Five Sneaky Strategies to Eat More Leafy Greens
Leafy green vegetables are an absolute staple for your health! Ideally, we would be consuming them in some form every single day.
What is a leafy green veggie? Any vegetable that is leafy, or the component of a vegetable that is leafy. The most common leafy greens include spinach, kale, lettuces of all kinds, arugula, chard, collards, and more. Fresh leafy herbs also count, including cilantro, parsley, dill, basil and more.
Also, many vegetables have a leafy part to them that is edible, and so the leafy part would also count towards your leafy green intake, such as beet greens (not the beets, but the leaves on top), fennel fronds, the leafy tops of celery and carrots as well.
You might ask, why the leafy greens and not the other vegetables? What about broccoli and brussels sprouts and bell peppers? They are wonderful too and you should have them often!
But leafy greens have nutrients they are particularly abundant in, including chlorophyll.
Here are five ways to sneak more leafy greens into your diet:
1) Juice them!
Many people love to get their leafy greens in through juice, because it’s something you can drink on the go and quickly. I also find that certain stronger-tasting greens taste better in a juice than in a smoothie, and so I like them that way. Juice is also extremely easy for your body to digest, so if you’re in transition to a plant-based diet and your body is not yet used to the fiber involved with a plant-based diet, juicing is a perfect way to get lots of greens in your body.
2) Include them in cooked meals that you might not normally put them in
I often toss extra leafy greens in my meals, even when the recipe doesn’t call for them. Many leafy greens can be good cooked, such as spinach, kale, arugula, chard, and collards. I’ll throw extra chopped greens in a soup or use greens instead of rice as a base for Indian food. I’ll add them to pastas, stir fries, stews and more. I’m essentially always asking, where can I possibly toss some more greens in? Even if it is only a few leaves in some cases, it all adds up over time. I also often add fresh greens at the very end of a recipe without cooking it. I might add some fresh cilantro or parsley to mix in at the end.
3) Add them to smoothies
Spinach is a remarkable leafy green in smoothies. You can add a big handful and not even taste it at all. It can be added to your smoothie fresh or frozen. I often freeze fresh spinach that will go bad if I don’t use it soon, and then use the frozen spinach in smoothies. Spinach works in berry-based smoothies, ones with lots of banana, and tropical fruit smoothies such as ones with pineapple.
4) Make wraps and sandwiches loaded with greens
Greens add such a lovely crunch to any wrap or sandwich! Load yours up with some fresh, crunchy lettuce or arugula. You can even make wraps with collard leaves, where the wrap itself is a leafy green! Lettuce wraps are also wonderful, where a nice butter lettuce leaf or romaine leaf works as your “bowl”.
5) Learn about and try blended green soups
There is a whole world of recipes for blended green soups. Some are cooked, and some are made raw, almost gazpacho-style, and eaten cold in the hot summer weather. These soups involve large amounts of leafy greens, and where all the ingredients are blended into a smooth, satisfying, and energizing meal. Just go to a search engine to search “green soup recipe” and try one!
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