Hi everyone!

I am a super picky eater, and the biggest problem for me is vegetables - my sister is the same way. My mom told us a couple of years ago that she never fed us vegetables when we were really young, because she thought we were too young and wouldn't like them. (She regrets that now, of course. But she was a young mother going it alone.) So when she or other people would make us try to eat them when we were older, we hated them.

Right now, the only things I like/can tolerate are: lettuce, lentils, green beans, english peas, and whole kernal corn. Seriously...that's it. No broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, asparagus, olives, etc. I can occasionally tolerate: thinly sliced carrots, snow peas, and onions/celery (only if diced as fine as they can get and cooked in something).

Does anyone have any advice for us veggie haters? Is there a good way of incorporating veggies into the "diet" without feeling an urge to puke? (I can't even mask it with "healthy" salad dressing - I hate that, too. I told you I was picky!)

Or for fellow veggie haters: Has anyone overcome their aversion to veggies? Has anyone ever forced themselves to eat something for a prolonged period of time and eventually gotten used to it (perhaps even grown to like it)?

I want to overcome this, but I'm not sure how!

Thanks 3FCers!

First - congratulations. If you're asking this you've realized how important vegetables are and you've decided you're open to trying them.

There are many many vegetables out there to try and multiple ways to prepare them. One preparation many folks find they love is roasting. Cut different vegetables into about same sized pieces, sprinkle with a good oil, shake or turn them to coat with the oil, season or not, spread in a single layer on a baking sheet or large flat pan and cook in a hot oven (400 degrees F or 425). Shake them every ten minutes to turn. Remove when they're starting to brown a little bit. 20-30 minutes depending on how dense the veggies are.

Other preparations: steaming, stir frying (quick cooking in oil in a very hot pan), grilling (cut in thin "slabs", oil, grill 5-10 minutes per side), "shish ka-bob" (skewer, oil and grill - works for small roundish veggies like small tomatoes, mushrooms), stewing (low heat, long time), crockpot, and more. I also like vegetables that have been cooked then chilled with a light salad dressing. There's also raw with light ranch or blue cheese dressing as dip. Or plain. Cooked in soup or pureed. Also pureed and hidden in pasta sauce.

Try vegetables you haven't tasted before. If you didn't like a veggie steamed, try it stir fried. Keep trying. If you don't like broccoli florets, try the stems.

Good luck.

Thank you for the tips WebRover! I think I'll look into some recipe books, too, that will have specifics on the suggestions you mentioned. I'm a full-time student and work also, so it's been a while since I've really spent time cooking in the kitchen. So I'll have to do some additional research. I appreciate you taking the time for these suggestions - I hadn't even thought about trying the same vegetables, but cooking them in various different ways.

On another note - sorry I posted this in the wrong forum. I didn't even realize there was a "Veggie Challenged" forum! This place just keeps getting better!

Oooh, I agree with WebRover.

There are TONS of veggies out there. And oodles of ways to make them. I urge you to experiment with different veggies and methods of cooking them. Roasting is PHENOMENAL. We live on roasted green beans here, with garlic and onions and sea salt. Yum. Cauliflower roasted with chilli powder, cayenne pepper, cumin, garlic and onions. Butternut squash with sugar free maple syrup and cinnamon. I hated tomatoes until I started broiling them. Detested brussel sprouts until I started roasting them.

Also check out this thread:

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=126111

It's got a load of excellent recipes.

Okay, so my food aversion was not a veggie, but you might find this encouraging...

I had hated coconut since I was a small child. I mean really hated it, to the point where if I accidentally ate any I would have to spit it out. This wasn't really a problem for me until I became an adult and started to really love different ethnic foods. Going out for Thai food became a problem. I then read somewhere that it typically takes a person (or child in the case of what I read) 100 times of tasting something to get used to it. So, I made myself try a little of it hear and there whenever the opportunity arose. I'm not sure when the shift came, but I make coconut curries almost every week now. I've even found that shredded coconut is good. What I'm saying is that tastes can change, if you keep an open mind and keep trying.

In regards to veggies, I think you should try them in different ways (different cooking methods.) I know many of my parents generation over cooked veggies to death and made them nearly inedible. Proper cooking and different cooking methods can really change the taste and texture of vegetables.

Good luck!

If you like soups, try tossing a little bit of spinach in. It just gives the soup good flavor and you don't really taste spinach.

I can't do that now because I'm on Coumadin for a blood clot and have to severely limit anything with much vitamin K. I miss my spinach.

Thanks rockinrobin, zenor77, and fdevine! I've been checking out the veggie hater sub-group and have gotten some excellent ideas. I appreciate you all taking the time to reply to me, especially since a sub-group is already around for this exact same reason, and I just didn't realize it! Duh! And zenor77, thanks for the encouragement. I'm glad to hear that tastes can change for the better. I know when I was younger, for example, I love mayo. But at some point, I suddenly began hating it. Still do. But it's great to know that tastes can change the other way, too. It's encouraging that I may be able to try many many different veggies prepared different ways and at some point, just start liking it. Thanks again!

I'm doing MRC diet, and it calls for 12 oz RAW GREEN veggies a day and I HATE veggies. My lunch today was so insanely miserable. I had 4 oz lettuce, 2 oz celery and 2 oz cucumbers and I thought I was going to die. I made it through the celery by dipping it in my cottage cheese and 'destringing' it as I went, but the cucumbers almost killed me. The plain lettuce was a welcome relief at the end (though I can't imagine eating 12 oz a day of raw lettuce, either...that's over a bag of lettuce!). I can only use 10 spritzes of the salad spritzers for dressing, and nothing that contains salt, so the whole experience was horrid. It took me an hour to choke it all down. I WANT to like veggies, but so many of them taste like grass or dirt to me that it makes it very difficult. I think I'm going to suck it up and try the '100 times' idea to see if I can convince myself to like them. Ugh. I'm not a huge fruit fan, either, but at least I can manage apple slices without the skin and I really like melons.

If celery is one of the veggies you want to learn to like, you may want to buy celery hearts. You should not have so much of a problem with strings on your celery and the inner stalks tend to be more tender.

I love dipping carrots, cucumbers, celery, or greenpeppers in lite ranch dressing. NOT the FAT FREE, but the lite by Hidden Valley. Yummy. I can't force myself to eat Broccli, even with cheese, yuck. Just the smell of it makes me sick. I love the smell of cooked greenpeppers, but I only will eat them raw. When I was a kid I HATED corn out of a can. My mom would make me eat it and the only way was to hide it in my mashed potatoes, that way I didn't really taste it, lol. I know I need to eat more veggies and fruits, but one of my issues with veggies, is you have to wash, cut, sometimes peel and frankly I'm too lazy for all that, lol. I love cucumbers that have been soaking in Italian dressing, that is really good. Same goes for greenpeppers. Ok, now I'm getting hungry!

I love celery hearts dipped in egg salad (made with fat-free Miracle Whip and boiled egg whites)!

If it's something you really want to incorporate on a larger scale, maybe try adding in just a little here and there. Try a variety of veggies, and eventually you may grow used to them even in larger quantities. For now, stick to the ones that you do like.

I think it's a myth that you have to eat mostly veggies to lose weight- I hardly eat them, myself and I'm happy with my success.

You can always try and hide 'em in a sandwich with wheat bread ;D My boyfriend is also a veggie hater, and that seems to be one of the only ways he'll eat them.

The way I started was by eating veggies I knew I liked in ways I liked to eat them.

I knew I liked tomatoes so I snacked on grape tomatoes. I knew I liked carrots so I snacked on baby carrots although I find whole carrots to be more tasty so these days I generally eat carrots I cut up. Baby carrots and grape tomatoes require zero prep time though. I also liked sugar snap peas which are another zero prep time food so I ate those. I live on canned tomatoes and use them in multiple foods I make from soups to casseroles and they are again it takes zero prep time to use canned tomatoes.

I don't think you have to eat veggies to lose weight but they do help in weight loss by being a filling food. I also believe someone who eats a variety of veggies is healthier than someone who doesn't as veggies contain so many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber.

wow I can't imagine hating veggies- I LOVE veggies- in fact when I did my detox on the fat smash- I missed bread more than meat- I could live without meat.

My hubby is like this, he doesn't like many veggies, so what I do is introduce one at a time, and he's starting to like zuccini- I cook it in a tomato sauce (I'm sure you like spaghetti right?) and we eat it with chicken and brown rice and he actually likes it But I know he really likes corn, so once a week we will eat corn as a side.

Another thing he's starting to like is cooked green beans- I grill them with garlic salt and olive oil

Don't forget about spices! They can really enhance the flavor of foods for you

lol my sister and I can cut up a tomato- sprinkle a bit of salt on them and just eat them straight like that- YUMMMMMMM!