Nutrition 101: Veggies
When considering vegetables as part of your daily nutrition, you've got a lot of options to keep meals interesting, colorful, and flavorful. Though fresh is always best, the seasonal nature of veggies can feel limiting and sometimes unaffordable. It's important to understand how to best support a balanced plate while also considering budgets, taste and texture preferences, and time. Let's also gather a few tips to help incorporate more vegetables into your daily nutrition that will appeal to the picky palates too.
Important Education Takeaways
What can vegetables do for you? They play an important role in providing us with essential vitamins, minerals, and other plant compounds that keep our bodies healthy.
Provide several vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants that help protect your body from inflammation and reduce your risk of many chronic diseases including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
A good source of fiber, which works to maintain a healthy digestive system, regulate hunger hormones, and control our cholesterol levels.
Many have a high water content helping to keep our bodies hydrated.
Typically low in calories, veggies can help regulate our appetites by keeping our stomachs feeling full: helping us to eat less and more easily manage our weight.
Prep veggies ahead of time by washing, chopping, portioning, and storing for quick and convenient use later in the week.
Buy pre-cut veggies, salad kits, or frozen steamer bags for added convenience. Read more about salad kits in our Ask the RD blog.
Our Ask the RD blog shares ideas on creative ways to add leafy greens into your meals when you dislike the taste but still want to maintain a healthy diet.
Prioritize vegetables. The benefits of typically low caloric levels and high nutrient values should create an easy choice to include vegetables as part of our daily nutrition. Unfortunately, most of us fail to eat enough of them each day.
The recommended intake of vegetables is 2-3 servings per day.
Serving equals 1 cup of fresh or cooked veggies, or 2 cups of raw leafy greens.
Eat the rainbow! In addition to eating more vegetables, we also want to increase the color and variety of our veggie choices to get the most nutritious bang for our buck.
Red vegetables such as tomatoes, radishes, and beets are high in Vitamin C and lycopene, which may reduce cancer risk and support heart health.
Orange & yellow veggies such as bell peppers, carrots, sweet potatoes, and squashes are rich in vitamin C, potassium, vitamin K and beta carotene which protect against infection, reduce cancer risk, and support healthy vision.
Leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables like kale, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, Bok choy and others are rich in Vitamins A, C, K, folate, iron, magnesium, potassium and calcium as well as antioxidants which may decrease inflammation and prevent heart disease and cancer.
Blue & purple veggies such as eggplant, purple cabbage, purple potatoes, red onions are rich in antioxidants which protect our cells from damage and reduce our risk for heart disease and cancer.
White & brown vegetables such as garlic, onions, jicama, mushrooms, and potatoes offer vitamins C, K, folate, and potassium as well as antioxidants which may help lower cholesterol, improve immune function, and reduce risk for heart disease and cancer.
Keep it interesting with preparation and recipes. Enjoy them raw, or cooked, by using healthy cooking methods and plant-forward recipes.
Vegetables can be delicious grilled, roasted, sauteed, steamed, or blanched.
Eat them raw for refreshing flavors and add a crunchy texture.
Choose seasonal fresh veggies, when possible, though remember frozen can also be a great alternative.
If choosing canned, stick to “no salt added” or “reduced sodium” options. Rinsing canned vegetables may help lower some sodium content.
Check out our Ask the RD blog for advice on choosing organic versus traditional fruits and vegetables.
Challenge yourself to eat more vegetables. Get creative with your vegetable choices by keeping those you like in regular rotation, while also choosing to try a new vegetable at least once each month.
Here are some of these simple tips:
Breakfast: Add a colorful variety of sauteed mushrooms, bell peppers, or onions within an omelet, scramble, frittata, or egg bake.
Add spinach or kale to your morning smoothie. Easy tip: Freeze these in a freezer safe container, you can then “shatter” them into smaller pieces to make them less noticeable and improve the texture of your smoothie.
Use up older produce from your fridge by throwing together a veggie-packed soup or stir-fry.
Try roasting veggies on a sheet pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper for an easy and flavorful meal addition. Here’s one idea: Sheet Pan Dinner.
Bulk up sandwiches and wraps with added bean sprouts, greens, and tomatoes.
Prepare both a cooked veggie and a side salad at dinners to maximize your veggie intake and add variety to your meal routine. Give one of the incredible salads or veggie sides in our recipe collection a try.
Options to top your salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, celery, or carrots.
Add shredded or minced vegetables to sauces, casseroles, soups, and even baked goods.
Ideas include shredded zucchini, chopped spinach, or a diced mix (carrots, peas, bell pepper).
Meal prep snacks each week by filling a container with fresh veggies that are easy to grab and enjoy. If choosing to dip your veggie snacks in dressing, consider these helpful tips when selecting the healthiest dressing option. You can also find more snack ideas in our Ask the RD blog.
Carrot sticks, celery, bell pepper, jicama, or snap peas dipped in hummus.
Celery sticks with peanut butter (or any nut butter).
Recipes
Recipe of the month: Cornmeal Fried Tomato and Eggplant Burger
As always, this recipe is the showcase of our live taught, virtual cooking class. Our chef and registered dietitian bring the recipe to life as they walk you through food prep, swaps to meet dietary or taste preferences, plus tips and tools to support you being your own healthy chef at home.
Bonus recipe: Sheet Pan Dinner
From Jamie’s kitchen to yours, our monthly bonus recipes are published on our website and social media the 4th Wednesday of each month. We invite you to browse our recipe collection and come back often to find more flavorful and heart-healthy recipes.
We invite you to join us for the live taught, virtual nutrition classes each month to gather more information on our nutrition topics. This is also an opportunity to ask topic-related questions of our experts as well as connect socially with attendees for idea sharing. As a registered participant for our In the Kitchen program, you receive a few reminders ahead of each scheduled monthly classes, but here’s an easy to remember schedule: Nutrition Education (30-minutes, 2nd Wednesday, 12pm), Cooking Class (up to 60-minutes, 3rd Monday, 12pm).
Contributing authors: Jamie Libera, RD, LD, CCTD, registered dietitian, Providence.