Fruits & Veggies... Making veggies delicious

Fruits & Veggies... Making veggies delicious                                  

Many adults who I coach for weight management and diabetes consume little to no vegetables.  A common thread I hear from them is that they dislike vegetables and often do not know how to prepare them.  I can appreciate that.

Some people simply dislike the taste.  Scientists are finding that differences in how we perceive taste are programmed into our DNA.  The level of bitterness we perceive in food varies from person to person.  Genetically wired "supertasters" may be turned off by certain veggies that other people find enjoyable.  The good news is that food scientists and chefs say there are steps we can take to mitigate the bitterness.  We can balance the bitter/strong flavor of some vegetables with a little salt, sugar, lemon juice or vinegar.  So how do I effectively do this?

Being a dietitian does not necessarily make me an expert chef.  I want to know:  What is the easiest way I can provide a variety of vegetables at dinner that look good, smell good, and taste delicious?  After all, I want to truly enjoy the vegetables we eat.  This will help create positive experiences that lay the foundation for future eating habits and health.

On occasion the dinner veggie I serve receives a "Wow- I love this!" reaction, which is music to my ears.  This reaction happens when I steam broccoli, drizzle with browned butter, and add a touch of sea salt.  Even our non-veggie lover child rates it a 7 on a scale of 10.  I learned this browned butter technique from my mom.  Here is a 2+ minute video showing the technique.  

At one point I (discretely) began reducing the amount of browned butter and replacing it with coconut oil for health benefit reasons.  However, using greater than 50% coconut oil resulted in diminishing returns on the yummy wow factor.  I will stick with 50-50.

I am not one to disguise veggies in food.  Rather, I want my family to recognize and enjoy eating vegetables for themselves.  To learn additional ways to enhance the flavor of our dinner vegetable, I recently subscribed to Fine Cooking magazine and am thrilled to discover an article on the technique of glazing.    

There is truly an art and a science to using this technique.  It is different than the way I learned to boil carrots and load them up with sugar, butter and salt.

Apparently, much of the sweetness comes from the vegetables themselves. 

"As the vegetables cook, the liquid draws out their sugar and reduces to form a delicate glaze (with the aid of butter and just a touch of additional sweetener)".  When I master this technique, glazed vegetables will be a great weeknight side. 

Carrots are classic for glazing, but I also want to experiment with other root veggies -- beets, turnips, etc. The article suggests experimenting with your favorite flavors.  “There’s a whole world of vegetables to be glazed, types of sweeteners to glaze them in, and flavors to add”.   I am excited to try two new glazing recipes: glazed carrots and glazed beets.

Off to the grocery store.  My new approach is to have a plan outlined for the side veggie each night this week.  Yet I will be flexible depending on what is on sale (and what life brings this week). 

• Sat - salad (romaine lettuce, dried cranberries, toasted almond slices, feta cheese, tossed with raspberry walnut vinaigrette dressing)
• Sun - broccoli
• Mon - cabbage salad
• Tues - beets
• Wed - carrots/onions/potatoes
• Thurs - roasted red bell peppers (or frozen corn)
• Fri - glazed carrots

Canned green beans as needed for a plan-B on any night

One small step toward eating well is that each week I will try at least one new way to prepare a vegetable.  I will make sure to start with a product of good quality.  Personally, I prefer using whole carrots since baby carrots can sometimes be flavorless.  I may also attempt glazed beets on Tuesday.

My long term goal is to reach the point at which I simply have a variety of vegetables on hand and intuitively know how to prepare them to look, smell, and taste delicious. 

Fruits & veggies...Staying stocked up

Staying stocked up

The F&V (fruit and veggie) tracker is working like magic!   As one reader commented,

" I particularly like the intrinsic motivation that kids get from "keeping score" on a chart. Makes for less "motivating" required from mom. :) ”

 A picture is worth is thousand words.  David won the gold medal this week:  

By branching out on the variety of F&V we are eating, we are able to increase our overall intake.  Baby carrots are convenient, but trying to fill up the tracker solely with carrots will quickly lead to burn out.

Not very long ago I fell into the rut at dinnertime of resorting to tossing the cellophane bag of spinach leaves and the bag of baby carrots next to the main course on the island for our vegetable almost every night.  It was the easiest way to "prepare"  a veggie for dinner.  Our children will need spinach aversion therapy as adults!  Just to complete the task of eating the spinach, Jimmy would wad up a handful of spinach and pack it into his mouth.  After several chews, he would flash a big smile, teeth smothered in green mush & flecks of chewed up spinach.  Monkey see, monkey do... the younger siblings followed suit.   Hel-looo mother, it's time to switch the veggie menu!

Celery and red bell pepper strips are a new addition to our repertoire and are easy to pack in lunches.  Finding tasty celery can be a gamble, however.  Sometimes it is delicious yet other times horribly bitter.  So far so good on the Costco 4 pack of celery hearts and 6 pack of red peppers.  Single serving peanut butter packets are convenient and tasty for dipping a variety of fruits & veggies (including carrots). 

Today, my purchases in the produce section have taken an interesting turn.  A few oranges and apples are no longer sufficient.  I now am buying F&V in bulk just to keep us stocked up - oranges by the box, 6 pack of hearts of Romaine lettuce, 3 bunches of bananas at a time. Fortunately, none of it is going to waste so far!  We are actually fighting over the pears so as to grab one before they disappear.  Eating more F&V may mean an extra trip to the store, but that's a fair trade-off in my mind.  

Is this just a passing phase, a F&V honeymoon?  Will the children lose steam or burn out on eating the same veggies? Will I be able to squeeze in a trip to the store to keep us adequately stocked?

I realize that not all children take to eating a variety of F&V.  We have one adult child who likes a narrow range of fruits and veggies.  Forcing or manipulating a child to eat is a counter productive strategy.  What does work is being a good role model, patience, and time.  Scientists tell us that children's taste buds are more sensitive to bitter taste, which accounts for the increase of veggie consumption that often occurs as children mature into adulthood.  I tell myself their taste buds will eventually mature.  In the meantime, a "no thank you bite"  (try one bite and then say "no thank you" if one does not care to eat any more) helps their taste buds become familiar with the flavor.  It also teaches them to politely decline beyond one bite rather than make a disrespectful "Eeewwww yuck" response.

A helpful website at http://sacredappetite.com offers concrete solutions to return to harmonious family meals at the table, without battles or pressure.  The author's goal is to teach children to enjoy what’s good for them, not just get them to eat it. 

My short-term goal is to stay stocked up on a variety of F&V.  Next, I want to make the F&V offering at meals as appealing as is within my power.  If the veggies look good, smell good, and taste good, we're more likely to achieve the long-term goal of creating positive eating experiences that form the foundation for lasting habits. 

One step at a time, we are working on building habits to eat well for a lifetime.

Fruits & Veggies... Getting a baseline

Getting a Baseline

Paying attention to the fruits and veggies that my children eat often takes a back seat to the urgent millions of other things on the radar in my role as parent.   Author Stephen Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) coined this the "tyranny of the urgent".  Urgent means it requires immediate attention as in, "Quick!  Get in the car we should have left 5 minutes ago for soccer practice!"

On the other hand, eating fruits and vegetables is not an urgent matter.  Not packing veggies in my children's lunch today will unlikely cause much of an immediate impact.  However, there may be negative effects down the road as there is overwhelming evidence that eating adequate fruits and veggies helps protect us against major diseases such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke.  Therefore, although important, it is not urgent that we make sure we are eating adequate fruits and veggies.  Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more pro-activity.  How am I going to make this non-urgent activity of eating adequate fruits and veggies begin to get some traction?

 

To get started, I need to learn how far short we are falling with eating adequate fruits and veggies.  The current recommendation is to eat at least 5 servings but ideally closer to 10 servings per day of fruits and veggies. To get a sense of how many fruits and veggies we eat, our family agreed to begin tracking this week.  At dinner, I asked everyone if they would be willing to keep track of how many fruits and veggies they eat for one week.  Although no one jumped up and down with joy, they at least did not moan and groan. 

 

So, after dinner, I pulled out  this free on-line tracker  www.pps.k12.pa.us, and I printed the following:

 

• The tracker - front page (one for each person)
• What counts as a serving size - page 3 (one copy to share)

Using a marker I modified the tracker pictured here.  Under each day of the week, I added an "F" (for fruit) above the left column of 5 circles, and a "V" (for veggies) above the right column of 5 circles.  We used an orange marker to fill in a fruit circle for every serving we ate, and a green marker to fill in a veggie circle for every serving we ate.  There is a fruit and veggie tracking app at http://munch5aday.com/, but I prefer the colorful paper and pen method.

Although at this point we are simply gathering data to develop a baseline, I am pleasantly surprised at how the simple act of paying attention to a behavior provides it's own built-in motivator.  Without even mentioning a peep about any "should"s  (i.e., "we should eat more fruits and veggies"), the children are already in healthy competition to eat enough fruits and veggies to color in all the fruit & veggie "bubbles".   When trying to determine how much salad David ate, he had the great idea to measure the salad with a measuring cup the next day so we aren't guessing what constitutes a serving size.  ;-)

I want to be a good example and do all that is within my power to set my children up to be of healthy mind and body, now and in the future.  This can be done by teaching them what is an adequate amount of fruits and veggies to eat each day, and how to do it.   For now, we are just collecting information for a baseline.  No judgment, no pressure.  Just data collection.  From this baseline, the next step will be to track our progress as we find ways to increase our intake of fruit and veggies.

 

 

Clear the way...Habits can be hard to break

Habits can be hard to break  

If someone did a motion study of me, it would reveal that I am a creature of habit.

Habits can be a good thing.  Life is more efficient- I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. It's freeing- I don't have to spend much time thinking through all the infinite minutia of life. However, every once in a while it is good to examine whether my habits are helping me to be the best healthy me, or not. That is my aim with going dairy-free this Lent... to find out what's best for me. In doing so, I am totally messing with well worn patterns of daily life.  Sometimes changing things up can feel like a long overdue breath of fresh air.  Other times it can feel disruptive, foreign, time consuming, and draining.

When it comes to eating habits, it's super easy to get stuck in a rut and not even realize it. To get out of that deeply grooved rut requires some creative behavior modification tricks.  Getting myself off of dairy foods hasn't been easy.  First, I had to deal with the lure of those yummy foods so beloved to this Wisconsin cheese-head.  I have been on a mission to discover what to eat or drink in place of them.  I will spare the details for now and get straight to the "take-away's" I discovered about trying to cut out foods I was hooked on.

1. Have a very specific goal

My goal is "no dairy during Lent".  A specific time frame reassures me that this isn't forever.  I can decide after 6 weeks whether to continue with it or not.  I established from the beginning where the line will be drawn.  No cow-based milk in my coffee or in my post-exercise protein drink.  No ice cream.  No cheese. 

 

2.  Know the reason why

In the face of temptation, it helps to ask myself, "WHY am I doing this?" (What's motivating me?)  It is easier to say NO to something when I have a bigger YES calling me.  My bigger YES is my health.  Specifically being able to answer the question-  does dairy-free eating help my digestion, bloating, and general health of mind & body?  Knowing the reason why strengthens my ability to make the behavior change.

3.  Change my thoughts

As our thoughts go, so our actions follow.  It's like a chain reaction.

• First, there's a trigger.  For example, John (with the best of intentions) buys a carton of my favorite flavor of ice cream (French salted caramel) for our family Sunday dessert night.
• Second, I automatically think: "I would LOVE to eat a bowl of this ice cream; John bought it just for me; what will it hurt?  I'll just start back on dairy-free tomorrow."
• Lastly, those particular thoughts could lead me to cave in and eat the ice cream.

Blazing new trails...

To break the chain that would lead to me eating the ice cream, I must interrupt with a more helpful thought that's going to give me a different behavior outcome.  I insert a "but" statement that goes like this: "I will really enjoy eating my favorite ice cream, BUT doing so will mess up my experiment to determine how my body reacts to dairy-free."  The amazing thing is that by changing our thoughts time and time again, we are actually retraining our brain. Scientists say we have the ability to make new neural pathways.  With practice, we are literally changing the make-up of our brain.  It's kind of like forging a new path through dense forest.  The more I take the new path, the easier it becomes to take this route over time. 

4.  Take baby steps that are doable

I was dreading life without cheese-smothered pizza.  After all, what's pizza without cheese?  The big test came on home-made pizza night, a once-a-week affair in our family.  I've seen a few creative ideas for cheese-free pizza. I have toyed with the idea of making a dairy-free, wheat-free "paleo" pizza (http://paleodietlifestyle.com/paleo-pizza/). But I had been procrastinating with putting it on the menu because it felt too overwhelming to try something new.  All I had in me was the ability to take one small step to adjust our usual pizza to make it cheese-free.  So, I sautéed whatever veggies were on hand (onions, red & yellow peppers, mushrooms).  Next, I piled the veggies along with some sliced olives & arugula greens onto the cheese-free half of one of the pizzas.  The result: the flavor was out of this world!  John tasted the pizza and thought I had fallen off my dairy-free experiment. He didn't even realize this delicious, veggie-laden pizza was cheese-free!  One small step, and voila!

5.  It's OK to put my health first

In the busyness of life, it's common (especially for women) to fall into the trap of taking care of everyone else...except themselves.   Important note to self:  When I take care of myself, I am better able to take care of those around me (think oxygen mask on an airplane).  Getting adequate nutrition is important to me.  So I spent some time experimenting with cow's milk replacement along with researching the nutritional aspect of dairy versus non-dairy eating.  After trying different non-milk ways to make a protein drink, I was a bit dismayed with the results.  But I pushed on.  I then reached my most exciting discovery.  Unsweetened almond milk is delicious and most satisfying whirred in the Vitamix with 1/2 frozen banana, a few ice cubes and a scoop of chocolate protein powder.  I was thrilled to learn that one cup of almond milk provides more calcium than what I was getting through all the dairy products I had previously been consuming in one day (with far less fat and carbohydrates).  Doing something for me helped me find a cow's milk alternative that is delicious and nutritious for my body.

6. Clear out, if possible, the temptations

I poured my carton of lactose-free whole milk down the drain so I wouldn't be tempted to use it in my coffee.  I'm surprised by my dislike for black coffee given that I drank it black for many years.  It is almost not worth drinking.  I miss the creamy smoothness.  So far, the best "cream" I've found in place of whole lactose-free milk is a dairy free coconut milk beverage.  It will have to do for three more weeks. But who's counting?

Reflecting on the past few weeks, experimenting with a dairy-free diet has not been easy.  The good news is that my dairy-free path is becoming more well-trodden.  Perhaps the brain neurons are forming new pathways. I feel more confident that I will be able to keep my resolve to be dairy-free through Lent.  Is it worth it?  It doesn't always feel like it in the moment, but I repeatedly tell myself it will be in the long run. These new habits are not an end.  Rather they are the means to an end.  They will help me to determine what feels best, what is best for my body and health.

Moving forward, I will continue to break old habits to help clear the way and make room for goodness.  My next focus for the month of March will be "Bring on the Fruits & Vegetables!"