Healthy Eating Guide: 8 Ways to Get 9 Servings of Fruit

Fruits and vegetables get a bad rap when we fixate on making quick meals, but they’re actually the best possible food for your body—and you can prepare them in no time. Getting 2.5 cups of them into your system every day isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds 

Add an Apple to Breakfast

This one’s easy for quick meals in the morning! All you have to do is add one piece of fruit to your morning meal. What do you normally eat? Eggs? Toast? Cereal? It doesn’t matter—just add something to complement the protein your body’s getting from the main course. 

The classic choice is the apple. While we prefer to slice our apples to be snackable with a side of yogurt, you can also just take it on the road with you to work.

Add Fruit to Your Salads

And you should be eating salads often! One salad per day is ideal. Lunch or dinner make the most sense for this strategy since you’ll need to get your protein during breakfast.

It’s also easy to pack yourself a mixed salad with tons of raw fruits and veggies thrown in. Just add these to your salad:

• Cucumber
• Carrot
• Apple
• Strawberry (it tastes great!)
• Spinach
• Peppers (Green, Red, or Yellow)
• Green Onion

It’s easy to prepare, and it keeps in the fridge overnight. Just keep your dressing separate until you eat it.

Make a Fruit Bowl Part of Your Kitchen’s Décor

It’s a lot easier to grab a piece of fruit on the go when it’s just sitting right there in front of you. You can even go so far as to make that fruit bowl the center of your kitchen, prompting everyone in your home to grab a piece as they walk by.

That will also force you to keep it filled with fresh fruit every week!

Add Fruits and Veggies to Other Dishes

This one happens on a case-by-case basis. If you’re making pasta, then add some veggies to the sauce! Better yet, make a homemade sauce with a ton of different veggies!

Alternatively, you can add some fruits to chutney for meat, or chop up some veggies and throw them into scrambled eggs.

The point isn’t to reinvent a dish from scratch—just to tweak some quick meals with some added fruits and veggies for your purposes.

Make Quick Meals Out of Fruit Smoothies

You can make a fruit smoothie in no time if you have the ingredients. Just another reason to get that fruit bowl for your kitchen!

Throw in some yogurt, milk, and the fruits of your choice:

• Pineapple
• Strawberry
• Raspberry
• Banana
• Apple
• Orange
• Blueberries
• A frozen mix

You can take these quick meals on the go, or drink it from the comfort of home. Your choice!

Make Veggie Pizza

Great idea, but what about the carbs on the crust?

So glad you asked! You can actually make a crust out of cauliflower, seasoned to taste better than any takeout pizza crust you’ve had before (being totally honest, the bar’s set pretty low for crust flavor). You can find directions to make it right here.

Serve Fruit Platters Just Before or After a Meal

Not only does fruit make a great substitute for desserts (especially when you’re making quick meals), but you can also keep your hunger at bay by eating some before dinner.

It’s normally a bad thing to eat as you cook—especially if you’re cooking for yourself—but you can set aside a portion of fruit to snack on while you cook the main course. You can trick yourself into eating the fruit by making it the only viable snack food on hand, a tactic that works well with larger families as well.

Bring “Baby” Fruit on the Go

We can get hungry and on the go, so we should have snacks that give us more energy! Chips and sweets won’t do that for you, but baby fruit certainly will!

Our personal favourite is to put a handful of baby tomatoes in a small Tupperware container and throw in our bags, but this can work with any kind of fruit or vegetable—and it beats just about all of the quick meals you can buy out there!

But if you really just need quick meals on the go with fruits and vegetables thrown right in, then what you need is a meal plan that's ready to go whenever you are. Try it out to see for yourself!