2 Easy Meals for Picky Eaters That Support Gut Health

Author's Bio: Jessie Gutsue, MA, RDN, IFNCP

Are you interested in improving your gut health, but maybe have picky eaters at home that prevent you from eating the diverse produce that you hope to?

Well, I'm here to show you two easy meals for picky eaters that specifically help to support gut health.

Hi, I'm Jessie Gutsue. I'm a registered dietitian with Oswald Digestive Clinic.

If you are interested in more gut healthy cooking tips, then check out the link here for five tips for quicker gut-healthy cooking.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

Meal 1: Autumn Sheet Pan Meal

Okay, so I was just in the midst of making one of my favorite meals, which are sheet pan meals, and it's the perfect time of year because it's fall and I have a lot of vegetables available. I find rot vegetables to be really helpful with picky eaters because they're carbohydrate rich, so they have that little bit of sweetness that helped to ease a picky eater into various different types of foods.

So we have our sweet potato. I have a little leftover acorn squash, some onion and Brussels sprouts, and we are going to chop these up, make our dressing, and toss 'em onto a sheet pan. Alright, so let's get started with our squash. Now, acorn squash, the skin is relatively soft, so you can choose to either keep the skin on or peel it. It's up to you. If you're dealing with a picky eater, you might find more success by peeling. Here's what we're going to do, okay, we're going to slice these into moon shapes and sometimes with picky eaters, it just depends on what the food looks like. This is pretty fun to eat and it might be enticing for one that isn't normally open to eating the squash. Now, these squash are yellow, orange in color. They contain vitamin A and they also contain soluble fiber.

The Role of Soluble Fiber in Gut Health

And soluble fiber is the fiber that slows and makes this gel-like consistency in our colon because after all, what is gut health? It really is the activity and the vibrancy of our healthy bacteria that are found in our colon or our large intestine. So the bacteria really soluble fiber because they're able to ferment them and to create some really helpful things called short chain fatty acids. And these short chain fatty acids do a lot of different things. One of the things that these short chain fatty acids do is to help create a really strong lining of our intestine. And that strong barrier helps our immune system ultimately. So we'll continue to slice these into little moon shapes and toss them on our heat pan.

Cooking Tips

Now I have a stone sheet pan, and I really like stone when I am roasting my vegetables because I helps to conduct heat better. It takes a little bit longer to heat up, but I find that the evenness of cooking is better. You get a little bit more brownness with these veggies that are higher in sugar and it just makes for a great flavor. So next we'll move to our sweet potato and just cutting off some of the rough areas and then we'll chop these up. Again, I love sweet potato skin. If you'd prefer to skin your sweet potato, you may lose a little bit of that fiber. So we're keeping with a consistent shape that we made earlier with our acorn squash.

One of the things with sheet pan meals is you want to make sure the size and the shape is very uniform so that cooking is consistent throughout all the food that's on the pan. Again, sweet potatoes are really great sources of soluble fiber. They also have potassium, which helps with blood pressure, and of course that pigment, this orange-ish color has vitamin A, so it supports your eye health. And all these phytonutrients that are found in our produce help to feed our gut microbiome. So they help to feed those beneficial bacteria. And bacteria in our gut can change in a matter of a couple of days. Sometimes you find with picky eaters that even just cutting them in different shapes will do the trick.

Next, we're adding Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts are a cruciferous vegetable. They contain a chemical called the Coates. Gluc Coates will convert to create sulforaphane. And ultimately what Brussels sprouts and the rest of cruciferous vegetables are best known for is phase two detoxification. And making sure that we reduce the overall oxidation or oxidative stress in our body helps to improve our overall gut microbiome. And by doing a better job of detoxifying that helps our overall gut health. You can tell your picky eater that these are the cutest little mini cabbages and encourage them to eat them with a little bit of honey. So with Brussels sprouts, they also contain vitamin K, vitamin C, all healthy vitamins and minerals. And all you do to prepare these is wash them and chop off the ends. And then for the bigger ones, you make sure you either half them or quarter them.

So your picky eater might not be a fan of red onion, but something a little less intimidating could be green. Onions for scallions, scallions are helpful to add a little bit of flavor, but with all fruits and vegetables, when you vary the types and the colors, you introduce different nutrients to your gut microbiome. That helps to create a more diverse microbiome. This does two things. Number one, you want a lot of the beneficial bacteria, but eating a more diverse diet introduces different bugs into our colon. It also helps to push out the bad bacteria that you don't want. So it works in two ways. So what we'll do is we'll actually top our cooked veggies with this finally, and I'm sure your picky eater will enjoy these.

Adding Protein: Chicken Sausage

These are my favorite type of sausage. They're chicken sausage and they're pretty much always a hit in our house. They also make for a easy weeknight meal. They're fully cooked, contained chicken and vegetables and spices and herbs, and that's it. So to cut these quickly, we'll lay 'em out on a pan, sort of push them diagonally, and then you cut them into fancy little slants. Okay, so all that goes on the sheet pan, and then we make a very quick dressing.

Making the Dressing

So we'll start with a couple tablespoons of dijon mustard. A great emulsifier for any dressing adds a ton of flavor that also adds a little bit of tang, so it helps our digestive enzymes get going. And one of the things that was really necessary for gut health is making sure that we actually digest and absorb the food we eat. Mustard is helpful for them. We also add a little bit of acid. This apple cider vinegar contains a prebiotic and therefore is a beneficial addition to this dressing. So we have that little bit of acid and then we'll cut the acid with a little bit of honey.

And of course, honey is a nice way to reduce the acidity, but it also adds just the touch of sweetness that sometimes picky eaters need in order to enjoy a meal full of different colors. And we add a little bit of salt for flavor season with some salt and pepper and a little bit of paprika, just a quarter teaspoon and a couple cloves of garlic. Now, garlic contains allicin, and when allicin is chopped up is also very helpful in detoxification. Garlic is also very helpful for your heart. And finally, we'll whisk this dressing together and then we will drizzle in olive oil. This is a nice, healthy fat, contains a lot of unsaturated polyunsaturated fats and antioxidants that are really good for creating a healthy microbiome. While our sheet pan meal is baking, I'm going to show you a second meal that will easily please your picky eater and help to support their gut health at the same time.

Okay, so this is our autumn sheet pan meal on our stone, and all we're going to do is drizzle the mixture that we just made over top, and we'll toss it a little bit with our hands and then roast it. It's just about as easy as it gets with a lot of different colors and flavors and the little bit of honey and the familiar sausage. All these things are really helpful in introducing new foods to a picky eater.

Pro Tip

When you're introducing something new to a picky eater, what you want to make sure is you keep a familiar food or a food format. So if they really like sausage, combine it with these maybe newer vegetables to help ease the hairiness of them. When you have one familiar ingredient, it just always makes it a little bit easier. You can also toss this in a bowl if you'd like, but to make this even easier and limit the dishes, I always toss it, the pan itself, making sure just to coat everything, and then we'll toss it in the oven for 20 or 30 minutes, roast it and pull it out and it's ready to go. So that's our first meal.

Meal 2: Gut-Healthy Yogurt Bowl

Our second easy meal for picky eaters that will help support gut health is yogurt. So yogurt might not sound like a traditional meal per se, but when you get a really good quality yogurt and you add a lot of add-ins that can help your gut health, then it really leads to a meal for a very quick night. Okay, so I like to buy plain Greek yogurt that's organic.

Why Yogurt Supports Gut Health

And yogurt, of course is one of your best sources of probiotics. So we like to introduce new bugs into our gut microbiome, and that's by way of probiotics. Yogurt is one of the best sources of a probiotic that we eat in our day to day. So the probiotic is the actual bug that's in your gut microbiome. And then we want to make sure we're feeding those bugs with the right colors in different foods. So we'll get into our toppings to help with that.

This is a very simple recipe, but it's a really satiating meal. So I'm using organic Greek yogurt that increases the protein as well, which will help to stabilize their blood sugars and lead to fullness. So we'll start with the yogurt, and then we're adding in some pomegranate, walnuts, pepitas or pumpkin seeds, and then a little bit of cinnamon and honey, this is the way to jazz up plain Greek yogurt. So it isn't quite as tangy just by itself.

What I did is froze my pomegranate. I find freezing pomegranate be the easiest way to get the arrows out. So I've frozen this for a couple of hours and then I'm just going to cut it into the center on each of these little indents, not all the way through. So pomegranates and walnuts contain or one of the best sources of allergic acid and allergic acid is a polyphenol that's really beneficial for a lot of different types of systems in your body, but it really helps with longevity with reducing cells that just are sort of dead and hanging around and not being helpful, a really great antioxidant.

So we have this cut almost to the center, and then I'll pull out each of these segments. Having frozen pomegranate reduces the amount of bladder that happens when you're pulling these arrows out of their container. It also just makes it, it's one of the easiest ways I've found for the task that tends to be a little bit more tedious. This color of the pomegranates and the size and the shape, it's one of those things that really helps a picky eater be a little bit accepting of new foods. I've also seen people wrap their pomegranate into a bowl of water, so it reduces the splatter. I will say that freezing the pomegranate beforehand is the way that makes this task so much easier and cleaner. Pomegranate also contain a little bit of fiber and potassium at magnesium and lots of different nutrients, but these polyphenols are one of the best ways to feed our microbiome.

Gut Health Benefits

Microbiomes can change in a matter of days. One of the ways to make the best of your microbiome is by eating 30 or 40 different types of plants over a week. And if you think about how the average person eats, we tend to stick with the same old fruits and vegetables or plants. So that includes grains and legumes as well, and nuts and seeds. But pomegranates is what I think people shy away with from just because it's a little bit more laborious. That's why freezing it is so helpful. Of course, you can find them frozen, and I do love frozen fruit in my yogurt to make it a nice satisfying meal. I will often have frozen wild blueberries in as well to add a rich deep color that helps to satisfy that microbiome. You can also add in lots of different nuts and seeds. You could find some rock, a cow, or even mini chocolate chips because even just a little bit of sweetness or familiarity is sometimes the ticket that helps to introduce different foods to a picky eater.

Eventually, after they get familiar with the food with some introduction like say, honey or a little chocolate chip, then they might eat the thing plain and they've diversified their diet. And a diverse diet is the key to creating a healthy microbiome. One that's active and robust has lots of healthy beneficial bacteria and fewer bad bacteria. So there's our bowl with all of our pomegranate. So I mentioned walnuts being a great source of allergic acid. They're also one of the best nuts sources of omega threes, which can be really helpful to reduce inflammation and really supportive of the gut brain axis. So we'll just chop some of these up just a little bit. These are raw. I do tend to get raw nuts and seeds because it eliminates any of the unhealthy or fats and sugars. So then we'll add a little bit of pizza. All of these nuts and seeds also add in things like vitamin E and manganese and iron and zinc, really nutrients and trace minerals that we don't tend to get enough of in our diet.

Finally, we'll top it off with a little bit of cinnamon and a little bit of honey. And like I said, if you need a little bit of honey to help to introduce certain foods, like all of this goodness into a picky eater's diet, then I think it is well worth it.

Final Thoughts: 2 Easy Meals for Picky Eaters

So there you have it. There are two meals that are easy for picky eaters that help support their gut health. We have a Greek yogurt bowl, and you can jazz this up with a lot of different rich color fruit and nuts and seeds. And you also have your autumn sheet pan meal, and that is familiar because you have the sausage in there. And then it's a way to introduce various different root vegetables or different veggies that can be roasted and really help to introduce a variety of different nutrients because at its root gut bacteria really love a diverse diet.

So really look for ways to introduce different fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and different grains and legumes in order to diversify our beneficial bacteria and make them the most robust that they can be.

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