How To Add Vegetables To Your Diet

Step 1: Your Health

Eating vegetables as part of your daily diet can help you maintain a healthy weight, reduce the risk of heart disease, strokes and some cancers. Eating vegetables has many general health benefits as they contain a variety of vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates and fibre. It is important to eat different varieties to get the whole range of benefits. For instance, cabbage is high in fibre but low in vitamin C so add some red pepper, which is full of vitamin C.

Step 2: 5 A Day

The “5 A Day” programme was launched by the British National Health Service, to encourage everyone to eat at least 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Portion sizes vary, depending on the vegetable, but you can find a guide to portion sizes at http://www.5aday.nhs.uk/whatcounts/portionsizes.aspx.

Step 3: Preparing vegetables

There is a huge range of vegetables available, that can be prepared and served in interesting ways. You can steam kale, boil some corn on the cob, whip up a stir fry of roast peppers, aubergine and courgettes in a little olive oil. Vegetables that are frozen at the point of harvest are very high in nutrients, and tinned vegetables are good as well. If you want to keep it simple try adding a side salad of lettuce and cucumber to your meal, it won't take long and it will taste great. As long as you avoid deep frying and creamy sauces you can be sure you're onto a nutritional winner.

Step 4: New ways to enjoy vegetables

Adding extra vegetables to everyday meals like casseroles, soup and pasta sauces can help get more into your diet and give boring old meals a new lease of life. Try topping frozen or chilled pizza with extra sliced vegetables before cooking, and serve with a green salad. Add carrots and celery sticks with some dips to your packed lunch or just a handful of cherry tomatoes to go with your sandwich, this will be really good for your health.

Step 5: The result

By including vegetables into your meals and snacks you will discover many different tastes, colours and textures and can be confident that you're well on your way to a balanced diet.