Hi everyone,
1. How you guys including vegetables in your diet or in meal prep?
2. For alternative, do you have any suggestions for daily intake vitamins tablet? Which one are you eating, where to buy etc
For background I am a single male salaryman. I am not going into details. I do grocery shopping in bulk. I usually do meal prep for while week at once. My diet mostly cantains Chicken, egg, oats, milk, tofu, and rearly seasonal fruits.
Mainly because I don’t know how to cook vegetables nor how to include in meal prep, vegetables seems comparatively expensive and hard to find fresh vegetables and also expensive.
As you can see, I am lacking regular necessary vitamin and fiber intake. So I want your suggestions
Thanks 🙏
13 comments
Multivitamins.
[This is what I’ve been taking every single morning](https://www.dhc.co.jp/goods/goodsdetail.jsp?gCode=2144), right before I leave for work- for almost 2 years now. Pretty cheap at around 11 yen per tablet/day. Seems to do the job because I haven’t got sick for the past 1.5 years.
1. I like making stir fry with seasonal vegetables that are cheap
2. Nature Made and Dear Natura are two major brands that are available at most drug stores
Are you sick or pregnant? It’s the rare person who needs to supplement his or her diet with vitamins. Most of the supplements people take just end up in urine.
I buy only from Nootropics Depot, to avoid the Made in China rubbish:
[https://nootropicsdepot.com/?google-ad-click-&gclid=CjwKCAjwg-GjBhBnEiwAMUvNWwhOYVdi-VD0vyLznLgNOiy1GB_9GZcvhDL6kXxWKACw-qLSyI-w9RoCtOAQAvD_BwE](https://nootropicsdepot.com/?google-ad-click-&gclid=CjwKCAjwg-GjBhBnEiwAMUvNWwhOYVdi-VD0vyLznLgNOiy1GB_9GZcvhDL6kXxWKACw-qLSyI-w9RoCtOAQAvD_BwE)
I take curcumin and resveratrol daily.
If you’re eating tofu, why not miso soup?
Chuck in some mushrooms and some chinese cabbage, both are pretty cheap at the supermarket.
Got married to a girl who knows how to cook healthy.
This seems like a post about shopping, maybe your question is solved by [the wiki page](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/wiki/shopping)?
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Vitamin supplements or a perceived lack of vitamins is basically a scam. It’s actually difficult for an average person in a developed economy to not get enough vitamins and minerals.
Of most things we only need small amounts and our body usually stores them, so eating something once a week can keep you topped up.
But hey if you want to piss out money go ahead.
Frozen vegetables are a great option. Frozen spinach is easy to add to whatever you’re making. You can buy one of those microwave 温野菜 boxes from daiso (recommend the foldable silicone ones) to steam veggies in the microwave.
Potatoes, carrots, broccoli aren’t too expensive either, and you can add store bought sauces after steaming if it’s too much work. Personally i hate moyashi, but it’s nice and cheap to add to stir fries or miso soup.
You could also try meal prepping chijimi (korean style savory pancake) with a bunch of leafy greens in the batter and just eat one or two with every meal.
Yeah veggies aren’t the most cheap thing in the world, but they are critical for health, and something I never cheap out on.
You can get vitamins at any drug store (like Matsumoto kiyoshi) or Amazon. Even kakuyasu sells them.
Be warned though, according to many studies, taking vitamins isn’t nearly as good for you as eating actual veggies.
If money is an issue, you can often find the bargain cart where stuff is half off. That said is fine, just close to the expiration date, so you should use it soon. I would also just buy whatever is in season, since it will be cheaper and fresher.
Like many Japanese, I usually go shopping about every 2 days. If you want to buy in huge amounts less often, usually that will result in worse nutrition since vitamins fade the older something is.
I generally cook veggies and tofu in stir fry or similar, but streaming, sukiyaki, and many other ways work. Maybe YouTube is your friend to learn how to cook veggies in simple ways.
You’re diet mostly contains Chicken, egg, oats, milk, tofu, and rearly seasonal fruits. ?
That doesn’t seem like a lot of things to me, so it’s hard to imagine what kind of food you’re cooking, or where to advise you to add veggies.
I like my veggies, so I cook with them often. I’ll do things like add carrots, potatoes (sweet or not) and chick peas to butter chicken – The ones in the box that you break apart and add liquid. I make curry lots. Indian, Japanese, Thai. It’s something you can easily add veggies to buy just cutting them and throwing them in the pot with your other ingredients.
Or tomato sauce pasta with veggies. Recently I made it with bell peppers, onions and spinach. that can get a little expensive though, but I like bell peppers.
In evenings I make soup lots. Noodles, miso, other seasonings, some kind of cabbage, bean sprouts, green onions or nira. Whatever you feel like. It all goes in the same pot, so it’s quick and easy.
I’ve been having to learn to cook with ingredients that are more easily accessible here. So part of that has just been experimentation by adding new things to meals I already make and seeing how it tastes, or looking up recipes to make with the ingredients I find. Some of them turn out good, and some do not. But that’s how you learn right.
Spinach cooks down to almost nothing so I throw it into as many things as possible. Sandwiches, eggs, soup, noodles, curry, etc.