It is a well-known fact that most people, especially Americans, avoid eating vegetables. Actually, everybody knows that vegetables are ought to be healthy. It’s just the mental barrier that stops us from eating more of them. It feels like a Herculean task when you finally eat a lot of veggies in a day. The ratio of green, leafy veggies in our daily diet is horribly low. According to an estimation, 91% Americans don’t meet vegetable consumption recommendations. Today I’ll tell you how you’re going to stir up a vegetable revolution in your life.
It’s true that some vegetables are not recommended, like broccoli before a workout session. However, in general – there’s a plethora of health benefits you’re going to enjoy from daily consumption of vegetables. And that includes a longer life. First I’ll explain the benefits of veggies against meat, their direct benefits, and things that make them so good. We’ll then talk of modifying our habits to eat more veggies. Finally, I’ll give some pointers about how you can eat vegetables in different interesting ways throughout your day. So read on!
-
Meat against vegetables
Let’s make it short and simple. People who eat vegetables live longer than those who consume meat a lot because of lower exposure to high blood pressure. This is well articulated all over the world. According to a recent study by JAMA, “vegetarian diets are associated with reduced death rates in a study of more than 70,000 Seventh-day Adventists”.
-
Direct health benefits: high fibers and low calories
Vegetables are nature’s storehouse of health benefits. Virtually all human bodies are engineered towards maximizing productivity by consuming more vitamins and minerals and that’s exactly what vegetables do.
-
Fibers.
Veggies are supercharged with healthy fibers. Fibers fill you up and give a sense of satiety. So you eat less but feel full. This is the first pointer you get when controlling your weight and veggies automatically do this for you.
-
Low calories.
By replacing about 50% of your daily intake with vegetables, you’re going to cut down massively on your calorie intake because of the low calorie composition of vegetables.
-
What makes vegetables so good?
- You can eat veggies in any form – fresh, raw, soup, dried, or canned. You’ll get 100% benefits nevertheless. This isn’t true with other foods like fruits or fish.
- Better than everything else, veggies help reduce the risk of various threatening diseases like high blood pressure and heart disease. Arguably also some types of cancer.
- There are all sorts of vegetables which makes your plate look colorful and interesting. You can never try all the veggies so there’s always something to look out for.
-
Say yes to vegetables and say no to junk food!
- First of all, I would recommend that you teach your children to not avoid vegetables. If they start consuming enough vegetables, you can be pretty sure that they’ll keep their habit up in later stages of life.
- Replace snacks and junk food from conference tables, offices, drawing rooms, and serve the guests with a mix of healthy and colorful fruits and vegetables.
- Include vegetables as a part of your daily food intake. Work gatherings like meetings could be spiced up by introducing vegetables there.
- Know the benefits. That’s what will drive your interest for eating more vegetables. Remember the benefits of vegetables. Every time you take a step towards increasing your vegetable consumption, you can be proud of yourself.
-
But, how to eat vegetables!
Vegetables are not as tasty as snacks. Neither as easy to pop in as fruits. This is probably the first reason why people eat so less veggies. Let’s look at some ways to make veggie consumption fun and easy.
The Nerd Fitness way:
This is the easiest and most widely used way of eating vegetables, compiled at a single place by the website Nerd Fitness in an article “Vegetable Haters: How to Start Eating Vegetables”.
Take your pick of vegetable: bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, etc. Cut them up literally however you want, drizzle/toss them in olive oil, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, and put them on a foil lined pan in the oven at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) for 20-30 minutes.
Snack your vegetable way:
Chop vegetables like tomatoes and onions and shove them in your sandwich. Probably you already do that. What about doubling the amount? You can choose to add veggies in multiple other breakfast solutions like noodles, omelets, pizzas, breads, soups, pasta, and so on.
Salads:
Same as the above step, add these tasty veggies in your fruit salad. Or make a vegetable salad. Try adding such salads in your homemade delicacies. Salads, in fact, are the most effective way of reaching the daily veggie recommendation because of the large quantity you would be consuming.
Dedicated recipes:
There are innumerable ways of making vegetable-heavy dishes. My best selection is the article on BuzzFeed: 29 Ways to Eat Vegetables that are Actually Delicious. In fact, I cook a lot of dishes from this platter when bored. This is a really great resource that includes recipes like Avocado Superfood Breakfast Toast and Chicken and Cabbage Postickers.
Related Post: Best Waist Cinchers 2019
Conclusion
Vegetables are exceptionally healthy. And to get rid of that mental barrier that stops you from thinking of veggies as an easy food, you need to master the art of veggie eating. Yes! The art of veggie eating. This is your vegetable revolution – to end that barrier.
Don’t be afraid to experiment your part in this whole vegetable eating advice. They’re appealing, colorful, tasty, and healthy. And truth be told, you’re probably eating extremely less veggies as compared to how much you should.
So, off to those damn veggies now!