25 Ways To Trick Yourself Into Eating More Vegetables

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Do you want to add more veggies to your recipes, but don't know the first place to start? Here are 25 ways to trick yourself into eating more vegetables. There are lots of dietary and lifestyle choices that you can make in order to live a healthier life - one of which is adding more vegetables to your diet. According to the food guide of the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, adults should be getting between three to five servings of vegetables per day, and two to three servings of fruit each day. That's basically two-and-a-half to three cups of vegetables per day. Other sources say you should eat even more of this, to obtain the maximum health benefits of daily vegetable consumption. Although many of us know that vegetables are good for us, and that we should eat more on a day-to-day basis, it can be very difficult to add this many vegetables to your diet every single day. That's why it can be very helpful to know some healthy cooking hacks that can help add healthy vegetables to recipes without even realizing it.

First of all, when speaking of the USDA's recommended daily vegetable consumption of up to three cups a day, you might be wondering what, exactly, constitutes a vegetable and what can be included in a cup? According to the USDA's food guide, vegetable content includes a hundred percent vegetable juice, as well as raw veggies, cooked veggies, frozen veggies, dehydrated veggies, and canned veggies. Vegetables are also grouped into five different categories according to their nutrient content, including red and orange vegetables, dark green vegetables, vegetables with a high starch content, and other vegetables. Basically, when it comes to your daily three cups of vegetables, these servings can include a full cup of vegetable juice, raw vegetables, or cooked vegetables. When speaking of leafy vegetables, like kale, Romaine lettuce, or spinach, one cup actually equals two cups � because these greens aren't as dense as the other vegetables. When you stop to consider it, that's a whole lot of vegetables. But there's no need to feel overwhelmed about it. New dietary habits take a while to implement, and you can easily add just a few more veggies each day to meet this USDA quota.

One idea of how you can sneak more vegetables into your daily meals is to use vegetable substitutes in some of your favourite meat dishes � for example, why not try a buffalo cauliflower chicken taco recipe instead of a buffalo chicken one? Cauliflower is an incredibly versatile vegetable that easily takes on the flavour of anything and everything you marinate it in, so with this delicious buffalo chicken marinate sauce, the cauliflower tastes exactly like buffalo chicken, perhaps even better. As far as cauliflower nutrition goes, just a half a cup of cooked cauliflower is very high in dietary fiber, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6, and vitamin C. It's also high in manganese, phosphorus, potassium, riboflavin, and thiamin � so you can eat your veggies in this recipe, and get your bonus nutrients, too.

This excellent list of 25 ways to trick yourself into eating more vegetables comes from the �Buzzfeed Life� website, where you can check out a number of other healthy recipe ideas, healthy dinner ideas, healthy snack ideas, and vegetarian recipes in their food section to help live a healthier lifestyle. You'll also find the latest news feeds on more delicious recipes, DIY project ideas, and life hacks to help make your life easier.*

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