Bored With Salads? 7 Genius Ways To Eat More Vegetables Each Day, From RDs

Love them or hate them, vegetables are an absolute must in every healthy diet. However, if you do struggle with a distaste for veggies, it's undoubtedly more difficult to reach your daily recommended intake or even have an awareness of what that should look like.

Focusing on varying the types of vegetables on your plate can certainly make healthy eating more interesting, and using tactics to sneak veggies into your day will make it that much easier to adequately fuel and nourish your body.

Instead of focusing on a numerical goal when filling up on vegetables, naturopathic doctor and registered dietitian Jaime Schehr, N.D., R.D., recommends thinking about your eating habits in terms of percentages. "I recommend eating 50% vegetables, or at least 50% plant-based foods, of which at least 30% are vegetables," she suggests. "Visually it is a lot easier to think about each meal or snack and estimate how much of it comes from vegetables."

If you are a numbers person, the USDA guidelines recommend you consume between 2 and 4 cups of veggies each day. The exact amount varies by age and gender, and variety is encouraged across several key categories: dark green; red and orange; beans, peas, and lentils; starchy; and other vegetables (plus, loads of examples of what actually constitutes 1 cup based on whether the particular vegetable is fresh, cooked, frozen, chopped, etc.)

Looking at your meal in terms of building a plate can help increase the volume of veggies you're consuming, and Schehr suggests aiming to have at least half of your plate made up of vegetables at both lunch and dinner. Whether that's a salad, some air-fried broccoli, carrots, and hummus, or cooked spinach with lemon juice, there are hundreds of ways to build a meal around a staple vegetable.

Diversifying your veggie intake is definitely key to a healthy and thriving gut microbiome. If you're looking for an easy way to add variety to your meals, mbg's organic veggies+ is a great option. The formula contains 31 powerhouse ingredients, including organic sea veggies, leafy greens, and root vegetables. Just 1 tablespoon serves up a good source of fiber in your day while also delivering prebiotics, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and more.*

We discussed making vegetables half of your plate for lunch and dinner, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve a valuable spot in your breakfast as well. "Omelets are the easiest and most versatile way to eat veggies at breakfast," notes Schehr. "In addition to cooking the vegetables into the omelet, they can also be used as a base on the plate, with the eggs served on top (such as eggs over spinach leaves)."

Again, we want our vegetables to be as accessible as possible to help increase our intake. With this, prepping your veggies at the beginning of the week so they're readily available to add to any meal will give you the best chance of actually eating them instead of letting the produce rot in your fridge.

"I roast veggies for the week and add them to different dishes," explains Kimberlain. "Whether I'm making a grain bowl or including the veggies in my tacos or pasta, it's just a great way to 'meal prep' a few to use throughout the week." We're not reinventing the wheel here, people—meal prep works!

If you think you don't like veggies, odds are you simply haven't tried the right preparation method yet. Different seasonings and cooking methods can make a major impact on flavor, so try diversifying the way you cook vegetables to see if you can find a taste and texture you love. 

We know vegetables may not seem like the most exciting food to build the majority of your meals around, but with their versatility, nutritional benefits, and the ease with which they fit into dishes, there's no reason not to be meeting your needs each day.