Eating Right: 10 Ways to Include Vegetables in Your Food

During times of stress, we often turn to traditional “comfort” foods such as chocolates, pizza, and ice cream. Ironically, these high-fat foods are usually the worst possible choices because they can make us feel lethargic and less able to deal with stress. Not only that, but stress can drive up our blood pressure and raise serum cholesterol levels, wreaking havoc on our arteries and increasing our risk of heart attack.

The best solution? Low-fat, high-fiber, carbohydrate-rich meals with plenty of fruits and vegetables.

Haven’t we all have heard of the golden “5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day” rule, but as we said earlier, we are often caught up with our daily schedules, board-meetings, weekly targets and other demands of our stressful jobs to monitor these requirements and things go for a toss.

Hence, here are some ten shortlisted easy ways in which you can increase the amount of vegetables you consume in your meals on a daily basis without any sacrifice or hard work:

1. Give your veggies some visibility

Stock your vegetables on the top shelf or in the front part of your refrigerator so that they don’t get hidden at the bottom or the back. This way, you’re constantly reminded of your daily vegetable-resolution.

2. Create a taste for vegetables

Take some time out to think of which vegetables’ flavors and tastes appeal to you the most. Basically, don’t just eat vegetables like you were popping some pills but also see the beauty in them!

3. Include a salad in every meal

You may not want to compromise your main course just to make space for more vegetables in your diet. Fair enough! Then, at least have the vegetables at the sides. Onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc make for ideal side-munching.

4. How about some vegetable drinks?

To introduce more variety into your vegetable-intake you could drink your veggies apart from eating them. Spinach, carrot, beets, etc make for some of the most standard and healthy juices you could ever sip. You can find a list of more such juice over the internet – YouTube or Food Bloggers.

5. Replace tortillas with veggies

How about replacing the tortilla/bread and use green leafy vegetables as wrappings for your sandwiches and your tacos? Give it a try once. That way you get to do an experiment with your daily snack that is as healthy as it is cool.

6. Make gravies for eggs/fish/meat with sautéed vegetables

This is how you can have the best of both worlds! Instead of using generic, nutritionally bland sauces might as well use sautéed tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, etc to zest up your egg/fish/meat dish and lift your taste buds.

7. Add spinach, coriander and curry leaves as garnish/ flavoring

Not all veggies need to be at the heart of your dishes. Curry leaves or spinach act as great additions/seasonings for soups, stews or just about anything. Garnishing is important!

8. Make your vegetables more appealing

Yeah, plain/ boiled/steamed veggies can get awfully boring! So spice up your veggies with olives/ginger-garlic pastes/vinegar or other such powerhouses of flavoring.

9. Ask for extra veggies in your sandwich

While munching on your sandwich at your evening break, ask for double veggies instead of trifling about whether you want it spicy or sweet. Though it sounds boring, it’s one of the best ways of using a daily snack to contribute meaningfully to your daily veggie-count.

10. Be creative!

The internet is buzzing with crazy recipes that let you bring in vegetables into the most unexpected portions of your diets. Sample this, for instance- Replace the food color in your brownie with pureed beets. Worth a try, isn’t it?

So, here we are at the end of the article after exploring the 10 simple ways to include the intake of vegetables in your daily schedule. Weren’t they pretty easy? Not much of an effort to be taken, is there? No hard work, easily bendable in your daily schedule, no need to increase your expenditure; you’ve got it all, what are you waiting for then?

Do let us know if these 10 ways which we’ve shortlisted for you come to your rescue of a vegetable dilemma