What to do with people that refuse to eat vegetables?

[Gary350]

Relatives came to visit they refuse to eat vegetables, they say, We don't eat rabbit food. They want a steak dinner for every meal. I tell them we eat lots of vegetables, no beef, mostly chicken and pork, sometimes fish. They are not happy. Wow I never saw such picky eaters.

[pepperhead212]

Don't invite them again, or, if you have a Mac Donalds nearby, give them the address! They serve beef.

[imafan26]

When you invite them tell them its pot luck. You'll be making veggies, they can bring the meat.
Actually, my dad is like that. He makes all kinds of excuses to avoid vegetables. Actually, we did not grow up with a lot of veggies and I myself don't like a lot of raw veggies. I do know how to hide them well. Zuchhini bread, herb bread, carrot cake, lemon meringue pie, casseroles, chunky spaghetti, my stew has more vegetables than meat. The few raw veggies I eat usually go as sandwich stuffing or pickles. I love harvard beets, takuan, pickled eggplant, namasu, kim chee, soup, and stir fries.

[rainbowgardener]

I have two different friends who hardly eat any vegetables ever. Both of them are quite thin; I don't know if that's coincidence or if I should stop eating vegetables. But as a vegetarian for over forty years, I can't imagine it and can't understand how people live like that. I love my salads and garden veggies!

[Allyn]

My husband will eat vegetables (as long as it doesn't involve raw tomatoes), but according to him, it's not an official meal unless it includes "something that used to have a face." It doesn't matter if it walked, crawled, flew or swam, there must be some semblance of animal flesh on the plate somewhere. I can usually get away with taking a meal and halving the meat and doubling the vegetables as long as there's a piece of something that used to have a face.

[rainbowgardener]

Wow, meat three times a day!? That just seems so excessive. Not everyone needs to be a vegetarian (though it is better for the planet), but everyone can start by including meatless meals ...

[applestar]

Can you make things that incorporate significant amount of vegetables in the recipe? Rolled stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, stews and beef pot pie.... omelets with vegetables. Don't bother making salad for them, just for yourselves.

I like the idea of hiding the veggie in the bread. You can also hide a lot of veggies in the pasta sauce by putting them through the blender.

[SQWIB]

We don't have that problem, my folks love veggies and the kids are willing to try anything we make, we have been making a conscious effort to incorporate veggies in all our meals.
But I'm like that with breads and pasta, almost everything I crave is on bread. Since I have been eating healthier I usually make flat breads and forgo the meats and smother with vegetables as a treat. I have been trying to limit the pastas and breads as well but I would much rather have some caponata on french bread than a piece of steak.

My wife has been making me Zoodles instead of pasta and I LOVE IT
(sorry no pic)

Banana Fries
Kale Chips
Veggie Soup
Veggie flat bread


Stir fry is always a hit, this is when I was growing sprouts, I really need to get back into the sprouts and micro greens.


If I'm making burgers I try to get almost half veggies in the meat, my last burger was beef and eggplant. If I have micro greens or sprouts, I'll toss them on top.





My favorite meal
Salmon
Caponata on french bread
Fried Eggplant
Chicken Sausage Stuffed Anaheinm

[Allyn]

Wow, meat three times a day!? That just seems so excessive. Not everyone needs to be a vegetarian (though it is better for the planet), but everyone can start by including meatless meals ...

Oh good grief, hun, he says that. That doesn't mean he gets it. He gets a lot of 'unofficial' meals. I substitute beans for meat in a few recipes. And sometimes the meat is just a couple of tablespoons of ground pork or chicken so "three meals a day" with meat may just be one serving worth of meat spread over the three meals. He's not a caveman and we're not well enough off to have full servings of meat that often, nor would I want to. And that includes seafood, too, don't forget. "Used to have a face" includes fish. (And he says eggs count because they would have had a face. We have 30 laying hens so we have a lot of eggs. And we eat our own chickens, so I'm not sure how we're ruining the planet with our chickens, but okay.)

[imafan26]

I have to admit, I don't feel like I have really had a meal without some meat. But I don't use a lot. I make meat flavored burgers or meatloaf. I have maybe 1/2 lb of ground meat (mostly beef but sometimes a mix of pork/beef or beef and turkey) I add to that a chopped onion, a couple of stalks of celery if I have it, about 8 slices of old bread, sometimes 10 if I have a lot of bread. 1 egg, some powdered milk or half and half if I have any left over. Pepper (lots of pepper), ketchup, honey mustard, garlic powder. I mix it up and either make meatloaf or hamburgers with it. The hamburgers are really soft so it is hard to keep it together. When I make meatloaf I put half the meat in a foil lined roasting pan (I makes clean up easier) and then I stuff the meatloaf with spinach, cheese and mushrooms. I put the rest of the meat mix on top. Top it with more ketchup or a can of diced tomatoes and ketchup and I bake it about an hour. It lasts for about 5 days. There is more bread tha meat in the mix, but I am used to that, the meat is mostly for flavor. I usually don't need to add salt since there is salt in the ketchup, cheese, and the bread.

I make a big Dutch oven of stew with about 4-6 oz of meat (beef or pork. Lately pork is cheaper). The rest is about 5 potatoes, 8 carrots, a large onion, and a packet of beef stew mix with a can of stewed tomatoes or tomato sauce. This also lasts about 5 days.

I have a costco chicken in the frig for more than 5 days.

Today I made beef tomato for dinner but ordinarily I would have another week of the costco chicken bones in chicken and squash soup.

I do use a lot of vegetables to stretch the meat, but I do like the meat for flavor. There are only a few vegetarian like meals I feel satisfied with:

Nuked potato with butter, garlic salt and pepper. Sometimes with some melted cheese and frozen broccoli
Tofu steak
Tortong talon (Eggplant omellette) It is a filipino breakfast dish, but it is usually eaten with pork or longanisa (Filipino sausage)
Vegetarian nishime

I invited my sister for dinner once and made a steak and potato supper. My brother in law couldn't sleep that night until he cooked a pot of rice to eat. For myself, I can omit the starches like rice and bread, but I have to have some meat flavor or it doesn't seem like I had dinner.

[Gary350]

I do not like the flavor of meat I wish I did not have to eat it but I have to eat protein for my low blood sugar problem. I can eat, peanuts, peanut butter, beans & rice, yogurt, cheese, etc. but not eating the correct protein makes be feel really terrible. I like BBQ thin cut pork chops on the grill and meat loaf with gravy or catsup to hide the meat flavor, BBQ chicken, fried chicken, baked or fried fish. I cook lots of stews and soups to hide the meat and maximize the vegetables. I have been enjoying my garden vegetables, kale salad, boc choy salad, russian red lettuce salad, and salad mixes. The visitors claim they like dinner salads but say, we have never eater anything from the garden, never eaten kale or boc choy and are not going to start now. Wow what a bunch of jerks, they have been buying their own food and eating what they like that suites me just fine. When our children were growing up we always had garden vegetables on the table they will eat almost anything but now that they are on their own lunch is always fast food they only have 30 minute lunch at work and dinner is often pizza quick and easy, but my sons both love to cook just like me, on their day off work and days when they have time they are always cooking something good in the kitchen, they would both like to have their own garden but just don't have time.

[gumbo2176]

I can't imagine not eating vegetables and can't wrap my head around the mindset of folks that shy away from them. I've got a brother-in-law that won't eat anything "green", as he puts it. And if you think about it, there's a lot of vegetables and fruits that are green. Dang fool doesn't know what he's missing if you ask me.

I mean, the wife and I like meat and do consume more chicken and pork than beef, but to not include vegetables to balance out our meals is never going to happen. I can survive on salads, fruit and grains and will sometimes go for a few days without eating meat, but it is an integral part or our diet.

[Albert_136]

First, were these persons invited to dinner? If so the host bears considerable responsibility, I should think. Otherwise take them out to eat someplace, or, throw them out and let them find food on their own. ｡◕‿◕｡

[HoneyBerry]

I guess you could feel sorry for them. They are missing out. Some people have never tasted good vegetables before. That's how I was until I found a good produce store. I had to start over.

[john gault]

I do eat my fair share of veggies, but not much of a fruit eater. I also eat all types of meats, but I don't feel as if I hadn't had a meal if I go meatless, but I do need something with some "meat", in other words I just can't eat a salad for dinner. However, a baked potato will give me a satisfied feeling of eating a 'meal' or even just a bowl of cereal, since milk is kind of filling for me. Sometimes I just drink a large chocolate milkshake and call that a meal

[jeff84]

veggies are great, but there has to be something with fat and protein in every meal or I don't feel satisfied. doesn't have to be meat, beans and dairy products can work. most veggies while they might have plenty of vitamins and minerals contain very few calories, and the ones they do have are only carbs.

[MOFishin]

What are they expecting you to serve for sides? I would think chicken with veggies for sides would be sufficient for just about anyone. I have a brother who is very picky. The only vegetables (or any non-meat) that I can think of him eating is potatoes and sweet corn. But these people sound even harder to please if they have to have beef all day

[digitS']

This has been a fun thread for me to follow. Both because of my own preferences and the preferences revealed by others . I'm sorry about your visitors, Gary. It cannot be much fun to have them there at the table with such hard-&-fast notions.

It's a little difficult for me to think that a high meat diet can be a very healthy one. Still, we know that it isn't just an invention of modern affluence by looking at the diets of people such as some of the native Americans in Central America who ate almost entirely a plant-based diet and people like the Inuit of northernmost North America who had a nearly 100% diet of flesh.

Yes, I understand the idea that meat satisfies hunger ... although I'd suggest that this might be mostly a psychological issue. I grew up on a farm with cattle. We had beef 3 times a day, often. I remember searching through the freezer hoping to find a package of fish or chicken as an alternative meal suggestion. We may have had little money but there was a herd of as many as 40 cows, always fresh milk and a steer ready to go to the packing company.

I tried a near-vegetarian diet for a time, as a young adult. My mother was sympathetic and helpful but I found it nearly impossible after 3 or 4 years to continue being very insistent with visits to my family. By the way, Dad has always tended to just eat what is set before him, altho he obviously is very much oriented to eating beef. He was 99 in February.

Still, I think there is great value in having an abundance of vegetables in my own diet. I'm not much of a salad eater but appreciate discovering stir-fry at a young age and making good use of that method to really increase my happy consumption of vegetables.

Steve

[john gault]

Diet and health is not such an easy issue as some make it out to be. Look at the Maasai tribe, they consume tons of saturated fat, yet don't suffer from the same problems we do here in the west. The answer is still not fully understood, but I believe two factors are predominate. 1) physical activity. 2) Quantity of food eaten per day.

https://sciencenordic.com/maasai-keep-he ... h-fat-diet

Excerpt:

"The Maasai are a very special people who live primarily from farming and livestock activities in Kenya and Tanzania. They have mystified researchers for years.

To a large extent, the Maasai live on the milk from their cattle, which means their diet is as full of fats as the diet of people living in the West. Unlike Westerners, however, the Maasai do not have many problems related to lifestyle diseases.

Health researchers around the world have therefore been greatly interested in these East Africans since cardio-vascular and other lifestyle diseases started to become a great problem in the west in the 1960s and 1970s.

To date, scientists have only studied the Maasai’s physical activities using questionnaires.

But now Danish researchers are the first to have taken objective measurements of the level of physical activities of the Maasai."

[john gault]

Speaking of carbs, which a lot of people claim are bad for you, look at the list of foods many don't normally consider carb-intensive, but they are; I love carbs, since I ride a bike as my primary form of transportation and it's why I'm such a fan of potatoes.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/8-things-peo ... 11901.html

[applestar]

I kind of chuckle at the dietary recommendations that read like one size fits all. Not pointing fingers here but in a very broad sense. Particularly specialized diets for specific purposes that seem to disregard individuals, you know what I mean?

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that there is a lot to be said for heritage and genetic predisposition, which was touched in the discussion. If your ancestors lived for generations in isolated region eating and exercising a certain way, I imagine that might have had some effect in the physical predisposition of that came generations later. Maybe some day, your personal devices can prick your finger and performs DNA analysis and tell you what's the best dietary and exercise regimen are.

I think it IS important to separate and not confuse habit/dogma and conditioned cravings from what your body really needs to eat. I think it's capable of telling you that you need more calcium without waiting for your teeth to fall out or your bones to crumble. I don't always eat what is considered "healthy" but I try to listen and when I feel like I need a fruit/veg smoothie oh and add some nuts in it, that's what I have. And if I feel like I have to have some animal protein -- nuts or beans will not do --but all I can get is a Big Mac at that moment... I will eat it, even if I would prefer to be making something innovative and balanced with fresh ingredients -- meats as well as vegetables.

[digitS']

"innovative and balanced with fresh ingredients"

Maybe that was what I was craving as a kid.

I mean, 3 times a day for months off the same Hereford? The local packing company would cure and smoke our meat. So, we had the "traditional breakfast meats" of sausage and bacon, only it was beef. Mom was a pretty good cook, as long as it wasn't vegetables . Still, I had little interest.

In conversations with people from "3rd world" countries, I've learned that some think that all American meat tastes about the same. That's because of the common livestock feeds of corn and soy. I'm not enuf of a culinary expert to know ...

Gardening is especially important to me because of both freshness and diversity. I'm a snob but see it as forgivable. After all, my diet comes close to that of a peasant ... And, I do eat out of the common soopermarket thru much of the year - mostly because of DW's aversion to canned fruits and veggies while living at a good distance from a 12 month growing season.

Steve