VEGGIE STARTER
VEGGIE STARTERS TO STEADY YOUR GLUCOSE:
THE ULTIMATE 2024 GUIDE
This is a complete guide to veggie starters, one of my most powerful hacks.
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So if you’re looking to:
→ Manage your glucose.
→ Reduce cravings and hunger.
→ Feel amazing.
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Then you're in the right place. Let’s get started.
ADDING VEGGIES TO YOUR DAY
When I talk about the veggie starter hack, I’m talking about adding a dish at the beginning of your meals. You will eat more than you usually do and flatten your glucose curves in the process. The goal here is to return to how food used to be, before it was processed: wherever there were starches and sugars, there was also fiber. By adding a delicious veggie starter, we’re bringing fiber back.
THE MORE FIBER, THE BETTER
The amount of fiber we eat these days is much lower than what we should be eating.
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Fiber is in the structural lining of plants—it’s abundant in leaves and we get most of our fiber from beans and vegetables. It's is incredibly important to us: it fuels the good bacteria in our gut, strengthens our microbiome, lowers our cholesterol levels, and makes sure everything runs smoothly.
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Fiber is also good for our glucose levels for several reasons, notably because it creates a viscous mesh in our intestine. The mesh slows down and reduces the absorption of glucose molecules from food across the intestinal lining.
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We know that consuming more fiber is beneficial and that eating it before all the other foods is even more so. That’s why adding a veggie starter to each of our meals has a powerful effect on our glucose curves.
VEGGIES FIRST!
The objective is to add additional vegetables as a starter to a meal:
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To make up about 30% of the meal,
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The veggies can be raw, cooked, baked, and be dressed with any protein or fat that you like. We eat more and steady our glucose levels at the same time,
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The veggie starter can be consumed up to 90 minutes before the main meal, and the effects of the protective fiber will remain. It can also be consumed just before the rest of the meal.
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And this hack is best used before the meal of the day highest in starches and sugars.
ADDING PROTEIN OR FAT
To make our veggie starter tasty and delicious, we can add protein or fat to it, such as:
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Protein: seeds, nuts, full fat Greek yogurt, feta cheese, mozzarella, parmesan cheese, etc.​
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Fat: olive oil, pesto, coconut yogurt, salad dressing, etc.
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Avoid adding starch or sugar to your veggie starter. We want the fiber to be there first, so if you can, keep the starch for the main dish, and the sugar for dessert.
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Beware of premade dressings you can buy in grocery stores. They’re often packed with sugar and loaded with vegetable oil—it’s better to make a simple one from scratch.
My recipe for homemade salad dressing is:
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2 tablespoons of olive oil
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1 tablespoon of vinegar (any kind you like)
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An optional tablespoon of dijon mustard (if you like the kick)
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Salt and pepper
I usually make a batch of dressing every Sunday and keep it in the fridge to use all week.
COMMON QUESTIONS
TIPS & TRICKS
Here are some more tips and tricks I've used to make this hack as easy as possible:
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Buy raw veggies that you like. Such as raw baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, cucumber slices, or veggies from a jar like asparagus or artichokes, and just munch on these before a meal if you're hungry. This is more like assembling than cooking. I like to add some hummus or guacamole too. If you're cooking, why not eat the raw veggies as you're preparing the meal.
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Do some batch cooking. I like roasting a large batch of veggies over the weekend and keeping them in the fridge to reheat and serve as a veggie starter before any meal.
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A little bit is better than nothing. If you can’t make the veggie starter make up 30% of your overall meal, that’s fine – we're here to do things when they're easy. Even a couple of mouthfuls of veggies are better than nothing at all.
IN CONCLUSION...
I love the veggie starter hack because it tells us to add more food to our meals all while helping keep our glucose steady. It isn't restrictive, and it can make us explore veggies in a fun and original way. The veggies can be prepared any way you like, or simply eaten raw. Adding protein and fat to our veggie starter is a good way of adding taste, especially for kid-friendly starters.