A Tricky Way To Get More Veggies

I was watching the show Tosh.O the other day. If you haven't seen the show it is on Comedy Central and it is comic who finds crazy videos online and shows them on TV. If you are easily offended this is not the show for you.

Anyway, one clip he was showing was of a young kid each green beans. You could tell by the look on his face that this was not his favorite thing to eat. You hear the dad's voice on camera counting as he pops them into his mouth. After a few the young boy starts to gag trying to hold them down. He then has to try and wash them down with his chocolate milk. Well unfortunately everything comes back up and onto the plate. If you want to see it just click here.

Why am I sharing this lovely scene with you? Well I think it is pretty common. Most people, and not just kids, hate vegetables. I think this is a serious problem, knowing how bad the obesity epidemic has gotten. We seem to either force people (usually kids) to eat veggies or they are just ignored altogether.

One of the main reasons we are so overweight is because we choice energy dense food. When we over consume energy dense foods it will lead to excessive energy intake. It simple terms we eat too many high calorie foods. Energy dense just means there are a lot of calories in a small amount of food. Look at a Snickers. There are 271 calories in a candy bar. And most of these calories are not things the body wants. Compare that to carrot which is similar is size but only 35 calories and will give you your entire daily requirement for Vitamin A. Yes I would also rather have a Snickers than a carrot stick but is it worth it?

A new study just came out in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on this very topic. We know that most people do not like the taste of vegetables. So what these researchers did was puree veggies to hide them into meals and see what it would do. They made participants eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the laboratory and in each meal hid vegetables in the entree.

What they found was that those who consumed the pureed veggies ate more veggies than those who were just served them in the dish, consumed less calories (almost 400 calories less), claimed that they felt full after meals, and enjoyed their meals.

So just by using this little trick you can significantly reduce the number of calories you consume and increase your vegetable intake. Try this out. One thing I always recommend is to make a smoothie and throw some leafy green vegetables in it with fruit. You will never know there is a vegetable in it. Or you can make your own sauces for entrees and puree it with veggies.

You Stay Healthy San Diego,

Mike Deibler MS, CSCS