By Chelsi Rolton
As a CrossFitter I know how important it is to get enough vegetables into my diet but more often than not I’m falling short of the recommended 5-6 serves of vegetables a day.
Shift work get’s in the way, I get home late and sometimes the last thing i want to do is prepare food.
Eating more fresh vegetables is one of the simplest choices we can make to improve our overall health. Vegetables can help protect us from arthritis, heart disease, stroke, dementia, cancer, plus it makes you feel fantastic.
However more than 95 per cent of Australians are not eating enough vegetables each day.
A study in 2014-15, found that 49.8% of Australians aged 18 years and over ate the recommended daily serves of fruit, while only 7.0% met the guidelines for vegetables. Only one in twenty (5.1%) adults met both guidelines. These rates were similar to the 2011-12 study (48.5%, 6.1% and 4.2% respectively). In 18-24 year olds only 3.2 met their fruit and vegetable intake.
This study also found that one third of Australians’ daily energy comes from ‘junk food’.
Hence we don’t understand how beneficial eating more vegetables is to us.
I know I have made the excuses to not eat vegetables such as it takes too long, rice/pasta is quicker, I can’t eat vegetables for breakfast or lunch but WE CAN.
Here is a great little recipe I use to increase my vegetable intake and its amazing.
Veggie Mash
Ingredients:
- 1 or 2 sweet potato
- 1/4 pumpkin
- 2-3 zucchini
- 2 handful of spinach
- 500g mushrooms
- 2 onions
Method
Chop potato, pumpkin and zucchini and boil or roast.
Chop spinach and boil until dark.
Saute onion then add mushroom. Season with salt and pepper.
Get a big pot for mashing.
Blend onions and mushrooms into a paste.
Blend spinach.
Add all vegetables to pot and mash making sure you get out all of the lumps.
BOOM!!! You just created a beautiful vegetable mix for you and your family to enjoy.
This mix should stay fresh for 4 days.