Creative Ways to Eat More Vegetables

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Including vegetables in your meals is extremely important. Veggies are rich in nutrients and antioxidants, which boost your health and help, fight off disease.

Additionally, they’re beneficial for weight management due to their low calorie content.

Health authorities around the world recommend that adults consume several servings of vegetables each day, but this can be difficult for some people.

Some find it inconvenient to eat vegetables, while others are simply unsure how to prepare them in an appetizing way.

We’ll cover some unique ways you can incorporate vegetables into your eating plan, so that you never get sick of eating them.

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.

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.

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.

Blend into smoothies

Smoothies make for a refreshing breakfast or snack. Green smoothies in particular are very popular for hiding loads of leafy greens in fruity packages.

Typically, they’re made by combining fruit with ice, milk, or water in a blender. However, you can also add veggies to smoothies without compromising the flavor.

Fresh, leafy greens are common smoothie additions, such as in this recipe, which combines kale with blueberries, bananas, and cucumber.

Just 1 loosely packed cup (25 grams) of spinach contains more than a full day’s recommended amount of vitamin K and half of the recommended amount of vitamin A.

The same serving of kale also provides high amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, and lots of vitamin K.

In addition, frozen zucchini, pumpkin, beets, avocado, and sweet potatoes work well blended into smoothies.

Cook a veggie omelet

Omelets are an easy and versatile way to add veggies into your meal plan. Plus, eggs add lots of good nutrients, too.

Cook up some beaten eggs with a small amount of butter or oil in a pan, and then fold them around a filling that often includes cheese, meat, vegetables, or a combination of the three.

Any type of veggie tastes great in omelets and you can really load them up for lots of nutrition. Spinach, onions, scallions, bok choy, mushrooms, bell peppers, and tomatoes are common additions.

Prepare savory oatmeal

Oats do not have to be sweet. Savory oatmeal can add more veggies into your morning. While it’s great with fresh fruit, raisins, or cinnamon, you can also add in eggs, spices, and lots of veggies.

This recipe for savory oatmeal includes mushrooms and kale for a hearty and warm meal.

It is a known fact that kales have a lot of nutrition, as well as mushrooms too. They are high in protein, vitamin D, and vitamin B12. This makes them an especially great addition to a plant-based eating plan.

Grill veggie kebabs

Veggie kebabs pack lots of flavor onto a party-ready stick.

To make them, place chopped vegetables of your choice on a skewer and cook on a grill or barbecue.

Bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, and tomatoes work well for kebabs. Try Cajun-style shrimp and bell pepper kebabs and layer in all the veggies you want.

Swap to a veggie burger

Veggie burgers are an easy swap for heavier meat burgers and can be topped with even more vegetables.

Veggie burger patties can be made by combining vegetables with eggs, nuts or nut flours, and seasonings. Sweet potatoes and black beans are also commonly used to make veggie burgers.

Note that not all meat-free burgers are full of veggies. Watch the labels to find some that have veggies as their main ingredients.

You can take these recipes a step further by wrapping your veggie burger in a lettuce wrap, instead of a bun.

Add veggies to tuna salad

In general, tuna (or chicken or salmon) salad is made by blending tuna with mayonnaise, but any type of chopped vegetable can be added to increase the flavor and nutrient content.

Onions, carrots, cucumber, spinach, and herbs are common additions. This Mediterranean tuna salad has cucumbers, grape tomatoes, olives, red peppers, artichokes, shallots, and parsley.

There are so many ways to add vegetables to everyday food items. Some can sneak right into recipes without a lot of drama like spinach and some add color and flavor in ways you’d never expect like beets and sweet potatoes.

Adding to a dish is great, but sometimes veggies can become the star as your sandwich bun or rice.

Tip: If you don’t like a certain vegetable that you’ve only tried boiled, give roasting a try. So many people who hate boiled Brussels sprouts end up loving roasted or sautéed sprouts.

By making veggies a regular part of your eating habits, you’ll significantly increase your intake of fiber, nutrients, and antioxidants.