut bacteria and help them to thrive.

3. Vegetables provide you with fibre: it’s a sad fact that many of us do not get even close to enough fibre in our diets. This is problematic, because fibre provides the bulk of our stools, which keeps our bowels moving regularly. To put it another way: you need a good amount of fibre to poop properly. Fibre also has numerous other benefits, including supporting blood sugar regulation, lowering high blood pressure, balancing cholesterol, supporting your gut microbiome, and reducing the risk of diseases such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease. Eating vegetables regularly ensures that we are getting sufficient fibre into our bodies.

How to Eat More Vegetables

Tip 1: Make it Easy

One of the best ways to eat more vegetables is to make vegetables easy and convenient to eat: if you have vegetables prepped in advance and ready to go, you are much more likely to eat them than if there’s work involved at meal times. Yes, this takes a few minutes of prep time in advance, but then you have vegetables ready to eat when you need them.

I love having fresh salad with lunch or dinner. To make this realistic when life is busy, here’s how I do it:

1. In advance, wash and cut your vegetables. Then divide them into containers for storage. Best to do this right after you buy them, so they don’t get stuffed in the back of your refrigerator and forgotten about. If you’ll be taking your salad to go, store it in ready-to-go containers in single serving size amounts.

2. Also in advance, prepare a good-sized batch of salad dressing. This can be a one-minute simple mix of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or you can go for something more complex, like these amazing dressings here. If you’re packing ready-and-go salads, portion out your dressings in small containers and add them to your ready-to-go containers (make sure to keep the dressing separate until serving time to avoid a soggy salad).

3. At meal time, grab a handful of each vegetable and toss in a bowl with some salad dressing. Voila, fresh salad in less than two minutes!

Another way I like to make eating vegetables easy is by roasting a big batch of vegetables in advance, then storing them in the refrigerator and adding them to salads or as a side to my meals. Roasting vegetables is super easy: prep veggies, toss them in a bit of olive oil, season as you like, and bake at 425F until soft (I usually check and flip them after around 20 min). If you’re new to roasting vegetables and want more detailed instructions, you can find some here.

Tip 2: Make it Crave-Worthy

Do you want to know how I got my kids to eat copious amounts of kale? By turning them into kale chips! If you’ve never had kale chips, you are seriously missing out! These tasty morsels pack in all of the crunch and flavour of a potato chip, but in a much more nutritious way. And you can easily turn other vegetables into chips too, just use a spiralizer or cut very thinly. While kale chips are our family favourite, we also love making vegetable chips from sweet potato, beets, and radishes. Click here for an easy-to-follow kale chip recipe.

Tip 3: Make it Sneaky

Confession time: I sneak all kinds of nutritious goodies into my kids’ food, and they rarely notice. Over the years, I have gotten my sometimes-picky eaters to ingest tons of foods that they normally wouldn’t go near if served to them straight up. Adding vegetables in subtle ways to other foods is a fantastic way to eat more vegetables, particularly ones that you are not a big fan of.

Here are my favourite ways to sneak in extra vegetables:

1. Add a handful of vegetables to a smoothie. Throw in some leafy greens such as spinach or kale, or a neutral-tasting vegetable like cucumber, and blend it all up. While this may give your smoothie a greenish tint, it doesn’t affect the taste at all. For an extra treat, pour your smoothie mix into popsicle molds and freeze for sneaky smoothie popsicles.

2. Puree vegetables into sauces and soups. Easily add extra vegetables to soft liquidy foods but pureeing or blending in vegetables such as leafy greens or cooked sweet potato, carrot or peppers. If your soup or sauce is chunky, combine a few ladle-fulls with your vegetables, puree, and then add back to the rest of the soup or sauce. Again, this may affect the colour but will likely otherwise be undetectable.

3. Add grated vegetables to baked goods. Mix grated vegetables (such as zucchini or squash) or mashed vegetables (such as sweet potato or carrot) to muffins, breads, or other baked goods. When they bake, the small pieces of vegetable break down into the dough or batter, becoming virtually undetectable in your finished treats. This works particularly well for savory and less-sweet baked goods; for sweeter goods, experiment with smaller amounts. You can find a great recipe for zucchini blueberry muffins here.

A Final Few Words on Buying Vegetables

I hope this post has been helpful in showing you how to eat more vegetables in some simple and creative ways, but before you go off and start buying all the veggies, consider the quality of the vegetables you buy.

When feasible, I always recommend considering buying organic in order to avoid consuming pesticides and other harmful chemicals that conventionally-grown produce is treated with. An organic certification also ensures that you’re getting the non-GMO version. If you have the means and access to buy everything organic, great! But if this is not a feasible or realistic option for you, prioritize the vegetables that are included in the Environmental Working Group’s dirty dozen list.

I also recommend prioritizing local and seasonal food when possible. By eating local seasonal foods, we are eating foods that have recently been harvested, rather than those that have sat on a truck, boat, or train for days or even weeks. Local seasonal foods are fresher, which means they contain more nutrients. The best way to do this is to buy from local farmers, for example at a farmer’s market or through a community supported agriculture- or CSA- initiative. And you can also often find local produce in your supermarket, especially during the summer.

Happy eating!