Ninety percent of American adults do not eat enough vegetables. That is not a knowledge problem. Nobody in that ninety percent thinks vegetables are bad for them.
What separates people who manage to eat more greens from those who do not is rarely a lack of information. It is usually the number of steps between a vegetable being in the kitchen and actually being eaten: wash, trim, chop, cook, clean up. At the end of a working day, those five steps are competing with foods that require none. That is the whole thing, and every strategy that works is a strategy that removes steps.
This question turns up in my comments most weeks, usually from people who already know the answer and cannot make it stick. Goli’s output since 2018 is counted in billions, so the sample is wide. The honest answer is mostly about logistics rather than nutrition.
The Short Answer
The way to get more greens is to reduce the work between buying them and eating them. Frozen, pre-washed and pre-cut vegetables count fully and remove most of the preparation. Adding one vegetable to a meal you already make works better than building new vegetable-centered meals. Only around one in ten US adults currently meets the recommendation.
The Principle Behind Getting More Greens: Every Step You Remove Is a Serving You Gain
One idea explains why most advice in this category fails and why a few things work reliably.
The CDC’s most recent state analysis, drawn from nearly 295,000 adults, found 10 percent met vegetable intake recommendations. The figure ranged from 5.6 percent in Kentucky to 16 percent in Vermont, and fell to 6.8 percent among adults living below or close to the poverty line.
The pattern repeats elsewhere: British data shows 55 percent of low-income households meeting the five-a-day recommendation against 85 percent of the highest-income ones. That gap is the one that matters for understanding the problem. If low intake were driven by not knowing vegetables are good for you, income would not predict it so cleanly. What income predicts is access, time, storage and the cost of food that spoils.
Research on households confirms the pattern. A study of 1,942 parents found that barriers to buying and preparing vegetables were associated with having fewer of them at home, and that food-insecure households were 15 percent less likely to have vegetables available. Notably, the barriers that predicted availability were the preparation ones rather than the purchasing ones.
So how to get more greens is not a question about wanting them more; it is a question about which steps you can remove.
That reframing matters because it changes what counts as progress. Advice built on motivation asks you to be a different person by Thursday. Advice built on friction asks you to make one purchase differently, and then leaves your evenings alone. The second kind survives a bad week, which is the only test that matters over a year.
Where the Steps Actually Are
Worth listing them, because people underestimate how many there are.
Buying is a step, and it fails when produce spoils before you use it. Storing is a step, and it fails when vegetables sit in a drawer you do not open. Washing, trimming and chopping are three more, and they fail at seven in the evening when you are tired. Cooking is a step. Cleaning up afterwards is the one nobody counts and everybody feels.
A two-year study comparing produce fresh, after five days in a domestic fridge, and frozen found some frozen items higher in vitamin A, vitamin C and folate than the fresh equivalents stored that way, which is how most people actually keep them. A bag of frozen broccoli removes buying frequency, spoilage, washing, trimming and chopping in one move. That is five steps for one purchase, which is why the freezer aisle outperforms good intentions.
Six Ways to Remove Steps
Ordered by how much friction each one removes.
Buy frozen. Frozen vegetables are picked and frozen quickly, count fully towards intake, cost less, and do not spoil. They also skip the entire preparation sequence. This is the highest-return change available.
Buy pre-washed and pre-cut. More expensive per kilo and cheaper per serving actually eaten. If a bag of washed spinach gets used and a whole one rots, the bag was cheaper.
Add to what you already cook. Doubling the vegetables in a dish you make anyway requires no new recipe, no new shopping habit and no decision. Spinach into the pasta sauce, extra peppers in the stir-fry.
Eat them first. Starting a meal with the vegetables means eating them while you are hungriest, which is when they taste best and when you will actually finish them.
Put them at eye level. People eat what they see. A drawer at the bottom of the fridge is where vegetables go to be forgotten.
Keep tinned in the cupboard. Tinned tomatoes, beans and sweetcorn count. Rinse the ones in brine and the sodium drops considerably.
One Belief Worth Taking Apart
One idea does more damage in this category than any other, and it is the one the supplement industry has the most reason to encourage.
The belief is that a greens powder or a greens supplement can stand in for vegetables. It is attractive because it solves the friction problem completely, and it is wrong in a specific way worth understanding.
Vegetables provide fiber in quantities supplements rarely match, along with water and a complex mix of nutrients and plant compounds that may work together rather than in isolation. A serving of broccoli is around three grams of fibre; a greens gummy is a fraction of a gram. The trials showing that vegetable intake reduces disease risk measured people eating vegetables, not people taking extracts, and nobody has demonstrated that the extract reproduces the outcome.
What a greens supplement can do is add specific nutrients to a daily routine. That is a real and modest thing. It is not the same category of claim as replacing a food group, and any product marketed on that basis is selling something it cannot deliver.
The honest framing is a top-up, not a substitute. If your vegetable intake is low, a supplement does not fix it, and knowing that is what stops people spending money instead of changing anything.
Setting the Target You Are Aiming At
Setting the target clearly makes the gap measurable.
American guidance puts most adults between two and three cups of vegetables daily, with a cup being one cup of raw or cooked vegetables or two cups of leafy greens. The World Health Organization suggests more than 400 grams of fruit and vegetables per day, which works out at roughly five portions, with potatoes and other starchy roots not counting towards it.
Harvard’s analysis of the research found the most effective combination was two servings of fruit and three of vegetables daily, with leafy greens and vitamin C-rich produce carrying the biggest benefit.
Those numbers sound large until you convert them into steps. Three cups is a bag of frozen spinach across two meals plus a handful of something in a third.
Building the Habit in Three Moves
Three steps, in order, and the first one is a shopping decision rather than an eating one.
Step One: Change What You Buy Before You Change What You Cook
Two bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer removes five steps at once. Nothing about your cooking has to change yet, and the vegetables stop expiring, which is where most good intentions die.
Step Two: Attach Them to a Meal You Already Make
Pick one dish you cook most weeks and add a vegetable to it permanently. Not a new recipe, not a new evening routine, just more of something in a meal that already exists. Four to six weeks of that and it stops being a decision.
Step Three: Move Them to Eye Level
Whatever is fresh goes at the front of a shelf you open, not in the drawer at the bottom. People eat what they see, and a vegetable you have to go looking for is a vegetable you will find soft on Friday.
What Realistically Changes
Expectations set correctly stop people abandoning this in week two.
Vegetable intake is a habit rather than an intervention, so nothing measurable happens in days. Digestive changes from increased fibre appear within one to two weeks, usually including some extra gas while your gut adapts. The health outcomes the research measures accumulate over years, not months.
What you can notice quickly is whether the habit survived. A change that requires a decision every evening usually does not last a fortnight. A change that removed a step usually does.
Who Should Be Careful
Most people can increase vegetables freely, and a few should do it more slowly.
Anyone on warfarin needs consistency rather than avoidance with vitamin K-rich greens like kale and spinach, because sudden changes affect how the medication works. Anyone with kidney disease should check about potassium before loading up on vegetables. People with IBS often react to specific vegetables rather than to vegetables generally, and increasing everything at once makes it impossible to tell which.
Increase gradually if you are starting from very little, because a sudden jump in fibre produces predictable discomfort. Our piece on how long fiber bloating lasts covers the two-to-four week adaptation window and what shortens it. And because supplements are not assessed for effectiveness before sale, any greens product making claims about replacing vegetables has not been reviewed against them.
How to Get More Greens: Your Questions Answered
What is the easiest way to get more greens?
Frozen vegetables, by a wide margin. They are picked and frozen quickly, count fully towards your intake, cost less than fresh, do not spoil in the drawer, and skip washing, trimming and chopping entirely. The second easiest is adding a handful of something to a meal you already cook, since that requires no new recipe and no new shopping habit.
Do greens powders count as a serving of vegetables?
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding in the category. Greens powders and gummies supply concentrated nutrients but not the fibre, water or volume of actual vegetables, and the research showing vegetables reduce disease risk was conducted on people eating vegetables. A supplement is a top-up to a diet rather than a replacement for a food group, and any product claiming otherwise is overstating.
How many servings of greens do I need a day?
Most American adults are advised to eat between two and three cups of vegetables daily, where one cup means a cup of raw or cooked vegetables or two cups of leafy salad greens. The World Health Organization recommends more than 400 grams of fruit and vegetables combined, roughly five portions. Currently only about one in ten US adults meets the vegetable target.
Are frozen vegetables as good as fresh?
Yes, and frequently better in practice. Frozen vegetables are processed soon after picking, which preserves nutrients that decline during transport and storage. Research comparing produce fresh, after five days in a domestic fridge, and frozen has found the consumer assumption that fresh is far more nutritious to be incorrect. They also do not spoil, which matters because the healthiest vegetable is the one you actually eat rather than the one that goes soft in the fridge.
How do I get more greens if I do not like the taste?
Change the preparation before you give up on the vegetable. Roasting brings out sweetness that boiling destroys, and most people who dislike broccoli have only had it boiled. Blending greens into things you already eat works too, since spinach in a smoothie or a pasta sauce is largely undetectable. Goli’s Supergreens gummies exist for people who want a nutrient top-up alongside that rather than instead of it.
Do I need a greens supplement if I eat vegetables?
Probably not, if you are hitting two to three cups daily. Supplements in this category make most sense as a small addition for people whose intake is inconsistent, and least sense as a substitute for the food itself. The order matters: fix the vegetables first, then decide whether anything else adds something.
Topping Up Rather Than Standing In
If a supplement in this category cannot replace a food group, then the only honest thing to say about one is what it actually adds.
Goli Supergreens Gummies carry a supergreens and probiotics blend along with vitamins and minerals, headlined by a high Vitamin B12 content. They are a small daily nutrition top-up and I would rather call them that than pretend otherwise, because a gummy does not contain the fibre, the water or the volume that makes vegetables work. If your intake is low, the frozen aisle will do more for you than these will. Two notes worth knowing: they contain iron, which interacts with some medications, and greens products carry Vitamin K, which matters if you take warfarin.
A viewer asked during a Live whether these could cover the days she did not cook, and the honest answer was that they cover some nutrients on those days and not the food group. More than 10 billion Goli gummies have been sold worldwide since 2018. See what the label adds.
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Dose and population decide more than most supplement marketing admits. CoQ10 benefits works through an ingredient where the strongest results came from patients at three times the dose most products contain.
The Bottom Line
So, how to get more greens comes down to removing steps rather than finding motivation. Ninety percent of adults fall short, and the gap tracks with access and time rather than with knowledge.
Today, buy two bags of frozen vegetables and put them where you will see them. That single move removes buying frequency, spoilage, washing, trimming and chopping. Then add one vegetable to a meal you already cook, rather than planning a new one.
Billions of gummies later, Goli still has not put one on sale as a replacement for a vegetable. A supplement that admits what it is not tells you something useful about how it was designed.
References
- Lee SH, Moore LV, Park S, Harris DM, Blanck HM. Adults Meeting Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations: United States, 2019. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022);71(1):1-9.
- Landry MJ, Burgermaster M, van den Berg AE, et al. Barriers to Preparing and Cooking Vegetables Are Associated with Decreased Home Availability of Vegetables in Low-Income Households. Nutrients, MDPI (2020);12(6):1823.
- Parents on Lower Incomes Face Barriers to Affording Fruit, Veg and Wholegrains. The Food Foundation.
- How Many Fruits and Vegetables Do We Really Need? Harvard Health Publishing, Harvard Medical School.
- Li L, Pegg RB, Eitenmiller RR, Chun J, Kerrihard AL. Selected Nutrient Analyses of Fresh, Fresh-Stored, and Frozen Fruits and Vegetables. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis (2017);59:8-17.
- FDA 101: Dietary Supplements. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
