Saturday, April 12, 2014

A Tasty Way to Eat Your Veggies

Written by Jordan Zelenky
Part of National Nutrition Month 2014

How many times have you been told to eat two or three servings of vegetables every day?  If you’re anything like me, you probably hear that message all the time. Unfortunately, most people just don’t like the taste of those green, leafy veggies.

Image by Jordan Zelenky
What’s so special about greens? Take spinach, for example, which is an excellent source of Vitamins K and A, and is very low in fat (Palmer, 2009). All of those benefits are great, but because spinach has such a bland taste, it is often excluded from my meals. I knew I had to start eating spinach because relying on broccoli and carrots to get enough veggies doesn’t provide enough variety, so I thought about adding spinach to smoothies.

Image by Jordan Zelenky
Smoothies are so versatile, which makes them an easy way to add new foods to your diet if you’re unsure about a new food’s texture. The thought of an overwhelming spinach taste in my smoothie made me nervous at first, but after my first try combining the ingredients the flavors were nothing but strawberries, bananas, and soy milk! The spinach blended into the flavors of the fruits perfectly, and I was left with my normal smoothie, just a little more green in color.

To make my smoothie, use 2 large strawberries, ½ ripe banana, a couple of ice cubes, ½ cup of soy milk, and a ¼ cup of spinach. Next, cut up the strawberries and banana, then combined all of the ingredients into the blender. Pulse the blender for 30 seconds, but you can adjust that time depending on the thickness you prefer. Try to come up with your own combination of flavors and veggies! I’d love to hear new ideas to mix up my routine ingredients.

References

Palmer, S. (2009). Spinach Flexes Its Mighty Nutrition Muscle. Environmental Nutrition, 32(3), 8-8. 

Like this post?  Read more Enjoy the Taste of Eating Right posts!

4 comments:

  1. maggie.danhakl@healthline.comApril 25, 2014 at 7:23 PM

    Hi,

    Healthline just published a visualization of your daily value of sodium. In the chart, you can see what half of your DV of salt looks like for 30 foods: http://www.healthline.com/health/high-blood-pressure-hypertension/daily-value-sodium

    This is very valuable content as it puts nutrition information into perspective and helps a person understand how much sodium is actually in their food. I thought this would be of interest to your audience and wanted to see if you would include this as a resource on your page: http://hnfelibrarian.blogspot.com/

    If you do not believe this would be a good fit for a resource on your site, even sharing this on your social communities would be a great alternativeto help get the word out.

    Thanks for your time reviewing. Please let me know your thoughts and if there are any questions I can answer.

    All the best,
    Maggie Danhakl • Assistant Marketing Manager
    p: 415-281-3124 f: 415-281-3199

    Healthline • The Power of Intelligent Health
    660 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
    www.healthline.com | @Healthline | @HealthlineCorp

    About Us: corp.healthline.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nutrient dense and looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello this is somewhat of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I'm starting a blog soon but have no coding skills so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I want to share with you all on how I got my loan from a very good and honest loan company registered in the USA, as I was applying as a start-up loan it took me several documents to meet up with their conditions but God Willing I got through and it was smooth to work with as an entrepreneur.Contact   Whatsapp : +18632310632  / pedroloanss@gmail.com for all kinds of financial assistance such as loans and investment facility.

    ReplyDelete