9 tips for getting more vegetables into your diet

The average Canadian does not eat enough vegetables, yet nutrition experts would advise us to eat five to 10 helpings every day. If we did, we would probably all be much healthier. Here are nine tasty tips for getting more vegetables into your diet.

Nearly everyone likes carrot and celery sticks, cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes and green peppers. Place a platter of raw vegetables in the centre of the table at every meal.

Vegetables are not merely a side dish at dinner. Scramble eggs with peppers and onions for breakfast; make sandwiches with almost any vegetable that won't roll off the bread.

Filling your stomach with a nutrient-rich, low-calorie salad, means less room for the higher-calorie items that follow.

• Potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli can be made into a creamy, comforting soup.
• Sauté chopped onion in oil until tender; add to a food processor with cooked vegetables.
• Purée until smooth; return to the saucepan.
• Thin with broth or low-fat milk, reheat and season to taste.

Do your health a favour and ask for artichoke hearts, broccoli, and other vegetables that many pizza places offer these days.

A salade niçoise — mixed greens, steamed green beans, boiled potatoes, sliced hard-boiled egg and tuna drizzled with vinaigrette — would be perfect. Serve with crusty whole-grain bread.

Try green beans, peas, corn, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes. Like it chunky? Cut into big pieces. Don't want to see them? Purée with a bit of sauce, then add.

Stack meat in a sandwich no higher than half the thickness of a slice of bread. Pile on low-calorie slices of lettuce and tomatoes.

Top with sliced tomato and lettuce. Veggie burgers taste better than you think!