Sneaking Healthful Vegetables in Your Family’s Meals

You have been hearing it since you were a little kid – eat your vegetables; they are an important part of your health nutrition. But have you ever wondered what is so great about vegetables? Or, how you can fit them easily into a regularly health nutrition diet for you and your family? Read on for a brief overview of some of the more healthful vegetables and what is so good about them, as well as some tricks for getting your family – even your toddlers – to eat their veggies.

Highlights of Healthful Vegetables

Some vegetables are alright for human’s, but really have few nutrients and do not add significantly to our health nutrition. Unfortunately, these veggies include some favorites, including lettuce, corn and potatoes. It is important that we all learn to include more healthful vegetables into our daily health nutrition diets. One way to do this is to strive for color when choosing vegetables.

Among the most healthful vegetables are dark, leafy greens like broccoli, spinach and asparagus. These dark green veggies are high in numerous vitamins, including antioxidants, which help slow aging in our bodies. Dark red vegetables like beats and eggplant are also high in antioxidants and other nutrients. Carrots have beta-carotene, which is great for eye sight. Cauliflower is high in potassium, as are other white veggies. Bell peppers of all colors, as well as tomatoes, are high in vitamin C, potassium and lycopene – a cancer fighting antioxidant. Many vegetables – whole veggies, not just the juice – offer an excellent source of fiber, including pumpkin.

Sneaking Vegetables into Your Family’s Meal Plans

Unfortunately, vegetables are not always the most loved of foods. Particularly when it comes to children, most would choose a bowl of potato chips over carrots sticks, any day of the week. There are, however, some tricks for getting even the pickiest of eaters to embrace the health nutrition of vegetables.

First, offer veggies with an accompanying dip: try low fat ranch dressing with carrots, peanut butter with celery and yogurt with cucumber slices. Second, sneak vegetables into regular meals in a way that no one will even notice. Try adding grated carrots to a peanut butter sandwich. Another trick, stir some canned pumpkin into your toddlers strawberry flavored milk before bed and they will not even notice. Even store bought fruit juices now come in flavors that include carrot and other vegetable juice, amping up the health nutrition of solo fruit juice. Also, try adding bits of steamed, chopped veggies to sloppy joe’s or hamburger patties, or even pureed carrots or canned pumpkin to pancake batter, muffins and more!

With a little creativity, you can use vegetables to sneak more health nutrition into every meal that your family eats.