Family veggie challenge-need ideas

[sea_mommy]

I am working on changing my family's eating habits. My first goal is increasing how many veggies we eat (we have no problem with eating fruits). I see that the recommended amount for most people in our family is between 3-5 a day. My kids will happily snack on carrots and sweet red peppers but, honestly, I'm not sure how to increase from about 2 a day to 5. That means we'd need to have veggies at each meal and for 2 snacks. Right now we usually have a veggie snack and for dinner. Any ideas on ways I could increase the amount?

[Arctic Bunny]

Our Canadian Food Guide suggests 5-10 servings of fruits and vegetables. Keep in mind, it's 5-10 servings, and here are some examples of what constitutes a serving:

 

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/canada-food-guide/choosing-foods/vegetables-fruit/what-food-guide-serving-vegetables-fruit.html

 

So tonight, I made chicken pot pie with at least one serving per person each of mushrooms, carrots, and celery, So there was three each. And the food guide counts potato, which I don't, so four. Add a salad and that might be an extra two?

 

Making muffins with pumpkin, pineapple, unsweetened applesauce.... but you said fruits weren't a problem.

 

Stirfrys, casseroles, etc. I use add pumpkin pretty much whenever I make something with tomato sauce...

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I agree, it's servings, not variety, although variety is of course good.  

 

My kids generally eat a fruit serving with breakfast, 2 servings (either two veg or one each veg/fruit) at lunch, fruit or veg for snack, and 2 veg at dinner.  Kid servings are not huge, so keep that in mind.

 

One way to increase veggies at dinner is to make two different kinds.  Several times a week, we have sweet potatoes, usually cut in cubes and roasted, plus a green veg or salad.  Another good side veg is roast cauliflower plus some other green veggie or salad.  

 

We also do a salad bar night, that my kids love- I just put out lots of chopped veggies of different sorts and a big bowl of greens plus leftover grilled chicken breast chopped up.  Kids assemble how they like and add homemade balsamic dressing.  

 

Ina Garten has a salmon cake recipe that is just wonderful, and the cakes are actually mostly veggies.  So I serve those along with oven fries and a green salad.  Soups and stews are another great way to get in vegetables.  I'm not a huge fan of smoothies because of the sugar load, but if you do smoothies, spinach is basically totally undetectable as an ingredient in a fruit smoothie, so you can pile quite a bit in.  

 

Any time where your instinct is to reach for a bread product or another flour-based item, sub in a starchy veg and keep the green veg too.  

 

I also try to be reasonable with things.  On pizza night, I usually don't make any veggies.  It's just pizza.  :-)  My kids love vegetables though, so I'm lucky in that I'm not fighting an uphill battle.  

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Some other ideas of easy veggies:

 

beets:  not sure if it's available in the US, but I buy them already cooked and cubed and just add some olive oil and a vinegar to make a quick salad.  If you can only get raw, they are good just grated and tossed with a vinaigrette 

carrot salad:  carrots, raisins or apple chunks, bit of mayo, vinegar, and dash of sweetener

cole slaw:  very similar to how I make carrot salad.  Often, I'll add mango or pineapple chunks

a good dip can make veggies way more fun.  We are addicted to the French onion dip form the William-Sonoma recipe.

Broccoli salad:  blanched broccoli, bacon, red onion, raisins, cashews, and some kind of creamy sweet dressing.  

Roast broccoli or cauliflower:  sooooo much better than steamed

Quick green salads:  I routinely do greens/sliced cucumbers/red onions/drained can of corn/balsamic  or greens/red onions/apple/sunflower seeds/balsamic

grilled peppers or zucchinis

raw veggie sticks

butternut squash risotto (a staple in our house during winter)

peas, green beans, mixed veggies from freezer section

stir fry with in-season veggies.  

spring risotto with asparagus, green onion, peas

 

Just some ideas!

 

[Moonhawk]

Our veggie eating, usually daily:

morning snack of usually celery and peanut butter

lunch has carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes  and cucumber on side. sometimes salad.

dinner has salad and a side veg like green beans

 

Main problem place is breakfast for me. If we have eggs I saute onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms. If we don't have eggs, I usually include a few more celery sticks and carrot sticks later in the day. Also, most of my dinner recipes have veggies in the main dish, so that helps a bit, too. 

 

eta: oh, my kids also picked up a bad habit from DH, where they see me cutting veggies for snack or salad and want to take some direct from the cutting board. I pretend grumble but usually get more into them this way. It's like the "rebellion" of not waiting until it's served makes it taste better? idk, lol, whatever works. 

Edited July 20, 2017 by Moonhawk

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Our veggie eating, usually daily:

morning snack of usually celery and peanut butter

lunch has carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes  and cucumber on side. sometimes salad.

dinner has salad and a side veg like green beans

 

Main problem place is breakfast for me. If we have eggs I saute onions, bell peppers, and mushrooms. If we don't have eggs, I usually include a few more celery sticks and carrot sticks later in the day. Also, most of my dinner recipes have veggies in the main dish, so that helps a bit, too. 

 

eta: oh, my kids also picked up a bad habit from DH, where they see me cutting veggies for snack or salad and want to take some direct from the cutting board. I pretend grumble but usually get more into them this way. It's like the "rebellion" of not waiting until it's served makes it taste better? idk, lol, whatever works. 

 

We also have the cutting board phenomenon!  :-)  

 

I routinely serve the lunch crudités while I'm still putting together the rest of the lunch.  That means they are at their hungriest when the veggies are set out.  They always disappear that way.  

[fralala]

I am working on changing my family's eating habits. My first goal is increasing how many veggies we eat (we have no problem with eating fruits). I see that the recommended amount for most people in our family is between 3-5 a day. My kids will happily snack on carrots and sweet red peppers but, honestly, I'm not sure how to increase from about 2 a day to 5. That means we'd need to have veggies at each meal and for 2 snacks. Right now we usually have a veggie snack and for dinner. Any ideas on ways I could increase the amount?

 

Well, I'm not going to insist you serve veggies for breakfast (although omelets are great for that, and we like cherry tomatoes and radishes too), but I would challenge you to serve a veggie with lunch since it sounds like you're not already. Raw carrots and peppers are just fine-- get carrots and peppers of different colors for variety. Cherry tomatoes? Cucumbers? Celery? Broccoli? Dilly beans? Avocados? To begin with, I would just try to put something there, not necessarily fret about it being one of the top sources of vitamins and minerals. Soup is also a really easy way to get multiple kinds and servings of veggies in at one meal.

 

If the big problem is getting your kids to eat the veggies you provide, I've found (from order of least intensive to most intensive) letting them help pick out recipes from a cookbook with lots of pictures, letting them each pick out any vegetable they want! from the grocery store/farmer's market, letting them help cook, and letting them plant their own small garden (even if it's just a windowsill herb garden or mini sprout garden) to be good motivators.

 

I have one very, very picky eater. The other kids are fine with whatever salads, roasted veggies, and other vegetable-rich preparations I put in front of them. The picky eater will (grudgingly) eat most veggies raw but turns up her nose at anything cooked, spiced, covered with dressing, or otherwise made absolutely scrumptious.

[MamaBearTeacher]

Add peas or green beans to rice when cooking. Or add as a side.

 

Add zucchini or extra tomatoes to tomato sauces.

 

Add Brussels sprouts to roasted chicken. they caramelize a bit and taste great.

 

Chop up zucchini, bake with some olive oil and add Parmesan.

 

Cucumber slices with breakfast and lunch.

[Zinnia]

My kids are not big on veggies, but they like salad. They also like dippable stuff with hummus or ranch.

 

I add tomatoes to a lot of stuff (we eat spaghetti pretty saucy, gumbo, skillet rice meals, Salisbury steak gravy, etc). My kids like the meal type of saucy, stew thing over rice. I can put tomatoes and spinach in a lot of those.

 

To get away with spinach in food, I started adding dried Italian seasoning to things like stuffed shells. The next time, I added dried parsley, letting everyone see and taste it. Then I moved towards spinach. "Oh, I just went heavy on the parsley." Now they eat that pretty willingly. lol

[RoundAbout]

-Try serving two or three vegetables with each meal. For instance you could do a  mixture of broccoli and cauliflower or serve one hot vegetable and one cold salad/veggie plate. Serve more veggies and less main course.

 

-Zoodles! We regularly eat zucchini noodles as a side dish or in place of pasta. My DS loves using the Zoodler so its easy work for me. If you have more than one kid buy several and have a contest on who can make the longest zoodles. Yellow squash also works great for turning into noodles. If you have an Instant Pot spaghetti squash cooks in about 8-12 minutes and also make a nice pasta substitute. 

 

-Salad topping. If your kids eat salad its easy to pile on a variety of veggies like shredded carrots, radishes, cabbage, mushrooms, leftover cooked veggies from the night before like Brussels sprouts, etc.

 

If the problem is they don't eat them or are picky then try different preparation. My DS absolutely loves veggies but he won't do them raw except for cucumber and pepper slices. Everything else - broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, kale, etc. has to be cooked. I totally get this because too many raw veggies make my stomach upset. He also has a few quirks like we just discovered he loves asparagus but only when its the pencil thin kind not the bigger woody pieces. 

 

The biggest trick I use for myself is just to buy "too many" fruits and veggies. I hate food waste so it puts pressure on me to use them up. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

Don't know if it is already mentioned, but have you tried riced cauliflower? There is also cauliflower crust pizza. 

 

 

[bolt.]

Our veggies are usually one or two at lunch, and three or four at supper (we only really hit four if there's a salad).

 

I tend not to worry about serving size, and go for just make my goal about how many different ones I can serve up. I can work on making the scoops bigger over time. It's the habit that needs to be established. Therefore I count all servings as "servings" unless they are truly garnish-sized.

Edited July 20, 2017 by bolt.

[mytwomonkeys]

I like veggies in my smoothie & juicing them is a super easy way to make them taste yummy and get quite a few servings. I'll make a pitcher & we can drink from it throughout the day. Lastly we like salads, veggies as sides with dinners. I love a veggie sandwich - but my kids aren't there yet (although my daughter does tend to add more and more as she gets older).

[waa510]

For my kids, having veggies be the first thing they see when they open the fridge, prepped and ready to go has helped. My kids are too lazy to grab the step-stool to reach into the depths of the cabinet and get some crackers or nuts though ;) 

 

We make salads with dinner and I leave out plates of veggies for them to munch on while we school or while I prep dinner.  As vegans a lot of our meals involve a stew, or soup or chili or curry. Those dinners really lend themselves to a ton of veggies in each serving. Plus they keep really well as leftovers/freezer meals. I'll also make veggie sides for dinner or veggie dips. It helps to replace what would be a grain or rice with a veggie instead liked rice cauliflower or riced broccoli in stuffed peppers. I've also been known to add pureed veggies to pasta sauces. 

[Carol in Cal.]

Double check the serving sizes.

 

For adults, 1/2 cup of most denseish or cooked veggies is a serving, as is one cup of (loose) greens.  That means that it's pretty easy to see a pile of corn on your plate as a 'serving' but if you measured it it would actually be two servings.  

 

The best thing that works in our family is to start one meal with a huge salad.  2-3 cups of greens plus one half cup of chopped up other raw veggies are easy to tuck away at a sitting, and that's 3-4 servings right there.  Then you have your pasta or meat dish afterwards, and (bonus!) tend to eat less of that than you would have otherwise.  

 

Also just in general I eat crunchy veggies as snacks pretty often--carrot sticks, jicama, red cabbage, fennel bulbs, that sort of thing.  That adds up.

[Laura Corin]

You could double the number of veggies at each meal. I aim for plates that are half veggies, one quarter protein, one quarter starch.

 

A standard dinner might be roasted butternut squash, steamed broccoli, a roast chicken thigh and a serving of quinoa.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Laura Corin

[Carol in Cal.]

PS  If a typical meal for you is meat, starch, and veg, change it to meat, veg, and veg.

[Tanaqui]

That's five servings of vegetables - and in some calculations, a single serving of dried beans or potatoes also counts as a vegetable. (Just don't go overboard with the potatoes!)

 

I bet your kids are already eating more veggie servings than you realize, because some of their snacks are more than one serving.

 

But if you want to increase, I'd start having a serving of vegetables at lunch (perhaps a salad) and two full servings at dinner. That's three servings plus your snack, and you're eating two servings of fruit already.