Your health: “Veg-out” for health
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Your health: “Veg-out” for health
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Eating more fruits and vegetables may be the single most important dietary change you can make to reduce your risk of dangerous disease. Quite simply, Australians need to eat more fruits and vegetables otherwise they risk coronary heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. This fact sheet was written by Dr Brett Gardiner, Director of Medical Services at HKHS. It is part of our Health Hotline series.
Variety is the spice of life!All fruit and vegetables are healthy! Variety means a range of nutrients but it also keeps things interesting. We are attracted by colour, so serve as many colours as possible, particularly yellow, green and red - try corn on the cob, beans and carrots or mixed salad leaves, grated carrot and baby tomatoes. Instead of eating your favourite fruit and vegies all year, eat what is in season. This is nature’s way of ensuring you get a variety of nutrients and in season food is the most flavoursome and cheapest. Prepare!Many kids can’t be bothered peeling fruit and vegies; so peel it and it’s more likely to be eaten! Fruit salad is always a favourite. Try adding tinned peaches to a freshly diced orange, apple and banana. Or slice fruit and serve on a plate with a couple of grapes and strawberries – a little lemon juice will help prevent cut fruit from going brown. Chop up carrot and celery sticks and serve with salsa, avocado or a low-fat dip. ConvenienceCanned and frozen varieties are terrific, easy and nutritious! Frozen berries and peas, tinned peaches, pears and fruit salad, tinned corn, beetroot, baked beans and tomatoes are just some of the more popular varieties. Spotty bananasDon’t buy too much fruit at once. If you can, do your fruit and vegetable shop more than once a week. Spotty bananas will sit in the bowl forever. Fresh fruit disappears much more quickly. Sneak in a little extraTry adding apple, sultanas or berries to muffins and cakes, fruit to smoothies or breakfast cereal, serve ice cream with fruit, cook with onions and garlic, make mini-pizzas with tomato paste, chopped vegies and cheese, grate carrot, zucchini and potato into a savoury muffin mixture or grate beetroot or butternut pumpkin to add colour to your salad or sandwich. Tips for kidsDon’t put a value judgement on food like ‘you can’t have sweets until you eat your vegetables’. This can convey the message that vegies are duty foods and that sweets are the reward! Vegetables have a less sweet taste and take longer to be accepted. Give children a good dessert (fruit and ice cream or banana custard) and keep trying with the vegetables, a small amount at a time. Persevere!It is important to keep offering vegies and fruit in a variety of ways as it often takes several tries before we learn to like something new. Also, show your children that you enjoy eating fruit and vegetables. They learn a lot more from what you do than what you say. |
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© Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Health Service | |||
A recent survey found that 70% of Australians did not eat enough vegetables and that men especially,
ate no fruit and few vegetables apart from potato. That is a concern, as it’s the leafy greens and the
orange vegies that offer us the most health protection. It is recommended we eat two serves fruit and
five serves vegetables a day. So how do we entice men, children and teenagers to ‘veg-out’?
