Vegetables – 3 Ways to get more into your diet

If you are not someone who has a lot of vegetables in your diet at the moment, or you have kids that say they ” don’t like them ” then this blog post is for you!

I’ll be sharing 3 simple ways that you can easily include more veggies into your diet each day and flood your body with lots of nutritious micronutrients 

What are micronutrients?

In short…micronutrients are vitamins and minerals found in our fruits and veggies, they have many roles too such as supporting growth, immune function, development and many others. I’ll talk about this more in another post later this week.  

How many vegetables should we be eating each day?

We should be having at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables each day. A portion equates to around 80g.

For example…

2 satsumas, 2 kiwi fruits or a handful of strawberries would be one portion.

1 apple, pear or banana would be one portion

3 heaped tablespoon of vegetables would be roughly one portion.

So what are the 3 ways I can get more veggies in?

1- ‘MEAT FREE MONDAYS‘ there are many people now opting to have one or two days a week where meat isn’t the main player on the dinner plate. Having meat free days can really allow us to experiment with different vegetables we may have never tried before. Try selecting a vegetable you have never tried before, do some research on it and come up with a simple recipe that uses it. You never know if you like/ dislike something until you try it right? Or make some homemade pizza minus the meat. There are so many options now for eating a more plant based diet.

2- SWAPS – As an example here you could swap the pasta sheets you may use as layers on a lasagne for courgettes. You could also use rolled out leeks or even aubergine. This will add more a tonne more goodness to your dish ( and save some calories on carbohydrates if you are trying to lose body fat!) 

You could also swap out the meat, whether it be beef , pork or turkey mince in a spaghetti bolognese or chilli and replace it with extra vegetables 

3- This last one is probably the WINNER when it comes to kids and getting them to eat more Veg!

Use up any veg you have left in the fridge or pantry or cook it up and blend with a simple tomato passata. You can use it for pizza sauce or a base for bolognese. You can also use it for a quick and simple pasta dish. They won’t even know its there trust me! ( Tried and tested on my eldest who won’t , now she’s older, eat veg!! )

I hope these simple tips help you to include more vegetables into your daily diet