Day 10: Include vegetables in every meal
Posted by kathryn in Vegetables
Today’s task in the 31 Days to a Better Diet is centred around getting you to eat more vegetables.
If you’re following this group of posts, they’re marked by the picture on the left.
I regularly talk to clients about eating at least five serves of vegetables each day. It’s something they often struggle with and the most frequent complaint is they have no idea how to fit that many in.
While I have some clients who eat only small amounts of protein, and others who eschew grains or dairy, vegetables are the one group I won’t negotiate on. The hard, but simple truth is, if you’re not eating at least five serves a day, then you’re not healthy.
Spreading the vegetables out
One of the central problems is many clients view vegetables as evening meal material only. And even I’ll admit a full five serves at night, is a lot of veg.
Instead I always recommend spreading the five serves out. Putting a bit of veg in different meals and snacks. Which makes it much easier to achieve the target.
Today’s task
So my challenge to you today in 31 Days to a Better Diet is to include vegetables in every meal and snack you consume. It doesn’t have to be a lot and don’t worry too much about variety. But find ways to increase your vegetable intake.
Spooked out by this idea and not sure what to do? Well here are my suggestions:
Veggies for breakfast
- A trick I’ve learnt from Cassie at Veggie Meal Plans is to grate carrot onto muesli. Might sound strange, but the sweetness of the carrot blends beautifully.
- One of my regular breakfasts is hummous on toast, topped with cucumber and some leaves.
- Make a spinach, mushroom and tomato omelette, or stir some chopped tomato and basil through your scrambled eggs.
Veggies for lunch
- Make a sandwich and pile on the salads. Don’t limit yourself to lettuce and tomato, add in carrot, alfalfa sprouts, beetroot, red onion, baby spinach, etc.
- Buy a takeaway lunch and ask for extra vegetables. Most places will do this. Whether it’s noodles, pasta, a kebab or burger, you can ask them to add salad or extra vegetables to the mix.
- Buy some crackers, a tin of tuna, a tub of cherry tomatoes and a small cucumber and use these for lunch
Veggies for dinner
- Make some fritters with zucchini, sweet potato or carrots.
- If you’re having pasta then cook a smaller amount and broccoli florets to the water half way through. Serve this with a tomato based sauce.
- Add a bag of frozen mixed vegetables to a stir fry.
Veggies for snacks
- Have a couple of wholegrain crackers with cottage cheese and tomato slices
- Toss together a handful of chickpeas, half a cucumber and some cherry tomatoes and dress with olive oil and lemon juice
- Have a cup of vegetable soup.
If you do this, then you can’t help but get the minimum of five serves.
Try to fit vegetables in all your meals today and tell us how many serves you had?
Berries photograph by G & A Scholiers and vegetables photograph by iCampbell.
10 August, 2008
Comments
This is such an important one Kathryn! If you’re going to get in a decent amount of vegetables into your day you just have to start incorporating them into every meal (or both main meals at minimum).
If I can’t squeeze a good serving of vegetables into my lunchtime sandwich then I make sure that I take a bundle of carrot, pepper and/or cucumber sticks on the side. This has the added bonus of making me feel like I have had a more substantial lunch!
I started keeping a food diary yesterday – been meaning to for so long and your post on keeping a diary of food intake gave me the kick I needed to start it. When I looked at what I ate yesterday, all written down, I was astonished to realise I had eaten NO VEGGIES and NO FRUIT all day – and I actually thought I ate pretty healthily. Am definitely inspired by today’s post on getting 5 serves of vegetables during the day and watch the improvements come apparent in my food diary – thank you kathryn!
Another two delicious breakfast ideas with vegetables -
Wholegrain toast spread with Vegemite and avocado ( sliced cherry or grape tomatoes and a squeeze of lime juice can be added)
Toasted Turkish bread, topped with slices of tomato and a poached egg, then sprinkled with good quality balsamic vinegar (My favourite Saturday morning breakfast – yum!)
mmmm veggies. hummus + cucumber on toast is a favourite breakky of mine too, Kathryn! especially with a little bit of black pepper.
just out of curiosity, what percentage of a serve of veggies do you think that would count for? say, 1 tablespoon of hummus and 6 slices of cucumber? is that too hard to work out?
I did this task yesterday. I had some apple muffins defrosted, so I made a breakfast plate with one muffin, half a cucumber & a stick of celery sliced, and a few blobs of hummous.
Then mid morning I had an orange and a tomato – just ate them whole.
Lunch was a picnic before going bushwalking. We had bread, dips & cheese. But I also made a big salad with lettuce, spinach, carrot, celery, edamame beans and this sesame crusted tofu.
In the evening we had a spinach & onion omelette with steamed cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.
Emma: I find this is a common realisation from food diaries. You think you’re eating well, but it’s only when it’s written down that you know what’s going on.
Lindsey: a serving of vegetables is 75g, so the best way to check is to weigh your ingredients next time. Depending on the hummous you use, it’s generally about 70 – 80 percent chickpea. When doing this kind of breakfast I tend to use half a small cucumber (which is about 50g) and a good handful of leaves – so the ratio of vegetables to bread is quite high.
But simply by getting a few vegetables in each meal, you will almost certainly be doing the five minumum serves.
Yesterday;
breakfast: egg, cheese and tomato roll with a pickle chaser
lunch: salmon avocado/cucumber sushi roll, tuna and salad rice paper rolls with alfafa sprouts, cuke and capsicum and 1 evil prawn tempura oops.
dinner: teriyaki pot roast with carrots, broad beans and peas with mash potatoes followed by a fruit crumble with yoghurt
I saute or steam any veggies around to go with my egg and ww toast. Often it might be a chopped up onion and some brocolli, or some pepper and greens, or beets and carrots, etc. Getting 2-5 veggies in on breakfast makes it alot easier to get the required amount .
Alexandra – I thought I was doing well! Great to have such a variety of vegies at breakfast. Well done.
And Sue – love the idea of a “pickle chaser”. I’m a big pickled onion fan, eat them from the jar. And they go perfectly with cheese and tomato.
This is a wonderful challenge, thank you.
yesterday
breakfast – cantaloup with cottage cheese, soy milk
lunch – green bean/roasted red pepper/quinoa salad with lime cilantro dressing, falafel, tomato slices, carrot-orange juice
dinner – stir fry rice with red pepper, broccoli, tofu, carrots, ginger peanut sauce, carrot-orange juice
I finally got around to this one, which is a great challenge, but the breakfast part took me a while to get my head around.
Yesterday I had carrot in my porridge for breakfast; carrot, rocket and parsley on my wrap for lunch; a tomato for a snack; and a big helping of ratatouille with dinner. I was going to go for another veggie when I don’t usually eat them – rhubarb for dessert counts, right? – but was too full.
Only trouble with eating 8+ serves of veg was that I didn’t actually have room for any dairy! Everything in moderation I suppose :)
Gwyneth, how was the carrot in your porridge? It works well on muesli, but I haven’t tried it on the cooked oats.
Tastes ok, especially with the half an apple I grated in as well, but I’m not really a fan of the texture. I could have cooked it a bit more for a mushier texture which might have helped, but I was too impatient. Had sultanas instead today.
I am glad that you liked the sesame crusted tofu Kathryn, thanks for the link. I have just posted a tofu and vegetable breakfast inspired by this post.
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