Creative ways to eat more vegetables can significantly boost your fiber intake. While there’s a lot of buzz about carbohydrates and proteins, fiber often takes a back seat in our diets, going unnoticed. Vegetables, a major source of fiber, also come loaded with nutrients like vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, and zinc, making them an essential part of a balanced diet.
Beyond their nutritional benefits, vegetables enhance satiety, support weight loss, and add vibrant colors to your plate—each color bringing its own set of antioxidants. However, for many, including enough vegetables in their meals can be a challenge. Here are some easy and creative ways to incorporate more vegetables into your diet:
Vegetable Upma or Savory Oat Meal
Oats are a rich source of fiber. Pairing them with a lots of vegetables like Carrot, tomato and green peas is an excellent way to increase the palatability of vegetables thus increasing the fiber intake which will also help us in fat loss.
Recipes you can Try: Oats Vegetable Upma
Vegetable Soup
Since vegetables are difficult to chew for some people, incorporating these veggies in the form of soup is most ideal. This allows us to add multiple servings of vegetables to our diet without even us noticing it. Adding spices to these soups also enhances their flavors and taste. Broccoli, Tomatoes, Carrots, Beetroot, Mushrooms, Spinach, Pumpkin, etc, are a few veggies that can be blended into soups and are loaded with nutrients such as vitamins and antioxidants.
Try these delicious recipes: Mix Vegetable Soup; Pumpkin Soup
Note: Ensure that the soups are unstrained so that the fiber remains intact.
Various Rice Preparations / Wholegrain Preparations
Vegetables can be added to various rice preparations such as pulao, fried rice, khichdi, etc to turn rice into an excellent and nutrient dense wholesome meal. Rice is one such food items loved by everyone, be it young or adult.
Vegetables like french beans, cauliflower, tomato, onions, carrot, green peas, spinach, etc, can add so much color to any basic rice preparation. If you want to add more colors, you can also try adding a few exotic vegetables like bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, kal, broccoli to your fired rice to make it more appealing.
Along with rice other wholegrains such as quinoa, brown rice, oats, couscous, etc can also be mixed with above mentioned veggies to make a wholesome meal.
Try these delicious recipes: Chicken Cabbage Fried Rice; Brown Rice Vegetable Pulao
Vegetable Smoothie
Blending 2 to 3 vegetables together to get a desired color or taste is another excellent option. Incorporating these vegetables smoothies early morning or mid-meals can not only be refreshing but also perfect snack or filling option for weight loss. One can add different spices to the smoothie to enhance the taste and make it more palatable. Vegetable smoothies are a powerhouse of antioxidants.
Note: Ensure you do not strain the smoothies to keep the fiber intact which is one of the major nutrients that vegetables offer and has fat lower properties, and helps from immediate spike in blood sugars
Try these delicious recipes: Red Smoothie; Green Smoothie
Vegetable Tikki
Chop all the vegetables finely into small cuts, add a binder like oats or rava or besan with a few spices and shape it into your favourite form to make tikki out of it. Doesn’t this sound lip-smacking delicious? Who says vegetables are boring. This can be eaten has a snack between the meals, specially in the evening, when the hunger pangs are more and there are high chances of us picking up something by the counter, instead having these tikkis or cutlets would be an excellent option. It is also a very tasty and excellent way of promoting or adding vegetables in kids diet.
Try these delicious recipes: Hara Bhara Kabab; Sweet Potato and Paneer Tikkis
Grilled or Saute Vegetables
There are days when we are too bored to make extravaganza preparations and we just need something quick to go along with so that we don’t miss on our portion of Fiber. Chopping these vegetables and tossing them into a pan or simply grilling them and adding spices can be a quick hack. Accompanying this with a steak of Chicken or Paneer can make a very wholesome meal.
Try these delicious recipes: Chicken & Vegetable Stir Fry; Mushroom & Vegetable Stir Fry
Make sauces / chutneys using Vegetable as the base
Parboiling vegetables and making a paste out of it by adding a few spices is an excellent addition or side dip to your dishes. A few typically extensively used examples are pesto sauce made from basil leaves or red sauce made from tomato, red peppers or an onion dip or tomato chutney or mint and coriander chutney. They add color to your meals while you are unknowingly consuming your fiber happily.
Try these delicious recipes: Green Chutney; Dal & Oil Seed Chutney; Gram Dal Chutney
Pasta or Noodles with a lots of Veggies
Pasta and Noodles is something that everybody savours and loves to eat. Accompanying your favourite pasta with your favourite sauce that has a vegetable base and then further adding a lots of vegetables to it, not only enhances the nutrition of the dish but also adds color to it while making it more appealing to the eyes.
Try these delicious recipes: Healthy Pan Fried Noodles
Quesadilla or Wraps or Sandwiches or Parathas
Simply rolling your roti or chapati with vegetables like onion, capsicum, lettuce, cabbage along with a tikki made from vegetables or adding vegetable filling in between the bread slices is another creative way to incorporate veggies into our diet. Vegetable Parathas are staple Indian breakfast options and a wonderful way to incorporate vegetables.
Try these delicious recipes: Tofu Vegetable Wraps; Spinach Corn & Paneer Sandwhich
Vegetable sticks with a Dip (Hummus)
Preparing and cutting vegetables like carrots, cucumbers, peppers into juliennes can be a good snacking option. Use on the dips or simply blend beans into a paste like hummus and have these vegetable sticks along with it. You also get an easy snacking option and you are satiated for a longer duration.
Try these delicious recipes: Hummus; Hung Curd Dip
Raita or Koshimbir or Salad
Adding those finely chopped Veggies into Curd can be another innovative way to add color to your plate, beetroot raita being an example. Salads are usually dreaded by many, but accompanying these salads with creative dressings like soy sauce, lemon, curd and spices can make it so tatsy that you’ll want to eat more and experiment more with salads. Kachumbers or Koshimbir and Raitas are often accompanied with Indian rice preparations like Pulav and biryani and are a very intelligent way of adding fiber to your carbohydrate rich meal.
Try these delicious recipes: Beetroot Raita Recipe; Cucumber Raita Recipe
Indian Desserts
Once in a while desserts like Gajar ka halwa, Dudhi Halwa, Dudhi Kheer, are such creative ways to make kids eat their vegetables without even them realizing it. These are traditionally made by sauteing the main vegetable first until its half cooked and adding dairy in form of milk which is also dreaded by kids. It’s a perfect combination and your kid will enjoy it as a dessert.
Vegetable Omelette or Vegetable Pancakes
Adding lots of vegetables to your pancake batter or your eggs can be a fun way to add color, anti-oxidants and fiber to your diet. It is an easy and a quick breakfast option when you are in a hurry. Pre preparations can be done in order to save your morning time.
Try these delicious recipes: Vegetable Pancake;
Incorporating vegetables is not difficult if the meals are planned and thought through. Adding vegetables in the above-mentioned forms will surely increase the intake of vegetables without making them boring. It will add on not only color to your plate but also lot of fiber, nutrients and antioxidants.
Find Us On – Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube & Stay Tuned for more such insightful & informational blogs & videos.
