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Getting enough fruits and vegetables into your daily diet can be a challenge, especially if you overthink it. But it's crucial for your longevity and to help reduce your intake of unhealthy and harmful ultra-processed foods.
That's why former surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams has developed a simple and tasty strategy: pick an easy vegetable you like and hide it sometimes — like in a smoothie.
Adams's personal go-to vegetable is spinach.
"I can eat it in a salad, I can eat it sauteed, but I also have taken to smoothies," Adams, who served under former President Donald Trump and is now the director of health equity at Purdue University, told Business Insider. "You can actually get literally a full day's serving of fruits and veggies in one smoothie."
"I'm not a person who really loves a lot of fruits and veggies," Adams said. However, he added that "the best way for individuals to protect themselves is to incorporate and substitute vegetables and fruits for processed grains and artificial foods whenever we can. Smoothies are a way I accomplish this."
He uses this tactic to eat fewer ultra-processed foods — such as sugary cereals, soft drinks, ready-made meals like canned soup or packaged noodles, and processed meats. UPFs have been linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, anxiety, and depression. A recent study in the BMJ linked them to early death from any cause.
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His simple smoothie recipe allows him to sneak in more greens on a day-to-day basis. That helps control his weight and limit his risk for conditions that can reduce life-span like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, he said.
"You don't even taste the spinach," Adams added. "That's my hack."
Adams keeps four basic ingredients stocked in his fridge and freezer: spinach, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, some frozen fruit, and one more surprise vegetable — carrots.
He prefers strawberries, bananas, and citrus fruits like pineapples and mangoes because they hide the carrot flavor. He swears you can't taste either vegetable, and the carrots actually add a little sweetness.
Either before leaving the house or right when he gets home from work, Adams throws the ingredients into the blender for a quick and filling snack.
"You'd be surprised how much spinach you can get into a smoothie without it changing," he said.
Some people may like to add yogurt for protein. Adams skips that ingredient because he's lactose intolerant.
One smoothie ingredient he advises against is juice because it contains so much sugar.
"I've seen people make smoothies that are essentially Slurpees," he said.
To him, that defeats the purpose of a smoothie, which is to sneak in some healthy foods by masking them with fruit, which is naturally sugary but still nutritious.
