Easy tips to eat more salads and vegetables each day

Hands down the one thing I notice with most clients is that they aren’t eating enough vegetables and salads per day. Healthy eating involves not just calories, but also eating a wide range of vitamins, good amounts of fibre, and not too much added sugar, unhealthy fats, or processed foods.

This is very common in western society where our meals are high in animal protein, total or saturated fats and simple carbohydrates (sugars). We’re not great at healthy eating! Vegetables are essential for fibre, they help improve our gut health, are a fantastic source of all the important vitamins and minerals we need, and help fight disease.

Wait .. eating veggies really helps lower disease? 

Many studies support the findings that people who eat more vegetables per day have a lower risk of disease such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. They are also less likely to suffer from being overweight or obese. Healthy eating has it’s benefits!

What’s the daily goal? 

The goal for healthy eating is to try and eat vegetables with at least 2 meals per day.

You should fill half your plate with vegetables and salads, ¼ protein (a closed fist) and ¼ healthy wholegrains such as quinoa, brown rice, buckwheat (or just more vegetables). Try and avoid filling half your plate (or more) with simple carbs such as white pasta and rice, and instead add a few veggies or salad in their place and keep the carbs to a few spoonfuls. Start following these healthy eating tips and your body will thank you for it.

Here are the tips 

• Try and avoid potato (or sweet potato) as your normal go-to vegetable choices. Whilst they contain vitamins they also contain very simple starchy carbs which are just broken down to simple sugar and not a lot of fibre. They’re fine in rotation with all your othervegetable, just not all the time.
• Always eat a very large variety of vegetable, preferably with the season, and introduce as much colour as possible in every serving. The colourful vegetables are full of antioxidants which will help fight free radicals in your body which can cause inflammation and disease.
• Try eating parsnips, carrots, beets, corn, red capsicum, red cabbage, cauliflower, beans, green leafy vegetable such as spinach, kale, chinese vegetable and broccoli or broccolini. They all contain great amounts of fibre AND vitamins.
• Try adding spinach and capsicum to breakfast, such as with eggs, or corn and vegetable fritters.
• Steam your vegetable, don’t boil them, to reduce the amount of water soluble vitamins being lost in the water. Alternatively, you can boil the vegetable and use the water as a stock or soup, or in a risotto, to use the vitamin enriched water.
• If taste is a problem, try grilling your vegetable for improved taste. Healthy eating doesn’t have to be boring! Drizzle with oil and a little salt first. Place the green vegetable such as broccolini, broccoli and spinach and red capsicum under the grill for just a few minutes at the end as they don’t need much time. Kids LOVE serving themselves off a platter of grilled vegetables.

What about salads?

• Always add a salad to your meals. Even if it’s just a leafy green salad with pomegranate seeds, pumpkin seeds (zinc) or tomato, and a drizzle of oil.
• Avoid store bought dressings, they’re often full of bad fat and preservatives. Eating a large part of your diet from bottles or jars is not the way to achieve healthy eating.
• Try and add some colour to your salads. Chopped strawberries are beautiful in salads, so are oranges!
• Sprinkle some seeds or nuts, or probiotic rich feta cheese, this good fat helps your body to absorb the vitamins in your salad and veg.
• No time for prep? Doesn’t mean you can’t be eating healthy. There are fantastic pre-packaged salads at all the major supermarket chains which have kale, capsicum, cabbage etc pre shredded. Always discard the dressings included.
• Dress them up as a meal. Healthy eating can be quick. You can add tinned tuna or salmon, left over chicken from dinner, serve them with curries, add them to Bolognese, or add them to a meal alongside some protein and carbs as a side salad.

So how do we encourage the kids? 

• Kids won’t eat vegetables and salad unless it becomes the norm. that means rolling them out at every dinner to start with– seriously you need to persevere. You may go 10 days without a nibble, that’s completely normal. You need to teach them about healthy eating.
• The person they’re going to watch most is you! Make sure you lead by example and load up your plate with vegetables and salad, never talk badly about them.
• Try and prompt the kids to try just a few leaves at first. Add a piece of carrot (raw is always favoured for kids). Add half a cherry tomato. Really and truly it’s that small. A few peas and corn. No more. Healthy eating takes time.
• Even if they go untouched, keep rolling them out.
• Encourage just a little bite. Within weeks they’ll be nibbling away more and more.
• Never ever bribe them with dessert for eating veg (kids can get mighty suspicious .. veg and salads must be REALLY bad to be bribed to eat them.
• Serve some chopped up carrots, capsicum and cherry tomato whilst you’re cooking dinner. A hungry kid will eat. call them for dinner early and allow them to nibble away without saying anything
• Parsnip fries are a big hit with kids. Try them, much better for them than potato.
• On that topic – remove potato from the veg quote for both yourself and the kids. They are considered a starch (like a simple carb), not a veg.
• Encourage the kids to select the veg they want to eat. Allow them to help you chop them. Much more likely for success this way ! And it shows them that healthy eating can be fun for them too, not just a chore.