I hate vegetables. Any tips for sneaking them into my diet?

- What about butter? Drowned in butter and salt was the only way I would eat most vegetables when I was a kid. Then, gradually, you reduce the butter and salt.
– Do you grill? Try grilling up some peppers, summer squash zucchini, and onions to go with a grilled chicken breast. (Not really “sneaking”, but damn good. I grew up exposed to overboiled soggy veggies, and found grilled veggies to be a different thing altogether.)
– If you cut up veggies small enough, are you able to tolerate them in small amounts? Maybe try adding increasing amounts to things you currently eat?
– I’m sure you’ve probably done this, but just in case – have you experimented with raw vs. cooked, as well as different levels of cooked? Besides the grilling thing, I know some people can’t eat cooked carrots but love them raw.

Would you eat a potato cream soup? It’s extremely easy to blend a few veggies in there. Start with a handful of cauliflower and a carrot. Move on to broccoli and tomatoes. You won’t be able to taste the vegetables when mashed up with potatoes. Over time, you can increase the amounts and gently push your limit.

Do you eat sweet potatoes? They have a lot more nutritional value than regular potatoes.
You can try mixing half the meat in your spaghetti sauce with TVP , textured vegetable protein. I can’t tell the difference between meat and TVP in sauce. I imagine if it is mixed 50–50 you won’t be able to either.

Have you had corn on pizza? It is a very popular topping in Japan. The high heat caramelizes the corn giving it a sweet flavor.

Here is an article regarding vegetables. It includes a list of the healthiest vegetables to add to your diet.

One tip mentioned is investing in a good juicer. A variety of veggies with some additional ingredients added makes a healthy, tasty beverage. Plus there is the added benefit of obtaining nutrients in an uncooked form.

If there are any vegetables on that list that you would be willing to try, let us know. There are plenty of recipes out there.

For example, here is one: Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes

Can you load up your pizzas with veggies – peepers, mushrooms, onions, if not spinach or broccoli?

I’m not a big veggie lover but I’ve trained myself to enjoy a big salad bar salad every day for lunch as a weight control and veggie adding tactic.

Try putting a sauce on milder tasting vegetables, like green beans and carrots. You can find vegetable sauce recipes on the Web. If the sauce is flavorful enough you will barely taste the vegetables.

Make a meat stew with vegetables. In particular, onions work like magic in a stew, adding to the overall flavor without being recognizable.

If broccoli tastes horrible to you I wouldn’t try to force it. You might have that genetic thing where that particular vegetable tastes especially horrible to you. Do you like egg rolls? Those have cabbage and some carrots. What about pork fried rice with veggies in it?

I think maybe if you eat some veggies in little bits that you do like you will change your taste for them and eventually eat more.

If you’re willing to cook, cookbooks like Deceptively Delicious by Seinfield sneaks fruits and veggies into every day foods and desserts. She makes purees that are added to brownies and mac and cheese, and it was designed to feed her kids in a more healthy way, but the whole family eats the food.

Smoothies, combine fruits and veggies.

One word: V-8! I love the stuff.

I too love V-8. Squeeze a little fresh lime into 8 oz.

^^Gin also works as well^^

@gailcalled and @rojo, a bit of Worcestershire sauce and vodka once in a while ain’t bad either. ;-)

When I was little my mom always snuck in veggies by putting them in the meatloaf. Never knew the difference

Hide them.

All natural Apple Sauce instead of oil in cake mixes.

Mashed squash mixed with ground beef and spices to make burgers or meat loaf.

Homemade sweet potato French Fries.

You won’t event notice they’re their and you can have a burger, fries, and cake.

Add vegetables to your pizza. I like onions, mushrooms, peppers. On a Greek pizza, I like spinach.

Also into your pasta. Onions, red bell peppers, zucchini and garlic in the sauce.

Cook veggies in your tomato sauce and then blend it.

Put lettuce on any sandwich that can take it.

I think you should make a try at mixing vegetables into the foods you love. Chop up some broccoli crowns and add them into your fettuccini Alfredo or sprikle them onto your pizza prior to baking.

Life is short.
If you hate them, don’t eat them.
Figure out what nutrients you are missing and take supplements.

Kudos to you for wanting to take care of your health. Being mommy means sometimes having to adapt to what each of my children’s needs and likes involve. That sometimes means getting clever about helping them eat healthy. With a picky eater, presentation can make a huge difference. What is delicious to many can be like eating tree bark to others.
You mentioned broccoli. Most people who love broccoli love it with cheeses glopped over it. Do you love cheese? Maybe it seems like you are bringing down the value of cheese by dumping it over broccoli.
How about a sweet juice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-BO8Ilh_wA
If you don’t like the exact ingredients, maybe you could experiment with it some.
Spicy salad? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhmQomxZXIY
Hmmmm, this one? not appealing to me, but I can see at least half my family loving them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80FZ7usPu5o

They have califlower kraft dinner. I haven’t tried it.

It’s easy to hide vegetables. The problem is, many who claim to not like vegetables who find out that some snuck past their taste buds and made it into their stomach feel betrayed and poisoned. Their hatred of vegetables has nothing to do with taste or texture; they hate vegetables on general principle. If you are one of those types, then there is no helping you.

If not, then remember that it is okay to hate certain vegetables. Personally, I despise corn, celery, and iceberg lettuce with a passion, but I’ll eat most other vegetables, especially those on top of a pizza. And French onion soup is a great excuse to eat a big gob of melted cheese! Doesn’t even tasted like onion either; the act of cooking really alters the flavor.

You can add them to a smoothy.

If you were raised on frozen and canned veggies, it’s no wonder you don’t like them.

Eating those same vegetables on the day they were picked might be an eye opener for you. For the best tasting veggies not from your own garden, ask neighbors who have gardens, or farmers markets that sell locally grown veggies.

@bossob Yes, there really is no comparing fresh produce to the flash-frozen or soggy canned stuff. My wife used to hate olives because the only ones she ever had were the mushy black brine-soaked ones from a can, but then she got some real olives and her attitude changed. Those flavorless orange discs you get on a McDonalds burger are nothing like the tomatoes I used to pick off the vine in my mother’s garden. And I won’t even think of using canned salmon when Seattle has so many places to get many varieties of fresh salmon.

A lot of your fancy food uses simple ingredients. What makes them taste so good is that those ingredients are of a higher quality. Bad food is bad, and when you’ve only had the bad stuff, it’s easy to write off entire categories of food.

If you like spaghetti sauce, perhaps you like a smooth/blended tomato soup. You could sneak a few very softly cooked vegetables into that, if they are blended with everything else you shouldn’t notice them. Even a smooth blended potato soup, perhaps with small pieces of bacon thrown in.
Edit: I see @longgone had this idea before me…

I don’t know if you like Indian food or not but I find that I really enjoy vegetable curries and don’t feel a “need” for meat in them because the sauces are so delicious.

Add a veggie to your pizza order.
If there’s no problem, add another.
You can tell them ½, ¼.

I’ve got a bunch of ideas, but I’m so tired right now that I can’t think straight. But I do want to get you started.

I also wanted to let you know that when I was a kid, I was very, very, very picky, and hated most vegetables. When I got into my twenties, I made a conscious effort to try to new foods and I found out that some of the stuff that I despised as a kid, I now actually liked. And some things that I had never tasted, or had even heard of before, tasted really good. It turns out that your taste buds actually change as you get older. But I was bound and determined not to be a picky eater for the rest of my life. It’s super limiting and very inconvenient (for everybody involved).

I found out that you sometimes have to eat a food several times, maybe even 10 times, to acquire a taste for it. So if there are things that you don’t like, don’t give up immediately. You also have to change your attitude towards food. If you go in thinking that you won’t like something, you probably won’t. If you go in, knowing that you’re going to give a particular item about 10 tries (with different preparations and different recipes) you are much more likely to enjoy the food at the end of the process, and actually enjoy and appreciate the process.

I also found it very helpful to become a food detective, or food sleuth. Meaning that I had to do a lot of investigating to find out what was actually in certain dishes. I had to learn how to cook. I had to learn how to find out what nutrients I needed and how to find them, and how to best incorporate them into my diet. Becoming a vegetarian pretty much necessitated all of this sleuthing.

I was lucky to have some friends that grown up with very different food cultures than the “white bread” culture I was born into. In my early 20’s I was introduced to Vietnamese food, Indian food, Lebanese food, and Ethiopian food, and of course vegetarian stuff. I was shocked and amazed at how much delicious food is out there and readily available in the U.S. Most of the new stuff I was introduced to was vegetarian, so that also worked out to my advantage.

In the next day or so, I’ll try to rustle up some good ideas and recipes and strategies for you. In the meantime, here is a recipe for a Chocolate Zucchini Bread that should be very easy to swallow, literally and figuratively.

Do you like sweet stuff, like candy? There are tablets you can buy – I tried them just for shits and giggles – that make everything you eat taste like candy. That’s definitely one way for you to get all of the important vitamins.

I too love V-8. Squeeze a little fresh lime into 8 oz

Get a copy of “Deceptively Delivious” by Jessica Seinfeld.

She didn’t want to spend her entire young kids lives fighting with them over eating veggies. But she didn’t want to surrender to poor nutrition either.

So she used Purees. She got one of those small blenders advertised on TV (I think it’s the magic bullet ) and pureed all the vegetables and then figured out tasty ways to add them to stuff the kids did love.

For instance, pureed cauliflower added to the sauce in Mac N Cheese is totally unnoticeable.

Pureed carrots can be easily added to spaghetti sauce with no problem.

The reason the book is so terrific is because of the guidelines for amounts to add which won’t ruin the taste. This way you have a good idea for the starting point. Then you can adjust it to your own taste, less or more, whatever suits you.

This way you’re in complete control. And if it passed the taste test with her picky kids, it will likely be fine for you.

Once you get into the habit of making your purees ahead of time in large batches and freezing them in advance, then it’s easy to add them to just about anything you cook.She says that she usually spends one night a week steaming, pureeing and freezing her veggies so she has them all ready.

It’s easy to just get a bunch of ice cube trays and freezer bags to make it easy. Then you just drop the frozen cubes into whatever sauce you’re making. EASY.

And here’s one quick tip for you since you already like potatoes. Make mashed potatoes with half regular potatoes and half sweet potatoes. Really delicious.

The next time make mashed potatoes the same way except add about a third the amount of carrot purée. This way the sweetness of the sweet potato covers up whatever is undesirable about the carrot taste and it’s combined with regular potatoes which you already like. Try just a small amount of carrots the first time and then continue to up the amount you add each time.

You probably won’t believe this but she also has a terrific recipe for brownies (into which she added spinach and nobody knows unless they’re told).

I tried the recipe and it tastes great.

She also has a website with additional recipes and tips.

www.doitdelicious.com

But get the book. It has so many great EASY recipes. You won’t regret buying it.

In the same vein, there is also The Sneaky Chef.

My wife has tried quite a few recipes from there and it’s rare that I notice any difference.

These the tablets I was talking about if anyone is interested.

*“These are” is what I meant to say… lol

@johnpowell For this to work, you’re going to have to make a project out of it. Enlist the help of your friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members. If everyone knows that you are trying to add more veggies into your diet, get these people on board, to cheer you on and to give you ideas, recipes, helpful hints, and actual samples. Throw your stubbornness out the window, otherwise this whole idea is going to be fruitless (or should I say vegetable-less ha ha ha).

It might be helpful to start with one veggie, and try eating it prepared in multiple ways before moving on to the next veggie. And remember, like I said earlier, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 or 10 tastings of a new food to acquire a taste for it. If you give up after one try, this isn’t going to work.

You should probably start out with some of the easier veggies. The ones that most kids like, at least a little bit. Then move on to other things that are a bit more daring, but offer the possibility of deliciousness that you’ve probably never experienced before.

Let’s do carrots first. I think for each veggie, you should probably try it in it’s raw form first (unless it’s a veggie that’s not meant to be eaten raw such as potatoes and eggplant).

So here we go!

Carrots

Raw Carrots. Wow! Look at all the pretty colors! It’s like being at a Jimi Hendrix concert. Peel them, slice them up into matchstick sized pieces, then take a bite. You might like them better if they’re dipped in Ranch Dressing or Hummus

Carrot Ginger Soup

Gajar Ka Halwa This is a dessert that has seriously made me re-consider my singular sexuality towards just humans. I think I could happily live with, and marry this dessert : )

Spaghetti Sauce with Carrots. The carrots add a nice sweetness to the tomato sauce. You’ll barely know they’re there, and you might like it better than regular old tomato sauce.

Mexican-style Spicy Pickled Carrots. These are served as a condiment with Mexican food in most Mexican restaurants in California. I could eat them, and do eat them, all by themselves as a snack. You can make them yourself, or you can get them at most takeout Mexican places, or you can buy them in Cans

And let’s not forget about Carrot Cake

Sweet Potatoes

Raw Sweet Potato and Apple Slaw

Candied Sweet Potatoes with Orange Juice and Pecans

Sweet Potato Chips. These are made in the microwave and it really works! I’ve tried it with regular potatoes and sweet potatoes. The keys to success are making sure that your slices are of uniform thickness (best to use a mandoline slicer, rather than a knife) then don’t let the taters burn (I had to do a batch of 2 before I came up with the exact timing for my microwave and slice thickness, plus I turned them over after 3 minutes on one side, and did 30 seconds to one more minute on the other side) and make sure you put your slices on a microwave safe plate in a single layer, don’t stack them, and don’t let them touch each other or they won’t cook evenly. After you take them out of the microwave, you have to let them sit for one or two minutes, they will turn crisp at that point. When you first pull them out, they’ll still be wiggly and limp.

Savory Sweet Potato and Salsa Soup (You can use any brand of salsa you like).

Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Yukon Gold Potatoes

Loaded Sweet Potato Skins

Cauliflower

Raw Cauliflower Oooooooh the colors! It’s like your at a Jefferson Airplane Concert : ) You might like raw cauliflower better if it’s dipped in Blue Cheese Dressing or Tzatziki

Cauliflower Potato-like Salad. I’ve made this before (minus the bacon) and it was deee-lish! If you’re too afraid of the peas, just leave them out, or sub in some chopped celery or a pinch of pickle reslish, or some chopped ripe olives (or all of the above).

Cauliflower Pizza Crust Yes, you heard that right folks! Everybody loves pizza; this is just a new and delicious twist on the bottom part (that sounds downright naughty don’t it?).

Cauliflower and Aged Cheddar Soup with Bacon

Cauliflower Fettucini Alfredo

Celery

Raw Celery. You might like raw celery better with peanut butter on it, or dipped in Onion Dip or cottage cheese with pineapple.

Fruity Celery Salsas

Celery, Fennel, and Apple Slaw

Cream of Celery Soup

Chicken Salad with Celery, Dried Cranberries, and Apples (you can and should add chopped celery to egg salad and potato salad too, gives it a nice crunch).

Lettuce

Try to avoid iceberg lettuce. It adds little to no nutrition, so you’ll just be wasting your time, unless you add it in addition to other lettuces such as romaine, red leaf, green leaf, and butter lettuce. Of course you can and should add lettuce to burgers, sandwiches, wraps, tacos, and burritos, but you should probably eat at least one lettuce based salad every day, or at least every other day. It’s a good habit to get into.

Greek Salad

Chef Salad

Cobb Salad with French Dressing

Taco Salad (they used only iceberg lettuce, but I would either sub, or add in chopped romaine lettuce to this recipe).

Chinese Chicken Salad

Cucumbers

Raw Cucumbers. You might like raw cucumbers better if they’re dipped in Yogurt Herb Dip

Sweet and Sour Asian Cucumbers

Refrigerator Pickles

Scandinavian Cucumber Salad

Thai Cucumber Relish (this is good on grilled salmon or spooned onto Thai noodle dishes, or used as an accompaniment to egg rolls).

Cucumber Roll Ups

Cucumber Cups stuffed with Spicy Crab (you can also stuff these with egg salad).

Cucumber and Tomato Salad with Basil

Tomatoes

Technically, tomatoes are fruit, but for the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to consider them to be vegetables.

Raw Tomatoes Oh my! All the pretty colors! It’s like being at a Doors concert!

One of my favorite ways to eat raw tomatoes is in a Caprese Salad

Of course you can’t go wrong with salsa. Here’s a recipe for Pico de Gallo Salsa and one for Roasted Tomato Salsa (you can and should put salsa on just about everything from tacos and burritos and enchiladas, to scrambled eggs, to grilled steak).

Fresh Tomato Soup (serve this with grilled cheese sandwiches).

Cream of Tomato Soup with Bacon

Homemade Meatballs and Marinara Sauce (seriously, if you don’t like this, especially plopped down onto a big dish of pasta, or a nice big sandwich roll smothered with melted mozzarella, I can’t help you).

Beef Chili

Minestrone Soup (not only does this have tomatoes, it is laden with great vegetables and tastes deee-lish!)

Pickled Vegetables

So for the next items, I have some yummy recipes for all kinds of pickled vegetables. You can pickle just about any vegetable that comes down the pike, and pickling vegetables can drastically transform the taste, to the point that you might not even recognize the flavor (in a good way). Don’t be scared, pickles are our Friends

Pickled Cabbage

Pickled Cipollini Onions with Chiles and Cloves

Korean Pickled Garlic

Garlic Dill Pickled Cucumbers

Multiple Pickled Vegetables Look at all the colors! It’s like you are at a Buffalo Springfield Concert!

Pickled Radishes

Lebanese Pickled Turnips

Pickled Daikon and Carrot Slaw (use this on Vietnamese Banh Mi Sandwiches)

Pizza

It’s pizza man! What’s not to like?

Pesto Pizza with Broccoli, Artichoke Hearts, and Feta

Portobello Mushroom Pizza with Heirloom Tomatoes and Basil

Mushroom, Arugula, and Red Onion Pizza

Sweet Pepper Pita Pizzas

Greek Salad Pizza (note: you can use pre-made pizza crusts, or use pre-made pizza dough, and you can use store bought pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce).

Roasted Vegetable Pizza

Barbecued Pulled Pork and Brussels Sprouts Pizza

Butternut Squash and Sage Pizza

Pizza with Fresh Arugula, Peaches and Hazelnuts

Scary but Good Stuff

Kohlrabi Salad

Apple and Celeriac Salad

Watercress and Pea Shoot Salad

Jicama, Microgreens, and Mango Salad

Roasted Golden Beets and Quinoa Salad with Feta

Sweet Potato, Chickpea, and Quinoa Burgers

Roasted Vegetable Pasta Primavera

Chicken Sausage Cassoulet

Chicken Sausage Stuffed Shells with Artichoke and Spinach

Chipotle Black Bean Dip

Quinoa Enchilada Casserole

Turkey and Vegetable Meatloaf

Ground Beef and Lentil Sloppy Joe’s

Broccoli and Sundried Tomato Quiche

Beef and Mushroom Stroganoff

Mashed Potato and Broccoli Raab Cakes

Pork Tenderloin stuffed with Spinach and Mushrooms

Pajeon (Korean Vegetable Pancakes) with Spicy Dipping Sauce

Now, take a bite, and then another bite, and then another, and another…

Find a salad dressing you really like, like ranch. Veggies taste so much better with dressing! And you can dip it, not just use it on salad. Try raw cauliflower or broccoli with your dip. Or a sprinkle of apple cider vinegar on your steamed vegs, like spinach.

I was thinking along the lines of what @Buttonstc was thinking. Do you like fruit? If you put spinach or some other vegetables in a smoothie with fruit and some yogurt and sugar, you shouldn’t be able to taste the vegetables. It’s a very common thing to do. Google should give you more specific recipes if you want.