Ways to get more vegetables into your diet
After the holiday season passes we are left with dealing from the effects of all the rich desserts, heavy dishes and sugary beverages. Many experience weight gain, feel sluggish and even depression. Overloading on carbohydrates during the holidays is a major contributor to these symptoms. The good news is, once you make some changes by reintroducing healthy foods back into your diet, things will turn around. There are a lot of clever ways to get more vegetables into not only your diet but into your family's diet as well. Since many children are picky eaters, it can be hard but it is important they get enough vitamins and minerals everyday, since they are growing faster now in their youth than they will ever grow again.
Ideas for getting vegetables into the diet
Whether it's soups, stews, or sauces it is easy to add several handfuls of healthy organically grown fresh green leafy vegetables. The green leafy vegetables are hardly noticeable and once cooked into soup or sauce will go unnoticed by your child. Baby spinach is ideal for this, make sure you add at least one cup per person, yes I know that sounds like a lot but spinach reduces a lot once cooked and you'll see very little of it in the finished dish. However, it will be there and you can increase the amount in time. Start off with mild tasting greens like Bok choy, and Leeks and make sure to add variety, the sooner your children get used to these new foods the quicker they will accept them as part of their diet. Spaghetti squash is a vegetable that can be a fun addition to the diet, and certainly interesting to children to eat. The key is to present it to them just as you would regular pasta, by adding pasta sauce to it and serving it on top or mixed with the stands of the squash. Here's a few recipes you may want to try:
How to make Bok Choy soup
How to make Spaghetti squash with cheese
Tools that can help
There are several wonderful items you can use to get more vegetables into your diet. Of those tools there are a few that stand out and can be fun to use for not only soups, stews, etc but desserts, beverages and sauces. The Ninja Master Prep is easy to use, is powerful enough to pulverize any vegetable to add to smoothies, soups, etc. The Magic Bullet is also a handy tool for clever ways to get more vegetables into your diet, because the set offers a juice extractor that will enable you to mix in things like broccoli and spinach with fruits to make tasty drinks and smoothies.
For more healthy recipe ideas, check out The Low Carb Kitchen.
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