Many of the super-healthy plant-based ingredients that can be used in cooked meals face a similar problem to the raw green veggies discussed yesterday: they fail to deliver instant pleasure. 

The good news is that cooked food offers much greater possibilities to add great taste to these health sensations. That will be the core of today’s strategy for making these superfoods a permanent part of life. 

Let’s talk strategy

I grew up on a very meat-rich diet and my mom had a tough time getting me to eat some veggies. But as I learned more about health and environmental issues of high meat consumption, this changed. 

Today, I see meat as a glorified vegetable dressing. In other words, meat’s main purpose is to make vegetables super tasty so that daily consumption becomes totally natural. 

There are countless ways to combine meat with vegetables, mushrooms and beans, but dishes based on minced meat are the most practical. In my case, these dishes are made once a month in bulk and frozen in convenient containers. 

My three preferred minced meat dishes are listed in the next section. To further reduce meat consumption and increase variety, I replace one third of the meat with soy mince. 

It really is remarkable how little meat you need to make vegetables genuinely delicious. Less than 5% of my calories come from meat, but this lowly 5% is leveraged to turn a much larger amount of veggies, mushrooms and beans into genuine taste sensations.   

“Vegefying” meat recipes

The bulk of my 5% meat intake comes from three recipes: lasagne, bobotie, and chili con carne. There are tons of these recipes on the internet, so you can take your pick. 

But these are just examples. It’s the principle that is important. I strongly encourage you to think carefully about how you can leverage the meat dishes you enjoy today to maximize your consumption of veggies, mushrooms and beans.

Here are the vegetables that work best in my three core dishes: 

• Lasagne is great for including copious amounts of mushrooms, onion, peppers and eggplant. In addition, it works surprisingly well with raw spinach leaves on the side. 
• Bobotie is strongly flavored, so it goes brilliantly with a rather bland mix of cooked vegetables. Frozen packs of mixed vegetables are perfect for this purpose. 
• Chili con carne can accommodate lots of beans, carrots, peppers, onions and chili. The spicy nature of this dish facilitates surprisingly large quantities of vegetables. 

The general formula is very simple: choose your vegetable and gradually increase the concentration each time you make your favorite meat dish until you reach a limit where the taste starts dropping.

Don’t rush it. Make a small increase every time and, before you know it, you’ll be eating loads of healthy veggies without even noticing it!