During your typical week, it’s shockingly easy not to eat as many vegetables as you should. You may get fast food one night and only have a tiny lettuce leaf on a burger. The next night, you might eat spaghetti but not catch a whiff of anything green. In a sugar- and carb-hungry world, vegetables live on the margins unless you intentionally bring them into your diet. Here are three creative ways to eat more vegetables and overcome this obstacle.
Plant a Hydroponic Garden
Our initial strategy deals with where you get your veggies. Starting a hydroponic garden is one solid way to start experimenting with veggies you never gave a chance before. Hydroponic gardens are indoor-only, which means there’s never really an off-season during which you can’t grow greens.
There’s a wealth of tips out there on setting up your first hydroponic garden, but knowing how they work first is helpful. Rather than using the long-held practice of growing plants in soil, hydroponics gets rid of the soil and provides plant roots with a nutrient-rich water solution instead. The irrigation system that moves this water solution then recycles the water so that there’s little waste. This gardening method is perfect for greenhouses and tight homebound spaces, making it a great means of upping your veggie intake.
Food Preparation
Our next two creative ways to eat more vegetables involve food preparation.
Make Cauliflower Pizza Crust
Becoming more popular by the month, cauliflower is a vegetable many cooks use to replace less healthy ingredients. Cauliflower’s calling cards include its high water, fiber, and antioxidant contents, making it a smart substitute for carb-loaded pizza crust. Baking pizza with a cauliflower crust doesn’t give you license to then go crazy with toppings, but it does even out a potentially nutrient-poor meal.
Add Some to Your Smoothies
If cauliflower-crusted pizza is a touch too complicated, you can always throw vegetables in a smoothie to make the most of it. A smoothie is an ideal medium because it hides the characteristic veggie taste you learned to hate when you were little. Spinach and kale are simple staples. Assuming your blender can handle them, baby carrots give you another batch of good nutrients.