Everyone knows that they need to eat fruit and vegetables to stay healthy, but are we all really getting our 5+ a day? Probably not. One of the reasons is that they’re just not convenient and sometimes we just forget to eat them. So, what if we made fruit and veg more convenient to eat? Read on for some great tips and tricks.

Make Them Easy To Grab

As soon as you’ve bought your fruit and veg, wash them, prep them and package them up. Buy apples, grapes, carrots and peppers and put the grapes and apples somewhere where you can see them as you pass. You could try slicing the apples and popping them in an air tight container and then eat them with honey or cinnamon. With peppers and carrots, wash and slice them and store them in the fridge so they’re easy to grab. Eat them with a dip, humus or cottage cheese.

Blend

Smoothies are a great way to get fruit and veg into your system quickly and conveniently. Blending a banana with your spinach or broccoli masks the taste and gets all those minerals into your system. If you blend an apple, banana and a handful of spinach with 2 cups of water you’ve got your 5 a day right there.

Add A Little Here and There

Take a step back and look at your meal. Challenge yourself to add vegetable to every meal you eat. It could be tricky, but why not give it a go? Add some lettuce or a tomato to that sandwich or serve a side of cucumber salad with a tablespoon of olive oil to your evening meal.

Get Creative With Your Toppings

Instead of buying fruit yogurts from the supermarket, buy plain ones and make your own toppings. You can make some great toppings with a little fruit and honey; try apples, bananas or peaches dices and mixed with honey. You could also try banana, honey and cinnamon on oats for breakfast.

Put Them In Your Eyeline

Sometimes when we put fruit and veg away in the fridge or cupboard we forget about them and the only thing they then see is the bin. So, keep fruit out and about on your work surfaces and keep vegetables and fruit that need to be refrigerated right in the centre of the fridge instead of in the salad trays at the bottom, where they’re hidden and you can forget about them.

Plan Out Your Meals

No this isn’t to say you have to have a full recipe for every night of the week, but a little planning means you’ll buy what you want and eat what you intended. This will also reduce the amount of food you end up throwing away. Plan roughly what meals you want, e.g. we’re having chicken on Monday, so we’ll have x and x veg with that, and so on.

Have A Meat Free Day Once A Week

You could plan one day per week where you meals are vegetable based, such as a veggie curry, roasted butternut squash, vegetable rice, baked tomatoes with aubergine and feta, the list goes on. There are some great vegetarian recipes out there, so why not give it a try?

A Few Other Ideas

• Have some frozen veg available for a quick meal
• Mash cauliflower into your potatoes
• Make lettuce wraps instead of bread, e.g. with ground pork or diced chicken
• Used mashed up avocado instead of mayo on your sandwiches
• If you bake, add in some fruit to such as waffles, cupcakes and pancakes
• Make some apple crisps
• Freeze some grapes to make great little summer sweets