Eating plenty of vegetables keeps your weight in check better than any other trick. The lighter should therefore make sure that at least 600 grams of vegetables should be eaten per day.

Many Lighteners may be amazed at the early meters of membership: “I thought I was eating a lot of vegetables, but the quality ball of the vegetables is still screaming red.” The vegetable quality ball in your program doesn’t seem to turn green at all. Should you take a vegetarian here?

"I don't get a vegetable quality ball green"

Changing a vegetable ball from unfavorable red to moderate yellow requires more than 400 g of vegetables per day. However, the amount of vegetables recommended by lighteners is over 600 g per day. Only then will the quality ball reward with its greenery.

With the average consumption of vegetables in Finland being around 300 g per day, it is no wonder if the amount of vegetables proposed by the program feels huge. Finns are not particularly good vegetarians. On a European scale, we are around halfway through, with the Mediterranean countries at the forefront - which explains much of why the people of the Mediterranean are considered so healthy.


In addition to the relatively small amounts used, we also have room for improvement in the variety of vegetables in Finland, as not all vegetable ingredients are available with cucumber-tomato-salad combinations alone.

Why should the use of vegetables be increased?

Adequate use of vegetables by lighteners and weight management is key, as permanent weight management is very difficult with insufficient use of vegetables. The effect of vegetables on weight is many times greater than many other dietary changes. This is another reason why it has been desired to increase the recommended limit for the use of vegetables to more than 600 grams.

No other radical changes in the diet, such as increasing the amount of fiber, reducing sweets, reducing juices, modifying the amount of fat, are as effective as adding vegetables.

Weight loss and permanent weight management do not require a complete diet and not all aspects of eating need to be improved, but eating vegetables needs to be increased. If a glass of wine in the evenings is important to you, then let it be in your diet. If you like to eat whole fat cheese, do it. If ice cream is your delicacy, treat yourself to ice cream.

But vegetables can’t be ignored.

Why do vegetables affect weight so significantly?

Vegetables simply displace more energy-rich ingredients from the diet.

In the short term, people can lose weight with any kind of diet, but in the long term, that is, for years, people cannot, do not want or are unable to control the amount of their food and want to eat full.

Then it is essential that the more very low-energy vegetables in your diet, the less energy-rich the ingredients will be.


Why should you eat so many vegetables?

Quite a few have probably heard the instructions “half a pound a day”. Approximately the same recommendation is used in all Western countries. The main reasons for the high recommendation of vegetables are found in health and weight - with the same weight.

The rich and varied use of vegetables always emerges in studies as a protective factor, be it almost any general health risk or disease. Vegetables protect against various cancers, adult-onset diabetes, osteoporosis, stroke, coronary heart disease… The list could go on for a long time. If your blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar or insulin are high, increasing the use of vegetables is especially important, as vegetables are effective in fighting all of these risk factors.

“I replace vegetables with multivitamin pills and food supplements”

Adequate use of vegetables is a key foundation for health. Vegetables cannot be replaced by any kind of nutritional product, as a large proportion of the active ingredients in vegetables do not even exist in pills.

Vegetable folic acid can protect against cardiovascular disease. It appears to stabilize brain function, protecting e.g. dementia-type diseases. The excellent antioxidant properties of vegetables certainly explain some of the health effects, but only a small percentage of the antioxidants in vegetables are the well-known vitamins C and E. Most are components that are less familiar to many, such as various polyphenols.


In addition to these, there are a wide variety of compounds in vegetables, the health effects of which are only slowly becoming known: flavonoids, phytoestrogens, carotenoids. The health effects of vegetable fiber should also not be underestimated. They are already well known.

Can I eat too many vegetables?

It is limited to eating vegetables. If you eat a lot of vegetables, that is, a lot more than a kilo a day, there is not much else in the diet, because the fullness of the stomach is already being met. The end result is a one-sided and overly light diet. It pays off at some point during the huge hours of hunger.

Excessive use of vegetables is already getting used to it too much