The Colors of Fruits and Vegetables

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Fruits and vegetables come in terrific colors and flavors, but their real beauty lies in what’s inside. Fruits and vegetables are great sources of many vitamins, minerals and other natural substances that may help protect you from chronic diseases.

To get a healthy variety, think color. Eating fruits and vegetables of different colors gives your body a wide range of valuable nutrients, like fiber, folate, potassium, and vitamins A and C. Some examples include green spinach, orange sweet potatoes, black beans, yellow corn, purple plums, red watermelon, and white onions. For more variety, try new fruits and vegetables regularly.

Source: FruitsandVeggiesMatter.gov

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Adding Fruits and Vegetables to your Meal Plan

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Most of us know by now that we should be eating more servings of fruits and vegetables each day. But knowing and doing are two different things. We are constantly tempted to fill up on convenience and processed food. If your family is anything like mine, they’d much rather fill up on a bag of chips or a bowl of rice or pasta instead of trying an apple or a plate of steamed broccoli. So we’ll have to get creative. Here are 8 ideas to “sneak” some extra fruits and vegetables in your family’s diet.

1. Start the day with a breakfast smoothie. All you have to do is throw some fruits, low-fat yogurt and ice in a blender. Just blend for a few seconds and you have an easys ready to travel breakfast.

2. Dried fruit makes an excellent snack any time of the day. Add some small cartons of raisins to your child’s lunch box, pack some yogurt-covered raisins in your spouse’s briefcase and keep some trail mix sitting around for snacking. You can also add dried fruit such as banana chips to oatmeal and cereal in the morning.

3. Add some fruits and vegetables to your family’s sandwiches. Top a turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato or thinly sliced cucumber for example.

4. Have a salad bar at meal time. Set out a variety of chopped vegetables, lettuce, some low-fat cheese and croutons as well as several choices of low-fat salad dressing and let everybody create their own perfect salad.

5. Try this for dessert. Put a small scoop of low fat ice cream or frozen yogurt in a bowl and top it with lots of fresh or frozen fruit.

6. How about sampling some new fruits and vegetables. Maybe exotic fuits like Pepino Melons, Sapotes, Ugli Fruit, Cherimoya or Kumquats for example. On the vegetable side you might try Chayote Squash, Bitter Melon or Calabaza Squash.

7. Make a pot of vegetable soup or a stew that’s heavy on veggies and easy on the meat. Both of these make some great comfort food when the weather gets cold.

8. Start “My Veggie Day”. Each family member gets to pick a vegetable one day of the week. They qualify to pick a vegetable as long as they tried each vegetable the week before, otherwise they loose a turn and Mom gets to pick.

Incorporate a few of these ideas and you will have everyone in your family eating more fruits and vegetables in no time.