Easy Ways to Eat 5 Fruits & Veggies Each Day

I use spinach for lettuce too. Never tried cabbage. - 5/18/2013 10:19:50 AM

The pizza comment kind of got to me too. I really don't think pizza is a bad choice, compared to many of the other foods you can get at restaurants; in fact, its pretty balanced and it has its own portion control (take one or two slices, put the rest away). - 4/19/2013 4:49:21 PM

"If you must have pizza..." - really? I thought part of spark was teaching that no foods are off limits that we just practice moderation. Might be that I'm 7 months pregnant and irritable but the sentence rubbed me the wrong way!! - 4/19/2013 1:36:42 PM

I limit my snacks to fruit or veg, so that helps a lot; I would add protein if I felt real hungry, but I usually get plenty at meals. Just nothing starchy. In the winter there are quite a few good fruits that come mostly from Chile. The honeydews and small grapes are really tasty. And of course bananas, citrus from CA and FL, pineapples from HI, and the large papayas from I don't know where. I also like the 4 oz. fruit cups, especially pineapple. All of this violates my attempts to eat locally grown foods, but not much choice in the winter. We do pick wild blueberries and freeze them for winter use. Since I'm avoiding things like muffins and pies, I put them on cereal. They'd work great for smoothies, too. - 4/19/2013 7:09:33 AM

Those of us on lower calorie diets should beware of fruit juices, as they can be high in calories. It is very easy to drink way too many calories at one time. With some of the info coming out on no cal sweeteners and their effects on appetite, I usually try to avoid them. - 4/10/2013 10:37:10 AM

I forgot about spinach in my smoothies. You don't even know its there! - 12/28/2012 10:43:31 AM

I love to add some spinach to my smoothie in the morning to help get some added goodness. My kids don't even notice that I do it because the taste is masked by the other fruits in the smoothie. You can also add some mashed cooked cauliflower to your mashed potatoes. Finally, I also take Juice Plus. - 5/11/2012 2:27:47 PM

One more thought- if you only have canned fruit available but don't like it much, try dividing it into 4ounce freezer containers and freezing for a while. I keep the juice with it if it's just fruit juice. Really tasty. Experiment with how long to freeze, depending on how you like it, but it can be allowed to thaw a bit if it gets too frozen. - 4/2/2012 6:22:49 PM

One other idea: I add a package of a soy protein powder (Shaklee vanilla in my case) to 6ounces of fruit/veg juice and fill up to total 16ounces with frozen fruit. If I were more ambitious I could use just water and frozen fruit instead of commercial juice. After blending, I pour into 4oz freezer cups and freeze for later. Really good. Might need a bigger total volume to get four servings, usually I get 3.5 servings. But 16ounces just fits in my personal blender cup. - 4/2/2012 6:10:13 PM

I eat in installments and so feel no need to balance a meal... I really love tomato sandwiches with nothing but egg-free mayonnaise and some salt and as much tomato as I can fit on whole grain bread or in a pita. But I can't eat tomato too often due to allergies, so the best substitute I've found is either thick slices of seedless cucumber or loads of red or orange bell pepper. I only add salt for tomato or cucumber for some reason, I never add it to other foods. Avocado also makes a good sandwich in a pita or corn taco shell, sometimes with other veggies, although often I eat avocado all by itself. No need for mayonnaise with avocado, of course. Same is true when I add an avocado to a salad, I just mash up the avocado as the only dressing. - 4/2/2012 6:00:48 PM

I like to use spinach leaves or cabbage leaves instead of lettuce in sandwiches. Also shredded carrots are great in sandwiches.

Try shredded carrots plus chopped onion plus peanut butter as a sandwich filling sometime. Either just add separately or mush around in a bowl until the carrots and onion have a thin coating of peanut butter. I've used as much as a cup of carrots with 2tbsp peanut butter this way. Sunflower seed butter or almond butter works as well. I imagine other nut or seed or legume butters would also work. I like this in whole wheat pita or on rice crackers or good Lundberg rice cakes or in corn taco shells.

Shredded carrots basically taste great with everything... I also add to no-tuna salad made with mashed garbanzo beans (chickpeas) instead of tuna. I'm too disorganized to shred carrots myself, but the bagged shredded carrots actually taste much better than the bagged carrot chips or baby carrots for some reason. I cut them into smaller pieces sometimes with a kitchen shears, that's as far as I'll go with special food prep... - 4/2/2012 5:48:44 PM

Had 10 yesterday!!! I love those fruits and veggies!!! - 9/9/2011 8:01:34 AM

I love adding peas, beans, spinach, and greens, to my smoothies and vegetable/fruit drinks. Doing it myself is much better than buying the prepared, store bought drinks, as they typicaly have many calories and high in sodium. - 8/2/2011 11:48:36 AM

good ideas. I've been trying to think of ways to get my 5 a day that wouldn't be so ho-hum, and I think these are good points to start off on. - 6/17/2011 9:32:55 PM

Five Servings a day or 10 Servings a day...It's a lot easier in the warmer months when everything is in season at local Farmer's Markets. It's the colder months that are hard for me to eat all the fruits and veggies. I don't eat canned fruits and veggies - except beans and pineapple -- and most frozen stuff just doesn't taste the same to me. I will give props to the newer "steamer" versions. They do come pretty darn close -- but there just aren't enough varieties! - 6/13/2011 3:55:32 PM