{"id":45599,"date":"2021-09-15T12:14:21","date_gmt":"2021-09-15T16:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/?p=45599"},"modified":"2021-09-15T12:14:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T16:14:27","slug":"eat-more-greens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/eat-more-greens\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Deliciously Simple Ways to Eat More Greens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just about everyone needs to eat more greens.

Even you, healthy eater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because according to Dr. Michael Greger<\/a>, only 1 in 25 Americans eats 12 servings of greens per month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which at first sounds kind of good, to think you\u2019re that one person in 25 who gets a gold star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But get this. Twelve servings per month is only a quarter<\/em> of the amount Dr. Greger says we should be eating for optimal health. He recommends that many servings per week<\/em> \u2014 an amount that very, very few people actually get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greens are packed with nutrients, and low in calories. So on the ANDI scale<\/a>, which measures nutrients per calorie (remember the scores that used to be posted all over Whole Foods salad bars), greens top the charts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another good reason to eat greens: many greens also fall into the class of cruciferous vegetables (kale<\/a>, collards, and mustard greens, to name a few), which provide large amounts of cancer-fighting isothiocyanates (ITC\u2019s) like sulphorophane<\/a>. According to Dr. Joel Fuhrman, in population studies, cruciferous veggies<\/a> appear to be about twice as protective as other vegetables against disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But enough with that. We all know greens are incredibly healthy (it\u2019s one of very few things almost everyone in the nutrition field agrees on), and we need to eat more of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how we can get more greens?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7 Ways to Eat More Greens<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. Start a daily salad habit.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people don\u2019t mind salads, especially when you\u2019ve got a dressing you\u2019re digging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how can we eat more of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, it\u2019s two ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, you can make a giant salad with beans (I like chickpeas, myself) your default lunch. Make a tasty oil-free dressing<\/a>, then make salad easy: keep two kinds of greens in on hand \u2014 one mild and one more bitter (like dandelion greens or cabbage) \u2014 and combine them in equal parts. If you like, put it in a wrap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to add other veggies, great. But like all habits, the easier this one is to do, the more likely you\u2019ll stick with it. And if all you did was get a giant handful of two different greens plus a serving of beans for lunch each day\u2026 well, you\u2019d be doing alright in my book (and Dr. Greger’s, for that matter).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If lunchtime salad isn\u2019t your thing, my favorite trick for getting my family (and myself) to eat a salad with dinner is to prepare the salad first, and put it on the table while you\u2019re making the rest of the dinner, so that everyone will want to eat while they smell the rest of the food cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otherwise, far too often, we tend not to eat much salad, because we want to get to hot, tastier food that comes out at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Blend greens into your smoothie.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if green smoothies<\/a> aren\u2019t your thing, you can still get a serving of fresh greens in your morning smoothie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spinach is my favorite for its ability to slip unnoticed past my taste buds. But baby kale is surprisingly hard to detect as well, and it has the added bonus of being cruciferous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking again about habit formation, you want to start with a very small amount, and only gradually increase the greens as you get used to the slightly different taste of your smoothie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more trick to cut down on waste: when the greens in your fridge (you know, the ones you\u2019re making those salads with?) are just about to go bad, throw them in the freezer, and then use the frozen ones in your smoothie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. At dinner time, think \u201cgrain, green, and bean.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s face it: with the busy lives most of us lead, greens don\u2019t make it onto the dinner plate very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t like them\u2026 it\u2019s just that it\u2019s so easy to NOT make them. Very few dinners depend on the greens, so when we get busy, the greens are the first food to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter my favorite simple meal planning strategy: a grain, a green, and a bean<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you don\u2019t know what to make, just thinking in these terms as you glance through your fridge and pantry should help you see meal ideas where previously there were none.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a grain, a green, and a bean doesn\u2019t have to just be a big bowl of mush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider these far more interesting dinner choices:<\/p>\n\n\n\n