EVENING MEAL – Easy Ways To Increase Your Fruit and Veg Intake
Eating a healthier diet can often conjure up images of hard work, maximum organisation and extended preparation time. However, increasing your fruit and veg intake needn’t be like this in reality. Making incremental and easy changes to your daily diet will prove to make a vast different to your overall health and nutritional intake.
Below are some fruit and veg suggestions for midday meals that take minutes to add, helping to keep you full and satisfied until the evening.
MEAL |
ADDED FRUIT/VEG |
| Ditch pasta or noodles and instead use courgette or squash. Using a spiraliser or Julienne peeler will mean you can get this done in minutes. |
Courgette Butternut squash |
| Bulk our stews, soups and sauces with extra veg. Either chop them up into bite-sized chunks or puree them down so they go completely unnoticed – whatever suits the mouths you are feeding! |
Parsnip Butternut squash Turnip Swede Celeriac Pumpkin Carrot Tomato Sweet potato Pepper Onion Spinach Collard greens Kale Mangetout Lentils Kidney/black-eyed/borlotti/butter beans Celery |
| Use alternative vegetables as a replacement for pasta or potato when cooking hearty family meals such as lasagna or shepherds pie. |
Squash Sweet potato Aubergine |
| A stir fry can be created in minutes – use veggies that retain their crunch and only need a hint of cooking to reach optimum deliciousness. |
Pepper Mushrooms Bok choy Mangetout Beansprouts Cauliflower Onion Carrot Asparagus |
| Try making a pizza base from scratch using chickpeas or cauliflower as your base ingredient – one for the kids! |
Cauliflower Chickpeas |
| For any vegetables that benefit from a longer cooking time in order to bring out a more desirable flavour, simply chop down to your chosen size, toss together with herbs and spices and roast for approximately 30 minutes at 200C. You can do this in large batches and have as part of your midday and evening meals for several days in a row. |
Sweet potato Turnip Beetroot Swede Pumpkin Fennel Rhubarb Butternut squash |
