Learning to love veggies
 

How do you do it?

I'm ok with broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, and a few others. I mean, I can eat them but I really don't enjoy them. Will I ever?

Honestly I'm not much for cooked veggies. I do like salads full with fresh veggies, and luckily I am not huge on dressing, so just a little bit goes a long way for me. I am eating lots of salads lately. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, we still drank milk for every meal, water was rare, veggies were pushed on us much so we didn't eat them. My mom used to soak berries and such in sugar water before we would eat them. Lots of bad habits growing up.

I love roasting veggies. A little olive oil, salt and pepper - in a 400F oven for about 35 mins or fork tender and you got yourself a healthy, yummy meal. I've roasted brussel sprouts with garlic and red pepper flakes in the past. It's my favorite. You can store leftovers in the fridge. They won't be as crispy the next time, but they'll still taste great. :)

I think a lot of it has to do with preparation. I grew up on frozen vegetables, but now I buy almost everything fresh (peas and edamame still frozen). Frozen veggies seem too mushy to me now.

Like sunnigummi, I like to roast everything -- Brussels sprouts, broc, cauliflower, asparagus, winter squash, carrots, zucchini, even sugar snap peas are delicious roasted.

Some things I like better raw, like spinach. Kale makes a great salad, especially if you toss the dressing in a day ahead of time so it can soften up a bit. Have you tried slicing red cabbage really thin and tossing it into your salad? It's really good for you and chances are you won't even taste it.

Trying things repeatedly helps as well, though I swear I've tried beets a million times and I just don't like them!

Yep, I do believe you will come to love them. :carrot:

Lots of new veggie experimenters here this week. YEAH for you all! :cool:

I think lots of us grew up being served veggies in ways we just didn't like. As adults, that was what we knew veggies to be so we either ate them grudgingly or not at all. I refused to eat Brussel Sprouts until this past year. I also had never cooked a fresh beet until recently. Both are now things I crave. Made Salt and Vinegar Zucchini chips this week that were addicting.

IMO the key is to figure out the tastes and consistencies you like in various foods and apply it to veggies. My taste leans toward sweet but not mushy. Roasting or grilling most veggies is a win for me. I also like to drizzle with a small bit of really good Balsamic Vinegar. Lots of veggies that I detest cooked I love raw.

If you like pasta-ish things, just saw this post this morning so I'll be trying this one soon: http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/food...-today-14.html
(It's Munchy's post #209 at the bottom of page 14)

One poster here has committed to try one new veggie a week. I love that idea! Test different ways of cooking (or NOT cooking it). Experiment with toppings (balsamic vinegar, low cal dressings, herbs and spices).

When you have a few spare minutes, surf around for "healthy veggiename recipe". Maybe zucchini, brussel sprouts, whatever. We alllll know that once you start websearches, there's no telling where it will take us!

Best of luck! Enjoy your new veggie world. :D

I will say I LOVE fresh green beans now and do roast them. Just a little olive oil and sea salt, in the oven til crisp tender.

Growing up green beans were canned mush, or even worse, covered in cream and cheese etc in a casserole.

I agree, aversion to veggies is often about memories and preparation.

Yesss! I literally never ate veggies before, and now my plates are filled eith veggies and 3-4oz of chicken. Everyone keeps going "who would've thought YOU'd be eating veggies?".
Here are some things that might help you!

- boiling them (how can people eat them raw!? I will never understand that)
- salting them slightly and/or using a little garlic and onion
- making soups
- mixing them into mashed potatoes or something with a similar consistency
- combining them with hummus or garlic paste
- trying one new thing at a time (you don't have to go into veggie filled plates overnight if you're not used to it (;)
- look up fun online recipes (for example, I pretty much cannot get myself to like zucchini, but I'll eat stuffed zucchini)
- smoothies (though I can't personally stand the idea of substituting a solid meal for a smoothie, some people like it)

I hope these can help! ^^

Yep, and in summer grilling them.

I think most people overcook veggies. Seriously, mush veggies are gross. Keep they crisp. Like in a stir fry kind of crisp. or roast. Needs to be fresh veggies to do that though!

I'll be the odd man out and say that I still don't really love veggies (but I like fruit even less, so maybe I am strange).

I very much dislike raw veggies but will sometimes force myself to eat a salad because it's the only on-plan restaurant option or because I need to watch my calories but am hungry.

I will eat some veggies grilled or roasted, including brussels sprouts, asparagus, zucchini, and broccoli. I dislike almost all steamed veggies unless they are drowning in butter (and then they are just a vehicle for the butter). I sometimes will eat stir-fried Asian-style veggies, which are tolerable to me.

The truth is, I don't LOVE veggies. I like some "ok." I force myself to eat more than I want to simply because I know they're good for me, they're low calorie, and they're filling.

I was even a vegetarian for about 10 years (vegan for 4). I experimented with veggies in almost every way known to man.

Don't love 'em. But I have learned to tolerate them and like a few. Sometimes that's all we can ask for.

Have hope! Before I lost my weight , the only veggie I ever liked was the lettuce on a Big Mac. I agree with the previous posters that preparation can make all the difference for those who aren't fans. Can't recommend roasting enough; especially brussel sprouts and cauliflower.

Be patient with yourself it might take a bit of time!

Thanks everyone! Whenever I read the weight loss advice to eat more veggies, I've often thought, "Well, geez, if I liked veggies I wouldn't be so fat!"

I can't even imagine ever loving brussel sprouts! But then again if you would've told me I'd be able to eat the Green Giant broccoli steamer for dinner some nights, I'd have thought you were crazy, so I suppose anything's possible. And I do kind of like the stir fried chicken and veggies I make.

I guess I could try to mix up the veggies I throw into the stir fry. And I'll try roasting a few more things - that's how I eat asparagus.

Thanks again! I'll keep eating them and hope one day I'll love them.

Keep trying different ways to eat them. I think people who dislike veggies must have been served some pretty badly prepared veg when they were little. My mother was practically a vegan so I grew up on lots of fresh veggies thankfully. There are still some I don't like but I eat hundreds of them so I'm ok with not liking kale lol.

Not every veg has to be prepared the same way. I simply hate raw broccoli, but I will eat it steamed or roasted. I will not eat kale raw or cooked, but I will have it in a smoothie. I will not eat green beans unless they are braised until mushy. So I've found all the different ways to cook my veggies so that I'll eat them. I make sure I eat both raw and cooked veggies every day. Veggies are not optional, so find a way to appreciate them.

Oh and I used to hate salads when I was dieting. Hate hate hate hate hated them! All my life I probably hated them. I associated salads with dieting. But when I started doing IE and making peace with food I had to start asking myself some important questions like "what do I want to put in my salad?" After thinking a lot about it I realized that I really truly wanted to put ranch dressing in my salad. But I never allowed myself because I only ate salads when I was dieting, and ranch dressing is a BAD food with calories in it. So instead I always put olive oil and vinegar in it and hated every bite. When I finally let myself put the dressing on my salad that I truly wanted to eat I started eating and LOVING salads by the bucketfuls. I eat a huge entree salad every day and can't live without salad. Every day I eat a lettuce and spinach, carrots, colorful peppers, avocado, peas or black beans, cucumbers, radishes, mushrooms, any vegetable in the fridge! And I add some grilled chicken or shrimp or sometimes even ham to it and voila, lunch! And all those years I deprived myself of salad because I was unwilling to put 2tbsp of ranch dressing on it. What an idiot I was! All the salads I could have eaten and enjoyed!

So perhaps there is a part of you that associates vegetables with dieting and I can understand that nobody wants to eat diet food. So think long and carefully about how you want to eat a vegetable. Does a plain old carrot stick sound boring? Wouldn't it be nicer dipped in a bit of hummus or a bit of dressing? Do boiled peas make you cringe? Then why not grate some parmesan on them and a touch of butter?

Get the veggies in any way you can and don't listen to people who tell you that putting dressing on your salad will make you fat. I did listen to those people and I hated salads. Now that I'm listening to myself I feel fantastic, have lost weight and I'm loving my veg.

This thread makes me want to experiment with the veggies but I'm not a big cook. I would love to love veggies! Roasting them sounds great so I may try it but I'm limited in my likes (broccoli, cauliflower, peas, green beans and corn).. lol stunted taste buds :( great advice on here for veggie haters :)

Also spring a little extra for local in season veggies. When veggies are shipped far distances they are picked before they are ripe, and the flavor just isn't there. Maybe try joining a CSA- you get new fresh vegetables every week. Before I did that I didn't know that lettuce could even have a taste--it can when it is fresh picked!

I was raised with veggies in every dish. I came from a somewhat poor and very large family, and every meal was rice, noodle, or potato based. All meals started by cutting up onions, peppers, carrots, celery, and whatever else we could get. Tomatoes, chillies, squash, all those. Certain things like the broccolie, peas, corn and so on, we had frozen bags of. When we snacked, it was on carrots and apples which were cheap and plentiful. I am so glad we were "forced" to eat our veggies. Not much forced. I love them. I could eat veggies and rice every day! Love them!

So, I do have one veggie I absolutely hate. It is OKRA! Yuk. It is slimy. But to be fair, if someone is a good gumbo maker, then they can get mileage from okra, just not me.

Couldn't have said it better myself. This diet, and I'm only 4 days in, will be a HUGE struggle for me if I can't get in the vegetables, apparently. How can I make the veggies taste better?

I used to like even less veg. But the better cook I became and the more I experimented, I've grown to love so many now. Right now I have French carrots w/balsamic vinegar roasting in oven, green tomatoes ready for pan firing, and leftover quinoa/rice w/broccoli ready to be zapped. The protein is filet mignon and they're small so had to make more veg.

For lunch I was craving salad to have with my leftover slice of prosciutto/red onion pizza.

Hubs is English and hated almost all veg when he same over. Now he eats as much or more than I do. It didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. We eat almost no processed got do which I think has allowed our taste buds to be "cleansed."

You can't, they're already extremely delicious. But you can learn to cook, experiment, and eat them. I promise you will start to like them.

I absolutely love asparagus I can eat it raw.

I'm glad someone posted to this thread. I'd like to revive it. As a child and teen, I grew up eating canned corn, peas and green beans. Never any variety and never anything fresh. They were assigned a very tiny corner on my plate.

Veggies are an acquired taste. If you are accustomed to eating a lot of sweets, they will taste very bitter to you, but I believe they are very healthy. If you make a point to have one serving of veggies at each meal and vary them from meal to meal, I believe you will eventually come to like them. When I first started eating more veggies I noticed the following improvements. 1) my nails started growing longer and stronger. 2) I have much less joint pain. 3) my cravings for sweets are almost gone. When I do eat sweets occasionally, they taste excessively sweet to me and I can only eat a very small portion.

I went through a period when each week, I went through the fresh vegetable section and bought one veggie I had never tried before. Then I googled and found a way to prepare them. I can honestly say I never found any that I disliked enough to never want to eat it again. Greens like kale and collards were the hardest. I do try to get them in at least once a week, and to make them more palatable I sprinkle them with crumbled Feta Cheese.

I have trouble eating raw veggies, other than salad or celery sticks. My body just has a hard time digesting them, but we are all different.

Yes, what a great thread!

An easy way to start getting them is to sneak them into things... carrot zucchini muffins, zucchini cake, a lentil soup or chicken soup with lots of veggies in it, smoothies with greens... I rarely sit down and just eat vegetables by themselves. Not my thing. But bell peppers and tomatoes on my grilled cheeses or in my quesadillas? Veggies stuffed into soups? Those are my thing, so I do a lot of stuff like that.

Comment about okra. Okra is one of the "superfoods" rich in soluble fiber. Cook it in a tomato based sauce and it thickens the sauce and "loses" the slime. My lunch is usually sauteed veggies (including okra) topped with a mix of tomato sauce and, yes, plain greek yogurt. Mainly with veggies that "like" being in a tomato sauce (Not sure I would try this with beets, for example)

Also fried okra is simply nummy. But. Not a good diet choice :)

GrannyNancy, I see you are in SC. Okra is a southern thang! LOL Hasn't really caught on up her in PA. I have bought frozen mixed veggies for soup that contain a bit of okra. That's about my limit, so far.

You NEVER see it on a restaurant menu.

I grow them but I buy them frozen and just cook them in the microwave for a minute or two then throw in a sauce. The fresh ones in the stores are usually nasty. To me, learning about the veggies I eat really helps me embrace them. I am working on liking kale and dark leafy greens. I normally sneak them in various veggies dishes so that I get a low dose a lot of the time. Okra is truly a superfood though.

https://draxe.com/okra-nutrition/

Seriously, if you are hungry enough you will grow to LOVE veggies!

:hug:

@wannabehealthy don’t feel bad for not liking raw veggies. They are actually really hard to digest and Ayurveda suggests to never eat vegetables raw. Also, many veggies have more nutrients when cooked.

I wanted to comment on something that happened at my house yesterday. My family was here for their Christmas visit. The coffee table was filled with snacks. Lots of cookies, candy, dips, chips, and also a big veggie tray. My 9 year old grandson approached the table and grabbed a handful of pepper strips from the veggie tray and sat down and ate them! I was so impressed at the good eating habits my son and his wife have instilled in him!! They are both healthy eaters and sweets are just a rare snack in their house.

It's easy if you can find tasty recipes!
Something like this - Vegan Mushrooms Pasta with Avocado Sauce
Really good!
https://greenann.com/wp-content/uplo...m-1300x867.jpg

Hi!
I Found a lot of vegan recipes here - https://greenann.com/
Tasty!
Maybe it will help someone!!!))

Hey everybody!
I'm new here and this topic just jumped at me right away. I'm having great difficulties eating veggies :/ But I red some nice tips and tricks in this forum now and would like to thank everyone for the help and support:))