Adults often need more vegetables than they tend to consume. Many people feel that as long as they include some with dinner, they have eaten their vegetable portions for the day. In reality, for most people, they should be included with each meal. Yes, that means even eating vegetables with breakfast!
Vegetables and fruits are not interchangeable. Fruits contain much more sugar than vegetables do. While it is natural sugar, in high enough quantities, it can mess with your blood sugar levels. This can lead to more cravings throughout the day, a slower metabolism, and more energy crashes.
At first, this may seem difficult to do. You just have to get creative! Here are a few suggestions to increase your vegetable intake with breakfast.
1. Omelettes, frittatas, and hashes
Adding vegetables to foods like omelettes, frittatas, and breakfast hashes seems necessary. They add great flavour and texture to your meal. Vegetables that work well for these types of meals include broccoli, asparagus, onions, spinach, kale, mushrooms, and bell peppers.
2. Add them to smoothies
Have you heard of green smoothies before? Leafy greens are often added in along with fruits in order to mask the vegetable taste. However, you don’t need to stick to leafy greens in your smoothies, if you don’t digest them well. You can try zucchini, cooked squash, cucumber, or carrots with your smoothies without affecting the flavour too much.
3. Make it an English breakfast
If you like the bacon and eggs breakfast, turn it into an English breakfast! Add some fried tomatoes to your plate. Try The Curious Coconut’s Fried Green Tomato recipe. I also enjoy chopping up some onions, and frying them with tomatoes sliced in half in a skillet.
4. Eat dinner for breakfast
There’s always that weird person who suggests eating dinner for breakfast. I happen to be one of those people. It’s actually one of my favourite breakfasts. A nice full dinner meal keeps me going longer than most breakfasts do. And of course, any dinner I make will contain vegetables. My favourites include soups and curries.
5. Make it sweet
There are all kinds of ways to incorporate vegetables into sweet foods. Let’s be clear on one thing. Sweet doesn’t have to mean sugary. Stevia, when used properly, is a great replacement for sugar, and is healthy. Pro tip: if you don’t like the taste of stevia, use a few hacks to make stevia taste better.
Think of those zucchini loaves you like. Or that pumpkin spice smoothie you crave. You can also incorporate sweet potato mash into your pancake recipes, and sprinkle some cinnamon on there instead of syrup.
How do you eat vegetables with your breakfast? Tell us in the comments!