I personally love vegetables and eat at least 6 servings a day, but unfortunately, my family doesn’t feel the same way about them. This goes especially for my husband. He will tell you “I eat 2 vegetables corn and mashed potatoes (from a box no less).” Sorry to burst your bubble, but neither is really a vegetable. So today I am going to be sharing with you my tips on how to eat more vegetables by sneaking them past yours and your families taste buds. If you don’t like vegetables these tips are especially for you.

My trick to sneaking vegetables stems from a book I purchased many years ago called Sneaky Chef. I think I own all but one of the versions now, but rarely actually look at the recipes since I found what works for me and our family and just keep doing that. In case you want to check them out here is my link to each one on Amazon.

#1 The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals

#2 The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue: 101 All-New Recipes and “Sneaky” Tricks for Creating Healthy Meals Kids Will Love

#3 The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (In the Kitchen!): Hiding Healthy Foods in Hearty Meals Any Guy Will Love

#4 The Speedy Sneaky Chef: Quick, Healthy Fixes for Your Favorite Packaged Foods

The general principle behind how to eat more vegetables sneakingly is to shred, puree, or chop up vegetables and add them to things you are already making. There are vegetables that are better disguised in things as opposed to others, but you can pretty much disguise any vegetable into a meal. Here are some of my own special tricks.

How to Eat More Vegetables- Sneaking in Mushrooms

I chop up mushrooms and cook them with ground turkey. You could also do this with ground beef or chicken. I personally replace one pound of ground meat with 1 package of mushrooms. You can’t see them or taste them and they very much resemble the texture of meat. I do this for meatloaves, taco meat, chili, soup, hamburgers I really can’t think of anything I don’t do this with. It saves money and adds vegetables to a meal which cuts down on calories.

How to Eat More Vegetables -with Cauliflower

Cauliflower can be used in so many things. One way is to have it in place of rice. All you do is finely chop raw cauliflower, viola. I easily do this by sticking it in a food processor or blender. Anytime something calls for rice especially for fried rice with stir-fries it is always cauliflower I use.

Another way to use cauliflower is in pizza crust. I’ve only done this once and it was really good, but just too time-consuming to make for a large family for dinner.

You can cook cauliflower and mash it up to make mashed potatoes too. You may have to try mixing it with regular mashed potatoes and gradually add less of potatoes and more of cauliflower until you have fully converted.

There was also a video recently about making bread out of cauliflower for a grilled cheese sandwich. We tried it, but we didn’t dry it quite enough and it came out soggy. So if you try it my suggestion is to get the cauliflower as dry as possible after cleaning.

How to Eat More Vegetables -Using Squash

I tried spaghetti squash instead of pasta a couple years ago and haven’t went back to pasta since. I really prefer spaghetti squash over pasta. It has a slightly sweet taste so I can have spaghetti sauce that is less sweet.

The trick to cooking spaghetti squash is to get it so that the noodles turn out just firm enough without being mushy or hard. You may have to play around with times since all microwaves and ovens differ.

I replace all of my pasta meals with this now such as spaghetti, alfredo, and chili mac. Check out how to make one of these and cook it here: spaghetti squash.  You can also substitute pasta with zucchini with a spiralizer, but I haven’t personally tried this before.

Other Ideas on How to Eat More Vegetables

• You can puree carrots, or sweet potatoes to put in a grilled cheese or add to mac n cheese.
• You can puree and chop different veggies to add to sauces like pasta and pizza. The trick is to get them so finely chopped that they are not noticed. It helps if they are the same color too like tomatoes and peppers in spaghetti sauce.
• Lettuce leaves can be used instead of bread to make a sandwich or in place of a tortilla to make a wrap. It isn’t hidden very well, but it is a nice replacement.
• You can make fries out of sweet potatoes, carrots, or zucchini. Cut them into shapes, toss on some olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper,  and roast them on a baking sheet on high for about 10 minutes. Serve them with something to dip them in and call them fries. I guarantee they will at least try them. They are really good too! You can also make chips out of kale.
• Add veggies as pizza or burger toppings. You might have to finely chop them to start with and gradually begin to add more or slice them bigger.
• Add veggies to your eggs. You can dice tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, peppers and mix them in. Spinach cooks well in eggs too.
• You can puree veggies into a shake or smoothie. I use a great protein shake that help give me a boost of energy, plus helps with gut health and weight loss. It is Vegan too. Check it out here  Solle Complete
• Have a Meatless Monday to try a new recipe that the kids help you pick from a cookbook. Let them help you prepare it so they are more apt to try it.
• When a recipe calls for vegetables double them.
• You can drink a greens drink supplement (mine tastes like Koolaid) or add it to things like smoothies, shakes, or even casseroles. The one I use is Solle Vital and does NOT taste like grass like most green drinks do. Again if you decide to try it contact me for a coupon code to use with your first order.

I challenge you to try just one of these strategies on how to eat more vegetables this next week. Let me know in the comments below which one you will be trying and then let me know how it went.

Check out my Nutrition for Weight Loss Eating Vegetables the Easy Way blog and get even more ideas.

This was a Facebook Live I did with this blog in case you like watching a video more than reading. Follow me here on Facebook to catch them first.