Blasphemous Nutrition

Getting Veggies in When You Are Time-Crunched, the Benefits of Bitter Veg and Tips to Make Them Palatable - Part 2 with Carolyn of Wellness While Walking

• Aimee Gallo • Episode 48

Share episode

Think getting more veggies into your diet is impossible with your busy life? Think again. In this episode, Aimee teams up with Carolyn Cohen from the Wellness While Walking podcast to uncover smart, no-nonsense strategies for upping your vegetable game—without losing your sanity.

From managing those “life went sideways” moments to discovering sneaky ways to grab veggies on the go, this conversation is packed with practical advice for real life. Aimee and Carolyn also tackle the challenges of tiny fridges, making convenience foods work for you, and letting go of the pressure to eat perfectly.

Whether you’re a veggie novice or just looking to add more variety, this episode offers actionable tips to help you boost your health without overhauling your routine. Tune in now and start adding more greens to your plate today!

MORE ON VEGGIES!

Check out Carolyn's Podcast: Wellness While Walking

CHAT ME UP: let me know what's on your mind by texting here!

How to Leave a Review on Apple Podcasts
Via iOS Device
1. Open Apple Podcast App (purple app icon that says Podcasts).
2. Go to the icons at the bottom of the screen and choose “search”
3. Search for “Blasphemous Nutrition”
4. Click on the SHOW, not the episode.
5. Scroll all the way down to “Ratings and Reviews” section
6. Click on “Write a Review” (if you don’t see that option, click on “See All” first)
7. Rate the show on a five-star scale (5 is highest rating) and write a review!
8. Bask in the glow of doing a good deed that makes a difference!

Happy holidays, my fellow healthy heathens. For the next two episodes, I'm going to be taking some time off to enjoy my family this holiday season, but I am not going to leave you hanging. My podcast pal, Carolyn of Wellness While Walking, has graciously shared the episodes that I recorded with her for her podcast, and over the next two weeks, I'm going to share these episodes with you. So, we're going to be talking all about vegetables, and it's a really great segue into some of what I am planning on sharing in 2025. You're going to learn some time honored tips to get more veggies on your plate in easy, sustainable ways, how to increase your willingness to eat vegetables when you are feeling a little reluctant, And how to get better at finding them whether you are on the road, in an airport, or even navigating a new grocery store. Carolyn and I discuss what to do when your plan goes sideways, creative ideas on how to expand your veggie palette, and myriads of ways that veggies can improve your health. I do hope that you enjoyed these conversations as much as I enjoyed having them. And have a wonderful, wonderful holiday. We all have the best intentions when it comes to eating well. Well, what happens when life goes sideways, as our guest Amy says today? Can we still eat in alignment with our intentions? And specifically, how can we get those veggies in? And if you've been pushing aside those slightly bitter vegetables, we've got big news for you. Don't turn up your nose, but do. Join us. Welcome to the Wellness While Walking Podcast. I'm your walking guide and health coach, Carolyn Cohen. Whether you've been walking or otherwise moving regularly, or it's fallen off your schedule, I'll be here to help you make your own wellness a priority. We'll plan for about a 30 minute walk each week, and while you're ambling, I'll be rambling in your ear. Mm hmm. We will talk about walking a bit, but also about wellness in the largest sense of the word so that we can continue on a journey of a beautiful life of no regrets. Let's chat, learn, laugh, and move in the most natural way possible, and then get back to work. To designing and living the best, most rewarding lives we each ever imagined. Hi, welcome to episode 228. Thanks for being here with me today. Before we continue a reminder that I'm not a doctor or a mental health professional, and that the content presented here is for educational and informational purposes only, please make sure that you check with your doctor before making any health or lifestyle changes. One of the most successful healthy eating campaigns took place in the past couple of decades across the world. In the US, the UK. In New Zealand and in other countries where officials were trying to get residents to eat more and vegetables. The campaigns centered around getting folks to eat five or more servings a day, whatever a serving is, of fruits and vegetables, or as we would say here, vegetables and fruit. And wow, the campaigns worked. Well, sort of, I should say. The awareness of the campaigns was strong. Extremely high. People got how important it was to add more produce into their diets. So with all that success of drilling into our heads that we needed five or more servings a day of fresh vegetables and fruit in our diets, wanna guess how many more servings we ate, uh, with that full knowledge of how these extra servings would impact our health? Well In the U. S. anyway, servings of produce, according to many sources, actually went down. Veggies went down 7 percent and fruit 2%. So there you go, that is the perfect example of a no do gap, where we know what to do, but we don't. And maybe that, in this case, is partially because we're letting The perfect be the enemy of the good. In other words, we might be able to get closer to getting those veggies in if maybe we threw away our preconceived notions about how that had to look and how that had to happen. So let's jump back into our conversation with Amy about all things produce and then I'll come back afterwards. and chat with you about how to make a particular subgroup of produce more appealing. See what I did there? Because this particular group of plants, um, pack a huge nutritional punch. So you'll definitely want to bridge that no do gap in this case. Okay, we're jumping back in. If you're working with somebody and they're really wanting to cook more at home and that part of that. Is to maybe get more vegetables into their diets. What are some steps that you recommend that people start with? I think if they're, if they're really in a time crunch, which I, I'm going to make that assumption because it's hard, it's harder and harder to find people who aren't, if we're honest. Yes, absolutely. Taking advantage of our convenience culture and purchasing pre cut vegetables, uh, frozen vegetables, canned vegetables, lean into that, let that, use that to your benefit. It, again, it doesn't have to be, I go to the farmer's market and get the best stuff and I take it home and I spend four hours prepping everything and putting it in glass containers. neatly in my fridge. And then I take an Instagram picture and my life is perfect, right? Like, that's not, that's not. That's so true. We probably just happened to get more of those like popping up because we do probably, you know, follow different kinds of accounts on social media. And then they assume that I'm going to want to see a refrigerator absolutely stacked full of the rainbow. That no family could possibly consume in time. You know what I mean? It's just so unrealistic. And then people think like now there's a refrigerator is sold in the U S I don't know. If it's widely available everywhere, uh, that comes with a drawer, which like a very narrow drawer. So it's like the freezer, the fridge, and then this extra third drawer. And when my kids were young, especially, we used to do salad bars all the time, like on the kitchen counter and they could take what they, you know, first of all, it was impossible with four of them to keep track of what they liked and didn't like, but they could customize it. It was fun. And then we put all those kind of containers back in the fridge and pulled them out the next day and did the same thing again. I always thought I would invent a salad bar. contraption that you could just easily take out and put back in the fridge because I thought it was so helpful for my kids. But this, like, drawer is being used kind of like that in some cases where it's just, like, open, like, people would just open it up and there's, like, lettuce and cut up carrots and celery and cucumbers just sitting there and everything. But again, it's just, like, A, what percentage of the people have this in their fridge? Like, 0. 001%. And B, just, like, it's so Pretty unperfectionist kind of affirming that people are just like, Oh, that's lovely to look at. And I can't do that. You know, exactly. That is a dream though, right? And what is what is the internet but not a collection of our fantasies? There you go. And it's all well and good until you pivot and go 180 degrees in the opposite direction, you know? Yeah. I mean, there are, there are certainly plenty of people who, at the start of the year, they're like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to food prep. I'm going to do this once a week. And, you know, for a week, two weeks, three weeks, I mean, if they are, in my eyes, amazing, maybe it lasts a couple of months where they have the Instagram worthy refrigerator with all the glass containers stacked up at the start of the week and they just go through it, right? But inevitably, life happens. And so finding a system that is sustainable for you is of critical importance and entering any kind of health goal with, Okay, yes, we have our ideal. We have our best case scenario of how we're going to execute this. But what happens when stuff goes sideways? Then, then what are you, what's your backup plan? And having a backup plan is so, so important. And that's why I encourage, like I always encourage my clients, have an emergency stash of frozen vegetables in your freezer because there will be a day, I promise you, when either you can't get to the grocery store, when you come home and you find out your kid came home from soccer practice and just cleaned out the fridge and there's nothing left for you. Things happen, right? Having that backup plan prevents you, one, from entering into that fatalistic mindset of, oh, well, it didn't happen today, so I might as well just get takeout or just have the sleeves of Ritz crackers for dinner or, you know, what have you. And it also allows you to be more agile and adaptable to the chaos of the real world. It's so, so important. We have to be realistic with, you know, what's going to actually fit in our lives today, and not be punitive when it doesn't work out, because there are those Other steps that are perfectly good. One, one obstacle that I struggle with personally is for several years now, I've lived in locations where the size of our refrigerator is, is much smaller. You know, if you've ever been to Europe, European style fridge, right? Or, you know, in the U. S., in the cities. You know, they have now these super tiny fridges that are economical and not made for people who eat produce. It's just, yeah. And so when I go grocery shopping, shopping for two or three days and I'm cramming, you know, the romaine lettuce takes up an entire shelf all on its own. And then you throw in a couple bell peppers and they're like, there's not room for anything else. In the winter, I can put it outside on the deck and make it last a little bit longer, but as the weather warms up, I'm losing that option, right? And it just becomes too warm for it to keep out and stay put anyway. So in these situations, Where you don't have the storage space, but you have the desire and the intent, what you can do, in addition to utilizing the freezer, is you can go to the grocery store and, and this is what reminded me of this, raid that salad bar. Use the salad bar at the grocery store to get just the right amount of vegetables that you need and the variety of vegetables that you want to then use in a salad at home to then use in a stir fry. Is it the most economical option? No, not by far. However, if you're not bringing home produce that then goes to waste, you're more likely not to step on that guilt train that has you throw in the towel at the end of the day. And sometimes that's worth it. And sometimes you actually end up saving money by using the produce that's already pre cut at the salad bar and throwing it into a soup, then buying all of the ingredients and letting the leftovers rot. In the fridge or on the counter because you don't have any space in the fridge. Yes. I appreciate that perspective very much. I think that we have to sometimes allow ourselves to splurge in a way that is, And, you know, consistent with our, our goals. And sometimes it's challenging. It's an interesting kind of fact to remember is that we used to spend a much larger portion of our salaries, of our income on food. And we have, at least in the U. S. where things have been drastically subsidized, we are used to less expensive food. And so I'm not saying everyone can do this, but if we can, it's certainly aligned with You know, our health and perhaps our health goals to spend a little money to get that help, you know, to get the help of somebody's labor at the grocery store to cut up those things. And that huge variety of things that we might not be able to buy, you know, like, it's a big step to buy, like a big, Package or a bunch of radishes when we want one or two. And so when we go through something like that and we have a salad bar that's prepared for us, and we can just get a little bit, you know, that works out so well, like you said, and it, like, it really could end up saving us money. And then if we have the funds and you know, if we have the, the ability to spend a little bit more, also encourage people to, to take advantage of spending a little bit more to help you achieve what you're, what you're trying to achieve. Exactly. Yeah, and that salad bar tip can be used too for, for things like I, it's always kind of irritating when you are making a pot of soup or something and it calls for one stock of celery and maybe your grocery store does not sell single stocks of celery and then you buy a whole head of celery and maybe you don't really care for it raw, you don't know what to do with a whole head of it after you make the soup and so the rest of it just kind of Go south. That's a great place to, again, go to the salad bar, grab either the celery sticks, or if they've chopped up the celery, and find pieces for a salad. Soups and things like this are rough estimates anyway. Get what looks to be approximately a stock worth, put it in a salad, you know, a salad container, and take it home. Yes, I love it. Actually, as you're speaking of celery, I think one of the, one of my favorite things to do when cooking vegetables is to use a pre made mirepoix. Oh, yes. Yeah, chopped carrots, celery, and onions, which I'm finding more and more available on supermarket shelves and how, like, that just, If I'm making like a chili, for example, to be able to just start with that, throw that in and start with that is just a huge time saving, so save you like 10 minutes. Yes, I'm glad for all these things that are happening more and more. For example, another one is shaved brussels sprouts. I'll put it in the show notes, but I have a recipe I just love for a shaved brussel sprout salad. And like, I probably wouldn't make it if I had to shave brussel sprouts myself, you know? It just wouldn't probably ever happen, but I can buy a bag of them and how wonderful. So I think more and more we're seeing that. And also just in historically, like when my mother was a health nut, kind of ahead of her time, there were times in, in American grocery stores where we couldn't find produce. That she really had a hard time finding fresh produce because it was kind of in the aftermath when everything was canned mostly, wasn't even really frozen. Frozen is such a boon, like you said, but she really had a hard time and there weren't even farmers markets really at that time. So I do feel like we are a little better off than we have been, even though sometimes it's still a hurdle. Yeah, absolutely. It's the access that we have now is really unlike anything I've, I've seen in my lifetime. Right. I mean just the amount of times I've gone into a grocery store over the last 15 years and been like, I didn't know cauliflower came in that color. Yeah, exactly. And that's right. That's not necessarily at your farmer's market. That's right in your, in your local supermarket. So some of us have definitely varying degrees of produce range, but I think we're going in the right direction. At least I hope that's the case. I think we are. Yes. That beep indicates we're about halfway through the episode. So if you're not walking a loop, you might want to turn around and head back now. So you mentioned just one thing I was curious about. When you have excess produce, do you ever freeze it yourself? Is that what you're saying? I do. Yeah. Sometimes I will freeze it myself. I do save all of my scraps when I'm prepping and then turn it into, into broth because I also save all the chicken bones and, you know, I, I hoard. I hoard food. That's so great. I know it's so funny because I, we're moving soon and I have accumulated some scraps and bones in my freezer and I'm like, I better make soup really soon because I don't really think I'm going to be able to move these items. So I relate so much to that sentiment, but it's going to be good when I remember to throw it into my pressure cooker. It's going to be awesome. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, thank you so much. I feel like this is so inspirational. And I would say, you know, my biggest takeaway is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to most things, but especially here. Yeah. And, and one, one thing that I also want to offer listeners is a guide that I have called five ways to five a day. In 15 minutes or less, and it's five different ways that you can quickly and easily begin to bring more produce into your diet, into your plate. And it's not a bunch of smoothies or salads. I, I don't, those get old quick and there's plenty of those options out on the internet for you already. So these are different ways that you can start to both expand your palate and, um, expand your skill set as a veg hunter. All right. And, um, increase the, the vitality and the energy and the joy that you have in your life that comes from a high produce diet. Well, I'm really excited to share that with the listener. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. And it's been really wonderful to connect. I found that our conversation was very inspiring to myself. I look forward to changing a few things up. And I know that people will benefit if they take any of the steps that we've we've talked about today. Great. Thank you so much again for having me. It's been awesome, Amy. I think Amy could actually call herself the veggie coach, or the veggie whisperer. It was great. To have her on and speak with her about her very doable approach to vegetable hunting. Because I think we often get caught up in the perfect vision of how our consumption of vegetables would go, and then of course, life happens. I think that being primed to look for something in our environment is really key. If we let our brains, which are wired to keep us fattened up because of a potential famine, that's unlikely to occur, but if we let that orientation take over, we're likely to pursue other high energy, aka high calorie laden foods. If we can keep front of mind that we want to be on the lookout for vegetables in our environment, that intentionality can shift what we see. Like, oh look, the convenience store has cut up celery and carrots, or the airport bookstore has a salad in their refrigerated case, or my local sandwich shop will swap out the bag of chips for coleslaw for an extra 50 cents. When we're looking for them, we're more likely to find them. define them. Amy alluded to training our taste buds to like some of the more bitter flavors in some vegetables, and she mentioned fried brussels sprouts. Our taste preferences that are naturally built in from birth do have us liking sweet tastes the most. My first class in college, that was a psychology class, the professor was very well known for his Experiments with babies where they so strongly preferred sugar water over regular water. It was crazy and kind of sad, actually, because they would really like Just love on that sugar water and then stopped drinking regular water infants like newborns Anyway, probably couldn't do that experiment. No again like this, you know natural built in preference for sweet that was helpful when we were evolving and Also, we were specifically wired to dislike some of the more bitter flavors because some plants that were better bitter were actually poisonous. So we were definitely throwing up the baby with the bathwater there because those bitter vegetables have a lot of nutrients we really could use. So our brain is kind of stymieing our ability to nourish ourselves fully, which means that we need to fight back a little bit. And maybe intentionally try to expand our palates beyond how they're wired naturally. This will serve us well because if we can broaden the range of nutrients we're getting through having a real variety of plant food, this will mean enhanced health and well being. There was a study done testing out the ability of adding more mild and sweet vegetables in versus the standard intake to help fight certain diseases. And then they also tested people who added more butter. bitter vegetables to their diets. The added veggies in both groups, the mild and sweet ones versus the bitter, strong tasting ones, they were actually the same vegetables, mostly root vegetables and members of the brassica or cruciferous family. But they varied on how bitter they were. We've been breeding modern crops for sweetness for years across all produce, and so this study compared those vegetables from modern hybridization with the more traditional and more bitter kind of varieties. So both groups who ate more veggies did get significant health improvements, which isn't too surprising. But the Bitter veggie eaters got even more than those who ate the milder, sweeter vegetables. They had better insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control, better body fat mass, and better blood pressure. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't also enjoy the milder, sweeter vegetables, but maybe that we should try to get used to eating some of the more bitter varietals as well. And one trick to do this is to, well, fry them like Amy alluded to. Another is to pair. bitter and sweeter together. So like a nice tray of roasted veggies where some are sweeter like carrots and maybe some are more bitter like brussels sprouts or celery root. Another option is to add sweetness to a bitter vegetable. Something like pomegranate arils will fit the bill here. Those are the little tiny arils. Nuggets of sweetness in a pomegranate, and um, they pair really well with bitter vegetables like kale and cabbage, and again, brussels sprouts. A balsamic glaze or a bit of maple syrup will also cut the bitterness. If you're trying to keep your blood sugar balanced, just keep those amounts maybe not too heavy, and perhaps eat them after your protein, which will help stem the impact to blood sugar. It's worth experimenting and playing around for the benefits because they're pretty significant, like possible reduction in cancer and heart disease, slowing down the progression of dementia, and many of these bitter vegetables are also rich in prebiotic fibers, so these are fibers that can feed our gut microbiota. and stave off a whole host of diseases and help nutrition absorption and also improve our immunity. So what's not to like there? And besides adding sweet flavors, by the way, we can also balance bitter flavors with all the other tastes as well, like salty, umami, sour, and even hot flavors like chili. All those can help balance out the bitterness as well. We can intentionally eat some bitter veggies, perhaps balancing them out with those other flavors. So that's one approach. On a more macro level, we can look to eat the rainbow. This involves getting an array of colors in, if not daily, then maybe over the course of a week, with the assumption that having a range of colors will also mean getting an array of all the different phytochemicals that plants can provide to us. These can contribute to reducing inflammation, which is at the core of many disease processes, and in turn can mean improved health and longevity. So eating the rainbow means that we'd. Strive to get servings of red, orange, yellow, green, kind of blue, violet, fruit, and veggies, white, and also brown foods into our diets. We're talking about veggies primarily today, but when we're eating the rainbow for nutritional benefits from a diversity of different, uh, sources for calories. getting the full complement of phytonutrients. We can also look to fruit and teas and spices and herbs and nuts and seeds to, um, give us more hits of those plant based nutrients. And this variety will definitely do us good, but back to veggies. Here are some of the most nutrient dense vegetables out there. According to wonderful friend of the podcast, Marty Kendall. The first listings are ones that are most nutrient dense per calorie, so adding them in, uh, won't add too much energy to our intake. Uh, they include spinach, bok choy, watercress, asparagus, kimchi, chard, kale, broccoli, endive, which might be endive depending on how you pronounce it, along with salsify, salsify. Lettuce, brussels sprouts, which we keep hearing about, also cauliflower, mushrooms, and green beans. And then another few come with a little more energy or a few more calories, but absolutely can be part of our balance plate on a regular basis. Or a vibrant rainbow, depending on how you're looking at it. And these would include sweet potato, potato, So, sweet potato, and also regular potato, and avocado. From these listings, I'm sure you already have some favorites, so maybe you want to start there. Though diversity might be a good long term goal for some people, we should all start where we are. So, sticking with what we love might be the best strategy for us right now. Finding a similar veggie to one that we like might be a next step. for somebody else. Or if we're finding that we're gravitating mostly to sweet veggies and we want to try to get some more diversity in, then, you know, maybe we can consider revisiting some of the bitter vegetables for more diversity of nutrients and other benefits. Remember, it's not always easy because our brains were literally wired to do the opposite, but we can make a lot of headway and it's really worth our while. So. Maybe we can start doing those five a day that we know are good for us. So, you know, bridging that no do gap, and then we can go from there. Thanks for spending time with me today. If you're enjoying Wellness While Walking and would like to leave the show a review on iTunes, that would be so appreciated. There are instructions for how to do this in the show notes, or you can just email me and I can help you do it. Thank you so much for considering that and take care of yourself until we're together and again next time a reminder that neither I nor my podcast guests are doctors or health care professionals of any kind and Nothing on this podcast or associated content should be considered medical advice The information provided by Wellness While Walking, Whole Life Workshop, and Bermuda Road Wellness LLC is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider before With any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment, and before undertaking any new health care regimen, including walking.