5 Recipes that Don’t Taste Healthier But Actually Are

Do you find yourself at your wit’s end at getting your family to eat more greens, veggies or beans? It may be time to get sneaky! And we have just the recipes to help you get started.

Here are 5 tried and true foods that make it easy to help your family eat healthier without them even knowing it.

5 Delicious Ways to Hide Healthy Ingredients in Popular Foods

1. Smoothies are a great cover up healthy ingredients

Sweet, cold, and refreshing. Who doesn’t like something that tastes pretty much like a milkshake? This is one of the easiest way to sneak in some ingredients your family might otherwise turn up their nose to. Spinach, kale, beans, avocado, collard greens, and beets are all cleverly camouflaged...not just by color, but taste as well. Even tomatoes and celery taste great in this Virtuous Mary concoction.

2. Brownies are a clever way to serve beans

Healthy brownies is quite the oxymoron. In fact, if you don’t tell, they will never ever find out. Black beans have a mild taste and creamy texture, so they hide very well within most brownie recipes. If you’re using a boxed mix, simply blend up a can of rinsed black beans and use it to replace the oil and egg in the recipe. If you want to make the brownies from scratch, try this recipe.

3. Beans are a great addition to pasta sauce

If you’re using spaghetti sauce, just blend up ½ can of kidney beans and add it to one jar of the sauce, then serve over your pasta. You can also use white beans to make a “faux” alfredo sauce that has none of the heart-harming-waist-enlarging fat of the original.

4. You can make “velveeta”- like cheese out of potatoes and carrots

No lie. It tastes pretty close to the real cheese version. Except you get more weight loss friendly fiber in the potato carrot cheese. In fact, that’s the only kind we use for our mac and cheese anymore. What better way to get a picky toddler to eat lots of veggies?! And if you make a large batch of the “cheese” you can add it to a potato broccoli mixture to make a cheesy soup. You can also serve it as an appetizer with chips and salsa.

5. Creamy avocado makes a mean chocolate pudding

This chocolate pudding is a great way to get your chocolate fix without interfering with your goal to slim down. It’s also a wonderful way to add avocado to your diet, especially if you don’t care too much for its taste. The semi sweet chocolate flavor covers it right up.

Need More Ideas to Hide the Healthy?

While The Full Plate Diet philosophy is all about choice and choosing, we realize sneaky healthy foods in may be a good start for those smaller picky eaters. A great resources for more ideas is the Sneaky Chef herself, Missy Chase Lapine.