There are some people whose food choices are driven by a need to be healthy and have strong, fit bodies. Their view supports, when relevant, eating healthily when pregnant or breastfeeding, and their attempts to prevent diseases exacerbated by poor nutrition, such as heart disease. They can be seen, perhaps, ordering large salads for lunch or rejecting meat, anything fried, and attempting to avoid desserts at all meals.
Then there are those at the other end of the spectrum, whose idea of a tasty meal may be Ramen noodles wrapped in a burrito, or a large pizza covered with pepperoni and soaked in oil and melted cheese. If they find vegetables on their plate, say while eating at their mother’s house or that of someone in the aforementioned "eat healthy" group, they may carefully eat around the mound of broccoli, carrots, or kale, leaving the serving intact.
Many children attempt to avoid putting any vegetable in their mouth other than French fries and perhaps an occasional cherry tomato. But it is sometimes assumed—although there is no evidence to support this assumption—that once children reach adulthood, they will recognize the importance of consuming this category of food. To be sure, some do, perhaps because they like the taste and crunchy mouthfeel, or they discover ways in which vegetables can be made tasty as a main course. Others eat vegetables because doing so helps them lose weight or enhance their gut or cardiac health. However, according to national surveys, it is the rare person in this country who consumes the recommended five servings of vegetables a day.
In a report published in April 2021, the per person consumption of vegetables in 2020 was 145.46 lbs. The report revealed that the most commonly consumed vegetables were potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. Vegetables are not equal in their nutrient content; an onion has fewer nutrients than carrots, sweet potatoes, or spinach. And according to another survey that assessed vegetable consumption between 2015 and 2018, even though more than 90 percent of respondents reported eating a vegetable once a day, fewer than a third ate dark green leafy vegetables, those that are dense in nutrients and fiber.
It is, in some ways, hard to understand why we are eating fewer vegetables when doing so is so easy these days. If peeling a carrot or steaming spinach seems daunting and unlikely to produce an enticing dish, one has only to look to bags of ready-to-eat carrots, sometimes next to a dip, or microwave-in-the-bag spinach often with an optional sauce in the box.
Nutritionists might deplore the added calories from the sauce or dip along with the salt and other additives; yet the dip or sauce may make it more likely the vegetable will be consumed, especially among those who refuse to allow a vegetable to pass across their lips. A friend told me that she got her young son who had refused to eat any vegetable, other than tomatoes and cucumbers, to eat broccoli by stir-frying the vegetable in a Chinese-type marinade. “I know the marinade was probably all he tasted,” she told me, “but at least he put the vegetable in his mouth and ate it.”
But the avoidance of vegetable consumption is more complex than not wanting to taste that food group, or persisting in a refusal to eat vegetables that began at the age of four. Some restaurants still view vegetables as side dishes that come with an additional charge, rather than belonging on the plate with the entrée. Fast-food restaurants, if they offer salads at all, make them with usually tasteless low-nutrient vegetables. Unless the diner seeks out restaurants that specialize in salads, or advertise themselves as vegetarian or vegan, there are rarely menu options for salads or cooked dishes with an abundance of nutrient-dense vegetables.
And we, the eater, rarely seek out places to eat whose specialty is vegetables. As a sometime viewer of the television show “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives,” I cannot recall any program in which vegetables were featured as the outstanding menu option of the establishment. Have there been any episodes showing diners digging into a mouthwatering dish featuring mainly vegetables? I have been told that there was one episode featuring a vegan diner.
Eating vegetables at home should be an easy alternative since most are so easy to prepare. But for many, there seems to be an insurmountable obstacle between buying peeled, diced squash or frozen broccoli, and actually making the vegetable. The preparation may not be the problem as much as the belief that the cooked product won’t taste good. Basic information on how to transform vegetables fast and easily into dishes that satisfy our taste buds is too hard to find. The Food Network understandably wants to feature recipes that showcase the presenter’s skills, and recipes in newspapers and magazines also want to go beyond basic information in order to appeal to the experienced home cook.
Supermarkets could help by playing videos in the produce section showing how to prepare and season vegetables. For example, a thirty-second video could demonstrate how roasting vegetables transforms many into satisfying, crunchy, crisp dishes. The condiment and spice aisle could show videos demonstrating how to use these items to make eating vegetables more attractive (a recipe for vegetables using a bottled stir-fry sauce, for example).
Finally, increasing culinary diversity in school and college meals, as well as catered menu options, could offer meals in which vegetables are such an integral part of the dish that the most vegetable-adverse diner will not be able to remove them before eating. They could start with vegetable soup.
Getting Grown-Ups To Eat Their Vegetables - Psychology Today
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