I hate vegetables, and choke down two or three portions a week in a half-hearted gesture towards “healthy eating”. But I do eat three or four portions of fruit a day (mostly bananas, apples, grapes and raisins).
Is it healthy to do this, or am I setting myself up for heart disease and colon cancer later in life?
(For what it’s worth, I’m a healthy weight, although my blood pressure is at the higher end of the acceptable range. I live off of a lot of bread, pasta and rice, and probably a lot more cheese than I should be eating. I have meat maybe once a week.)
Avoiding vegetables is one way to avoid fiber, and you need fiber to keep your heart healthy. There are nutritional deficiencies that come from abstaining from vegetables altogether, which have been reported from studies on the health of fruitarians, like folic acid, vitamin B12, beta carotene, and other important nutrients, but these are examples of an extreme diet, and it sounds like you are making an effort to include vegetables in your diet.
Maybe you are not finding the best ways to prepare them, which will taste good to you, and lots of simple recipes are out there and on the internet. Also, cooking takes enzymes out of vegetables, so you can either supplement for it, or try a few raw food meals- like cabbage in a cole slaw…etc. Some of my friends who dislike vegetables, have no problem making mixed fruit and vegetable juices in a juicer, and I am sure they get some nutrition from doing it that way.
You get fiber from fruit just fine (apples, prunes), as well as vitamins. Most Americans should take a fiber supplement anyway, and a multi-vite is cheap insurance.
I’m guessing that a self-described vegetable hater probably eats a fair amount of meat, which puts him in a very different category from fructarians. In particular, he probably doesn’t need to worry about B vitamins at all.
Well, the parenthetical at the end of the OP says that he only eats meat about once a week and so the diet is mostly starches and cheese. Still, it certainly not all that extreme of a diet.
For the OP, I would say that fruits probably substitute well for vegetables, especially if you’re eating a variety of fruits on a regular basis. Ultimately, you should do an analysis by looking at vitamins, protein, carbs, fiber, etc. and see how a typical week for you stacks up against the RDAs. If there are any major discrepancies, see what foods might fill in the gaps and pick the ones you like.
I have to ask: you “hate” all veges without exception? Potatoes, tomatoes, avocados, lettuce, peas, carrots, cabbage, onions, garlic - nothing at all? I ask because there’s nothing in common between all vegetables except that we call them that. If so, is it then a psychological issue?
What is your problem with them, which ones do you “choke down”, and how are they prepared?
I’ve been experimenting with Paleo for so long, I read “bread pasta and rice” like others would read arsenic, cyanide and venom.
Well, tomatoes aren’t really vegetables in either clasification, taste or texture, neither are avocados. I don’t know what garlic is, In my mind, it’s not even food.
Huh? Tomatoes are technically fruits, but they aren’t sweet, so most people think of them as vegetables. In fact, that’s the criteria most people I know use: if it’s from a plant and sweet, it’s a fruit.
Yeah, yeah, sugar doesn’t count, not the least of which because they usually don’t know where it comes from.
What “clasification” are you talking about? All of these are vegetables in a culinary sense. The fact that you’d like to argue that actually strengthens Askance’s point: they don’t have taste, texture or preparation in common, and if a person doesn’t like any of them, then we haven’t really identified what it is they don’t like.
Just to clarify, I really haven’t found anything I like. Nearly all vegetables just taste awful to me. I don’t mind tomato sauces, though, so I make pasta with tomato sauce and throw in some red peppers or something. I also use soup as a way of getting vegetables in.
I do use onions and garlic, but I was under the impression that they had next to no nutritional value…? I very rarely eat potatoes, I don’t really like them.
The thing about fruit is that it’s loaded with sugar. It’s better than nothing, but only eating fruit is still not the ideal. And since you live on starches and cheese, you’re probably consuming too much sugar. (Starch converts to sugar in the body.)
My suggestion is to try different vegetables in combination with fruit that you know you like. Apples and carrots, for example, go very well together. (Apples also pair well with parsnips and rutabaga and sweet potatoes, and all of this goes extremely well with dried fruits. Cook them with a little liquid, such as an apple cider.) You might also try roasting winter vegetables; just toss with a little olive oil and some salt and pepper. Roasting gives vegetables a sweeter taste which you may like. And in the summer, most vegetables are excellent cooked on the grill.
One thing I’ve learned to do when confronted with something I think I don’t like is to analyze exactly what about it is so unappealing. You say it’s the taste, but I’d really think about what it is about the taste. Might it be the texture or the way it was prepared growing up that’s the real issue? Many people, for example, “hate” vegetables because Mom boiled the shit out of them, so it’s not necessarily the vegetable itself they don’t like, it’s the association with the nasty smell and mushy texture. But if they try them some other way, it’s a better experience.
How do you cook them? Are we talking fresh, canned, or frozen? What varieties? Those are key questions: overcooked canned green beans are quite different than fresh ones cooked quickly.
Fresh is always best, and frozen is second. Canned is just a convenience.
I didn’t like squash in the slightest until I started to microwave it. Brussels sprouts are mushy and bland until you try them fresh and baked with a little oil.
The biggest drawback as others have mentioned, is that fruits are high in sugar. When summer fruits are in season, load up on melons.
Make sure all your bread, pasta, and grains are whole grain. You need the fiber.
If you will eat tomato-based pasta sauces and soups, then you have the perfect vehicle to load up on veggies. Zucchini can be grated and added to pasta sauce. Carrots sneak into pasta sauce perfectly. For soups, dice up the veggies you like, puree the ones you don’t care for, and make a cream-based soup.
Try every single fruit in existence. Your world is so small with just bananas, apples, and grapes. Papaya, mango, nectarines, peaches, pluots, plums of all colors (yellow, green, red, purple, and black!), cherries, apricots, melons, pineapple… If you are gonna eat fruit, by golly, do a damn good job of it!
Fruit and cheese make a lovely pairing.
There is an entire world of flavor waiting for you!
~VOW
I have the same problem as the OP. It’s a big chore to force myself to eat veggies, and I usually try to get by with veggie soup or V8. I cant stand the taste and texture of things like carrots, celery, califlower and broccoli. The only exception for me is zucchini and squash. I can sprinkle some olive oil on top, season with lemon pepper and bake in the oven. Goes good with grilled chicken. Do mushrooms have any nutritional value? Probably not since I really do like those as well. lol
The onion family contains polyphenols, including quercertin and other flavonoids and sulforanes. (Antioxidant Supplements) I don’t think it contains any vitamin C.
BTW, SCOTUS once ruled that tomatoes are vegetables.
A tomato is a vegetable that happens to be a fruit. A carrot is a vegetable that happens to be a root. Spinach is a vegetable that happens to be a leaf. Vegetables can be many different parts of a plant.
The thing I don’t like about the taste… I don’t really know how to describe it… It’s the fresh, “green” taste. Bitterness, perhaps? I’m also not keen on crunchy textures. For example, I find mashed carrot easier to eat than a lightly cooked one. I can’t even swallow raw carrot.