Eat/ Shop Detroit: Greenopia

Greenopia Detroit provides consumers with high quality information to help them reduce their impact on the environment through their daily purchasing decisions. Greenopia publishes extensive green business directories, product directories, and brand directories, as well as offering a growing community, news articles, blogs, and tips to help Detroiters eat, shop, and live green.

Here are five quick ways to get some greens in your diet every day. The following tips were provided by writer Starre Vartan of Greenopia:

Green Food Bars: There are a plethora of green food bars on the market, and some of them are actually quite tasty. Covered in chocolate, layered with peanut butter or dried fruit, mixed with other veggies, or mostly solo, there are tons of options, and most of them squeeze a very generous serving of greens into one bar.

Smoothies: The very easiest way to 'sneak' greens into a diet is by adding them to a regular breakfast or snack smoothie. It sounds bizarre, but next time you whip up your fave blended concoction, throw a handful of organic baby spinach, watercress, or Swiss chard (leaves only) into the blender along with your favorite combination of yogurt, soymilk, and fruit. Most people can't taste the greens, or they're barely noticable if you do detect them. This works especially well for kids!

Make Them Taste Great: When greens are cooked well (that means not overcooked) and seasoned right, they can actually taste delicious. Try lightly sauteeing Swiss chard in extra-virgin olive oil and fresh garlic for 5-6 minutes and sprinkling with sea salt, adding spinach to bean soups right at the end (literally the last minute or so of cooking) so it doesn't get mushy, or mincing fresh organic parsley and mixing with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper for a refreshing sandwich topping or side dish.

Mashed root veggies: Mashed potatoes, yams, turnips and other root vegetables are popular Autumn and Winter dishes. Often mixed with a bit of butter, milk, salt and pepper, consider tossing some greens in before you get the blender going. The heat from the just-cooked potatoes or turnips will soften the chosen leaves, and once mixed with the usual ingredients, you won't be able to taste their addition (though in mashed potatoes they will add a green hue!)

Add To Favorite Dishes: Think your family will boycott dinner if there are some greens on favorites like pizza or in the special-recipe cheesy lasagna? No way. They and you will barely notice that they're getting some "leafies" while enjoying "fun" meals. Try mincing a bit of chard into burritos, or mixing finely chopped spinach into meatballs or hamburgers.

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