By now you know the importance of getting at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day (if not, click here). Perhaps you are still not convinced? Use the excuse-buster list below when you find yourself reasoning your way out of reaching for the good stuff. Excuses are easy to make, but with a little exploration, you’ll find that you can reach your healthy-habit goals quicker.
Excuse 1: Buying fruits and vegetables can be costly and they spoil too quickly.
Excuse-Busters:
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Buy them in-season and fresh. The y will be cheaper AND at their peak of flavor. Consider that you are getting nutrient-dense foods that your body craves, full of vitamins and minerals. They are certainly better buys than chips, cookies, and soda, which we normally buy regardless of cost.
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Buy both ripe and unripe items (for example, yellow and green bananas). That way you have some for immediate eating the first few days while the others are ripening.
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Keep fruits and vegetables on the top shelf of the fridge, on the kitchen counter or table. If you see them several times in a day, you will be more likely to eat them before they spoil.
Excuse 2: They take too long to prepare.
Excuse-Busters:
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Take advantage of your grocery salad bar, which provides already sliced varieties. Eat them in snack form or toss in a salad with less prep time.
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Stock up on frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. These are simple to prepare in the microwave and offer similar nutritional value to the fresh variety. Sometimes frozen vegetables lock in nutrients better than "fresh" ones that have sat for a few days. If buying canned food, look for the low-sodium varieties.
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Wash, slice, and dice ahead of time. Store in a clear container in the front of your fridge where you can see and reach for it on a daily basis for immediate use.
Excuse 3: Fresh fruits and vegetables contain harmful pesticides.
Excuse-Busters:
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Debates continue on the dangers of pesticides used on our foods. Remember that the FDA regulates pesticide use very strictly. You might consider buying "organically grown" varieties, which means that no pesticides are used. Most health authorities report that the health benefits that come from eating fruits and vegetables outweigh the concerns of pesticide use. Still skeptical? The following steps will help reduce risks.
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Wash produce with warm water. Don’t use any soaps. Scrub well with a dish brush. This is important especially if you are eating the outer skin of items such as apples, cucumbers, or potatoes.
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Discard the outer leaves of leafy vegetables that tend to be dirty, such as lettuce and cabbage.
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Peel and cook when appropriate. Realize that you lose some nutrients and fiber in this process.
Excuse 4: Vitamins are easily lost when you cook fruits and vegetables.
Excuse-Busters:
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It’s true that vitamins break down in heat and air. The longer and hotter you cook something, the more nutrients you lose. But there are simple, easy ways to avoid major vitamin loss when preparing fruits and vegetables. The most obvious, of course, is to eat raw fruits and vegetables whenever possible.
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Cook only until crisp and tender. Otherwise known as al dente, a crisper vegetable or fruit will retain more nutrients than a mushy one. A good way to achieve this is steaming rather than boiling your food.
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Use as little water as possible while cooking. This reduces the dissolving action of vitamins.
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Use big pieces rather than small, cut-up pieces. Minimizing the surface area of each piece prevents loss of vitamins when exposed to air.
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Cover your pots during cooking to contain steam and heat. This helps reduce cooking time and therefore saves nutrients.
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The water you’ve used for cooking vegetables can be reused in soups, sauces, stews or vegetable juices. This is a way to get the benefit of residual vitamins.
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Laura Bofinger
Member Comments
I'm practically vegetarian these days, because meat costs more than even organic vegetables, so I stick mainly to my fruits and veggies, and I can even grow my own. I love vegetables. Growing up, most of them were my least favorite due to how my parents cooked them: boiled to mush. I thought I hated broccoli for the longest time. Nope, just hate it boiled. I love it fresh, steamed, stir-fry, broiled... pretty much every way but boiled. And of course, you can not forget the seasonings! Spices are the... well... spice of life!
Still can't get past the taste of peas, though if they're well hidden enough I can tolerate them.
The bulk of my diet is vegetables, some grains, and small amounts of meat, but not necessarily every day. I have raw salads or "snack" trays, stir-fried, in soups, baked/roasted, and blended into smoothies. Sneaky way to get veggies is pasta sauces, salsa, and sandwich/burger toppings.
And yeah, I buy organic. - 5/8/2013 3:45:12 PM
You are also better off eating many vegetables cooked, and not just lightly steamed either; some contain oxalic acid and some contain goitrogens (chemicals that mess up your thyroid) that are in the plant naturally, because the only way plants can defend themselves is chemically most of the time. Cooking inactivates a lot of the antinutrients you find in plants, and you're much more likely to find antinutrients in leaves and stalks, since those are what herbivores typically eat. (You also find them in seeds, by the way, which is why basing your diet on seeds--i.e., grains--is a terrible idea.)
But what about water-soluble vitamins, which are destroyed by cooking in water? I would say that as a general rule of thumb you are better off eating vegetables for the minerals and the fat-soluble vitamins and carotenoids they contain, but eating fruits for the water-soluble vitamins. There's not too much in the way of most vitamins that you can't also get in meat, and in a much better form for your body. However, vitamin C is still of some concern. So get that from fruit. You shouldn't be eating scads and scads of fruit anyway; if you don't watch it, you could wind up using the stuff as a sort of candy substitute, and if you're like most Americans you don't get enough choline in your diet, are suffering from fatty liver and the last thing you need to be eating is more fructose if that's your issue. (And you won't always catch it with liver enzyme tests. So eat more eggs and fewer apples, and get more vegetables for your p... - 5/9/2011 8:17:33 PM
Canned vegetables are overcooked & have a lot of sodium, so I don't use them at all. I did grow up on them, and didn't know until I was an adult that green beans were crisp and actually a bright green, instead of grayish, like the canned beans..
If you don't like veggies but want to incorporate them into your diet, try putting them in baked goods. Zucchini, carrots, squash can be shredded & added to muffins/cake, cookies. You can also shred veggies to put into meatloaf, etc. Tomato sauce is a veggie, eat it often. Drink tomato juice or V-8, but watch the sodium.
Also, don't think you have to eat a salad made of lettuce. I used to buy lettuce & watch it rot in the fridge because I was the only one in the house eating it, except on a sandwich. I make salads of chopped veggies instead. - 5/9/2011 1:24:54 PM
DH and I are the opposite and we have gotten the kids who are ages 9, 12 and 15 to eat almost everything. Last night I made a squash casserole and they all ate and enjoyed it, even Mommy who said, "I don't know how you get squash to taste so good".
(Little does she know it contains mayonnaise which she hates. I'll never tell.) - 5/3/2011 1:31:04 PM
I know what TYKXBOY is talking about when it comes to mouth appeal. I had the problem with meat growing up. Hated the stuff until I got pregnant the first time. There are still things I have a hard time with. I can have a small piece of fish and then I get the road block in my head and can't put another piece in my mouth.
I am so glad this is not true for fruits and veggies for me. - 4/17/2011 9:26:43 AM
www.gograhamgo.
com/2010/06/d
iy-vegetable-
and-fruit-wash.html - 1/9/2011 9:31:33 PM
I LOVE veggies..so did not want to leave the impression that I do not eat them.
Just the low carb ones even though squash (higher carb) is my favourite. - 1/9/2011 2:02:51 PM
Yes you can buy organic but they are quite expensive.
There is also the issue of GMO so it is hard to really feel comfortable about eating fresh foods today.
Personally I don't trust any government agency statements of health.
For years they said Tuna was a great food and now a lot of people have overloads of mercury because it is filled with it.
I believe you have to use your own instinct and judgement and make trade offs.
Many fruits are high in simple sugars and carbs..I'll change that to "most" fruits.
- 1/9/2011 1:59:37 PM
Everybody has their own struggles or else we wouldn't be here. Some empathy instead of criticism would be appreciated. - 10/27/2010 8:37:40 AM