Eat even more vegetables
Everybody knows that vegetables are healthy. But what can we do, when we don’t fancy the carrot or the cucumber, or when we don’t know what we are supposed to do with a zucchini?
Here are some ideas to address these problems, and we will see, that getting our “5 A DAY” is easy!
1. Raw or steamed, cooked or fried
Raw vegetables contain most of the valuable nutriments, and they are rich in vitamins and minerals. They can be put in salads, sandwiches, creams or a piece of cucumber as a snack, and we already done something for our health. We can prepare them as a side dish on a low heat, using a small amount of fat (because of fat soluble vitamins), or if we don’t like the taste of vegetables that much, they can be mixed in rice, millet, buckwheat porridge or in couscous. Similarly to meat dishes we can prepare vegetable hash (from savoy cabbage, mushroom or chickpea), pasta or stuffed oven baked meals. Almost all of the meat recipes have their vegetable counterparts, but even just putting more vegetables next to the meat can be a great improvement .
2. Looks are very important
When it comes to the meal, table setting and visual looks of the food is very important. Be creative and cut, chop, play with colours so that the meals prepared will be more enjoyable to eat. This can be especially effective for children and choosy adults.
(Figure: creative meals)
3. Simple and difficult tastes
To each of his own, but as a matter of fact, there are very pleasant vegetables (like the tomato or the cucumber) and there are the ones which are harder to love. Spinach, pumpkin or Brussels sprout are on the side of divisive vegetables, many people don’t like them. Let’s do trial and error, learn our taste, test ourselves and learn what we like and which are the foods what we can’t eat in any form.
4. A vegetable has many facets
It can be added to the previous point that a vegetable can have several tastes. Some likes carrot cooked in a soup, but doesn’t like it eating raw, or sorrel can have fine sour taste as raw, but can be very different cooked in a sauce. Cabbage and kohlrabi are typically good to eat raw, their crisp, fresh taste can be easily liked, however as a cooked meal they might not going to be our favourite.
5. Sweets from vegetables
There are vegetables which can be used as sweets. Carrot is a good example, which can be eaten raw with honey, mixed with lemon it is a real vitamin bomb or bake it in a cake and a very special and healthy pie can be made from it. Another example is the pumpkin which is a real threat when baked, and the red beet which can be put in a chocolate cake as well.
According to the recommendations made by the WHO the ideal daily consumption is at least 400 grams of vegetable and fruit (250g vegetable, 150g fruit). In Hungary the daily vegetable consumption per capita (2007 survey) is around 117 grams, which places the country in the middle of the list of EU member countries.