Adding fruits and vegetables to a diet is a great way to enhance nutrition. For years, it has been said continuously that the addition of fruits and vegetables to a diet is the best way to get the most nutritional value out of calories. The reason for the recommendation or advice is quite simple. These things are full of important nutrients like vitamins, fibers, minerals, and so on. It’s a great time to check whether enough vegetables and fruits are added to the diet.

Understanding the Daily Requirement

Before knowing how to add enough fruits and vegetables to the diet, it’s important to understand the daily recommended intake. As per the recommendations by USDA, an individual should take two cups of fruits plus two and a half cups of vegetables for a 2000-calorie diet. This is only an average limit and this could be increased or decreased depending on other factors like age, gender, and amount of physical activity carried out by the person.

It can be said that half of the plate of a meal should be filled with vegetables and fruits. This should be done during each and every meal of the day to achieve the recommended intake levels.

How Much is a Cup?

Above, it’s mentioned as a certain number of cups of fruits and vegetables should be added to the diet. So, how much is a cup? For fruits, any fruit or 100% juice would count as a cup here. It can be of any form like fresh, canned, frozen, dried, whole, cut piece, or pureed. When it comes to dry fruits, one cup will be equal to half a cup of dried fruits.

Likewise, for vegetables, any vegetable or 100% juice would count as one cup. Here again, any form can be considered. As such, the vegetables consumed may be cooked, raw, fresh, frozen, canned, dried, whole, cut piece, or mashed. In the case of raw leafy greens, two cups would be equal to one cup.

Tips to Include Fruits and Vegetables in Every Meal

Breakfast

• Cut down one of the eggs or half of the cheese in the omelet and add spinach, onions, or mushrooms instead. This way, the volume will be added when at the same time decreasing the amount of fat.
• Adding fruits to the whole grain cereal topped with low-fat milk is a great way to add fruits. Also, consider carrying a bottle of vegetable juice for the roads.
• Thick oatmeal topped with nuts, seeds, or dry fruits may be considered.
• The batter for waffles or pancakes can be added with blueberries.

Lunch

• Cut down the amount of meat and cheese on the sandwich and use vegetables instead.
• To the chicken/tuna salad, add fruits and vegetables like the following:
  • Celery
  • Carrots
  • Cucumber
  • Apple
  • Grapes
  • Pineapple
  • Cranberries
• Decrease the amount of peanut butter and add 1 banana or apple instead.
• Cut down pasta in soup and add vegetables instead.
• In general, when eating out, go for vegetarian dishes with lots of fruits and vegetables.

Snacks

• Replace the crackers with whole strawberries or carrots.
• Blueberries, broccoli, and other easy-to-eat fruits and vegetables can also be considered.
• Try adding fruit kabobs and popsicles.
• Apples, celery, cauliflower, and others are also good options.

Dinner

• Cut down a portion of the meal and add an extra serving of vegetables or salad.
• Replace half a portion of pasta with vegetables.
• Try stir-fried vegetables with chicken.
• Consider doing chili with beans or other vegetables rather than meat.
• Replace the traditional hamburger with a mushroom or black bean burger.

Examples of Fruits and Vegetables with Approx. 100 (or less) Calories

• Medium-size apple
• Medium-size banana
• 1 cup blueberries
• 1 cup grapes
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup Broccoli
• 1 cup bell peppers
• 2 tbsp hummus

Attaining Success

The easiest way to attain success in the mission of adding fruits and vegetables to the diet is to keep a bowl of fruits or vegetables within reach in the kitchen or desk. Thus, they can be easily grabbed whenever the person is feeling hungry. It’s okay to buy and keep some pre-packaged and ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables. These would cut down the cutting and preparation time thus, making it easy to consume. It’s advisable to keep dried fruits on hand for the snack. This is also easy to take away wherever the person goes. It’s okay to use the microwave to cook the vegetables quickly.

Finally, it’s important to track how many vegetables and fruits the person in a day. This is because the person is more likely to consume more fruits and vegetables if not tracking it down. Staying at the appropriate levels is also important.