I really can’t stand tomato juice or any of the commercial vegetable drinks, e.g. V8. I understand that they are supposed to be very good for me, and a quick, painless way to get a couple servings of vegetables daily, but I hate the taste.
Barring alcohol, or salt (which I’m not allowed) what other ways have you resourceful C&F folks found to mask the flavour of this vile tasting, but oh-so-healthful nectar of the garden?
If you love the taste of this stuff, it probably won’t be of much help saying so here, but if you know of a healthful way to make vegetable juices palatable I’m sure there are others here besides myself who would be interested.
The makers of V8 in the states sell a combo vegetable and fruit version which is supposed to have all the veggie values, but tastes like the fruit. I never tried it, so your mileage may vary.
I think one of the biggest set backs to trying to eat healthy is when people feel they have to eat things they just hate. If you hate vegetable juice, then don’t try to drink it. Maybe putting ice in it would help. I have drunk V-8 juice that way when it is hot and I also liked the spicy kind, but it always tastes like V-8 juice. And I think the juice lacks fiber, which is one important reason for eating vegetables. I never thought that the juice would really replace eating the whole vegetable I guess.
Do you like raw veggies? I’ve been eating them for lunch. If you have to eat lunch fast they don’t work, but maybe you could snack on them during the day. You can get those little carrots that are already cut up. Just put them in a colander, rinse well, and put in a clean plastic bag with little drainage hole punched in. Set them on a paper towel in the refrigerator. Then you have a week’s supply all ready. I like green peppers, celery (cut up and then stand them in a container of water so they stay crisp), cabbage—and they are crunchy which is something that I like. Or you could pre-clean a lot of things and make big salads. The main thing is to get them ready to go for the week and then it’s easy to just grab them and eat them.
I think I read somewhere that some of the nutrients in vegetables aren’t available unless they are cooked. It might have something to do with tough cell walls or something, but I’m not sure I’m right. Anyway, if you cut up all your vegetables on the week-end then you can just grab a couple of handfuls and steam them for dinner and it won’t be such a chore.
I’m not a real vegetable lover so I definitely understand the problem. Luckily my husband does the cooking and he cooks very healthy so for dinner I just eat the veggies he puts on my plate—I have it easy. I can’t say I love them, but I don’t hate them.
V-8 and the like taste like they are cooked to me.
I bought a rather heavy-duty juicer to make fresh raw juices. It does make really good juices but it’s a bear to clean. After it nearly spun across the room and attempted to kill me, I let other people make juice for me.
I’m partial to carrot juice variations, such as carrot-orange, carrot-apple, carrot-beet-celery.
Actually, ketchup is very good for men (it’s a whole tomato product, good for staving off prostate problems).
I hate veggies in general. I hate grocery shopping almost as much as I hate veggies. I hate throwing out half the veggies I just bought because they’ve gone bad already.
I was thinking about the juicer/blender thing, then maybe adding some sort of flavouring to mask the taste of what I was consuming (though I just can’t see chocolate working in this regard). I guess one could experiment adding fruit and vegetables to the blender at the same time. Carrots need to be limited, as they are very high on the glycemic index. Fibre is easy - just buy some psyllium fibre in bulk from the healthfood store. It’s dirt cheap.
I was hoping someone might have stumbled upon something really creative to make up for my lack of imagination.
my wife thinks veggies were invented to punish her and she thinks soup is a major conspiracy. have you considered spending some time at a good farmer’s market and actually tasting fresh veggies? they’re actually really good and rarely poisonous. i don’t know what you eat regularly but my wife was raised on processed junk foods. i’ve made some progress with her but she has a long way to go.
honest story: she once said (without thinking) “lettuce just mucks up a good salad.” a good salad to her is croutons, bacon bits, mushrooms, cheese, and pepperoni with poppyseed dressing.
If you hold your nose while you are drinking your v8 and then still holding your nose take a mouthful of your favorite juice and slosh it around your mouth.When you let go your nose all you will taste is the juice !!
I used this method for taking a spoonful of cod liver oil .
one of the ways I used to “sneak” veggies into the kid’s diet was by making homemade wontons. I’d use well drained ground beef or pork, but I’d boil up some veggie mix (usually fresh broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and celery), then puree them with the water they were cooked in, and mix that into the meat, along with some spices, then stuff the wonton wrappers with them. Instead of deep frying, I’d just brush them with oil and bake them instead, turning several times.
But the best way to get someone to eat veggies is to grow them. I once caught Noah sitting in the middle of the lettuce (we’d mix all types of lettuce seed together and fill a bed, it would look very pretty with the red oak leaf, spinach, and other colors) with a bowl of salad dressing, ripping and dipping and eating.
I never got a chance to cook any peas - the kids would eat them as soon as the pods came on, and almost never let them get actual peas - but if they did, they’d eat those raw, too.
And, of course, there is absolutely NO comparison to home grown tomatos. We also grew peppers of all kinds, green beans, onions, garlic and herbs, brussel sprouts, spinach, and strawberries.
I tried asparagus, but didn’t get it to “take”. It’s VERY labor intensive for the first five years, but if you can get it through that, it lasts for years. And it tastes nothing like what you purchase in stores.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the yard for a garden anymore - too much shade. We did do some container tomatos this year, and they worked out well.
