Eating fruits and vegetables is important, but it can be a challenge to get enough of them into your daily diet. Most people prefer to snack on convenient and junk food, rather than healthy fruits and vegetables. To make sure your family gets enough of these nutritious foods, you need to be creative. Here are ten easy ways to sneak fruits and vegetables into your family’s diet.
Start the day with a breakfast smoothie. Blend low-fat yogurt, ice, and some fruits in a blender. Add a scoop of protein powder for good measure. You can also add some frozen yogurt or ice cream to make it more appealing to your kids.
Dried fruit makes an excellent snack any time of the day. Add small cartons of raisins to your child’s lunch box, pack some yogurt-covered raisins in your husband’s briefcase, and keep some trail mix handy for snacking.
Add some fruits and vegetables to your family’s sandwiches. You can add some banana, sliced apples, or strawberry slices to a peanut butter sandwich. Top a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and anything else they will eat. You can even make a sub shop style vegetable sandwich by combining several different vegetables with some mayonnaise and cheese on bread.
Have a salad bar at dinner. Set out a variety of chopped vegetables, cheese, and croutons, as well as several choices of salad dressing along with the lettuce and let everybody create their own perfect salad.
Let them drink their fruits and vegetables. Keep an assortment of fruit and vegetable juices in the fridge and encourage everyone to drink them as a snack. You could start “family cocktail hour” by pouring everybody a glass of his or her favorite juice over ice.
Try this for dessert. Put a small scoop of ice cream or frozen yogurt in a bowl and top it with lots of fresh or frozen fruit.
Offer fruits and vegetables as snacks. You can cut apples into slices and top them with peanut butter or cheese. Cube cheese and serve with grapes. Cut up some fresh veggies and serve them with ranch dip. And of course, there’s ants on a log. Spread some cream cheese or peanut butter on the inside of a stick of celery and sprinkle raisins on it (wow, fruit and vegetable in one snack).
Try some new fruits and vegetables. Pick something exotic to get your family’s curiosity. You could try artichokes, plantains, papaya, mango, star fruit, or anything else you can find in the produce department of your local store.
Make a pot of vegetable soup or a stew that’s heavy on veggies and easy on the meat. Both of these make some great comfort food when the weather gets cold.
Start “My Veggie Day”. Each family member gets to pick a vegetable one day of the week. They qualify to pick a vegetable as long as they tried each vegetable the week before, otherwise they lose a turn, and Mom gets to pick.
Incorporate a few of these ideas into your family’s daily diet, and they will be eating more fruits and vegetables in no time. Additionally, make sure to always have plenty of fresh fruits and veggies available and ready to snack on to keep everyone healthy and happy.
