Five Quick and Easy Ways to Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

If you have the slightest interest in eating healthy foods, you know you should be eating more fruits and vegetables. However, if you have a busy schedule, you may be find it difficult to actually get those healthy foods onto your plate. Here are five easy ways you can eat more fruits and vegetables without spending all day (or even half an hour) on it.

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Tip # 1: Put Fruit on Your Morning Cereal

A bowl of cereal is one of the fastest breakfasts to prepare, but it is also one of the best carriers for healthy foods. Almost any cereal, hot or cold, tastes great topped with fruit. If you don't have time to cut up fruit in the morning, chose fruits that are naturally bite-sized, such as fresh berries in the summer and dried fruits (such as raising and dried cherries) in the winter. Just be sure to limit dried fruit consumption to 1/4 cup at a time (more can cause digestive problems).

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Tip # 2: Drink Your Fruits and Veggies

Supermarkets now stock a wide array of fruit and vegetable smoothies, but you can also make your own. Ingredients for smoothies can be prepared ahead and then stored in the fridge or freezer until they are ready to be used. For example, you could measure out 1/2 cup portions of frozen mixed into individual baggies. Then, when you wanted a smoothie, all you would have to do would be to pour milk into a blender, add the berries, throw in a ripe banana, and hit "frappe".

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Tip # 3: Use Premixed Salad Greens

Salads are one of the best ways to add vegetables to your diet, but sometimes preparing them takes too much time. Prewashed bags of salad greens are great to have on hand for rushed lunches and dinners: all you have to do is open the bag and pour the contents into a bowl. Since bags of greens cost more than heads of lettuce, you can also make your own bagged mixes. Just make sure to keep any wet ingredients (such as tomatoes) separate from greens until the salad is ready to serve. This will prevent greens from becoming soggy.

Eating More Fruits and Vegetables Tip # 4: Use the Salad Bar as Your Soux Chef

Many supermarkets and natural food stores now have salad bars. Visit one, and you'll see buckets of cut apples, carrots, broccoli, green beans, and many other fresh fruits and vegetables. Those these are supposed to be "for salad", the store really doesn't care what you do with them as long as you pay for them. So take some of those perfectly prepped foods home and cook them. This is an especially good idea for stir-fries or other vegetable-heavy dishes which normally require a lot of slicing and dicing.

Eat More Fruits and Vegetables Tip # 5: Use Steamer Bags

Many stores now carry microwave steaming bags (usually located near the aluminum foil). These can be used for frozen vegetables, fresh produce, and root vegetables such as potatoes and yams. You can also add butter, olive oil, and seasonings to the bags, something you can't do with microwavable frozen vegetables. Steamer bags are a particularity good choice for root vegetables. Potatoes that would take 30 minutes to steam on the stove-top can be prepared in 5 minutes by using microwave steaming bags.