Veggie Egg Scramble

by Amylee Amos PhD, RDN, IFMCPRecipes
Nutrient-dense veggie egg scramble

Unlike your basic vegetable scramble, this egg based dish has a greater ratio of vegetables to egg- making it especially nutrient dense. Getting in extra servings of vegetables at breakfast helps ensure that you get adequate vegetable intake for the day.

If you’re wondering why you should try out this egg scramble over one of the hundreds of thousands of others on the internet, the answer is simple: more vegetables! This egg scramble has a greater ratio of vegetables to egg, which makes it especially nutrient dense. Getting in some vegetables with breakfast is key. The “5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day” adage that we’ve all heard is dead wrong. We need 10-15 servings of vegetables per day to get in the nutrients that we need to prevent disease and optimize our health! Getting in that many servings of vegetables is not easy. This egg scramble recipe gets your day started off right with three servings of vegetables.

Now, here’s the caveat. The vegetables we’re using in this recipe give a variety of colors, textures, and nutrients, so these are great veggies to start with. But if you’re going to eat this scramble all the time, it’s important to mix it up. Variety is extremely important when it comes to vegetable intake. Different vegetables contain different types of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, and we need them all. Our early human ancestors lived off of 800 different varieties of plant species. The modern American lives off of approximately 3 different varieties of plant species (1). And we wonder why the rates of chronic diseases are soaring! We need both density of vegetable intake and diversity of vegetable intake. Our health depends on it.

This recipe serves 1

Ingredients:

  • 1 tbsp avocado oil
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • ½ cup onion, chopped
  • ½ cup red bell pepper, diced
  • ½ cup mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 ½ cup spinach leaves
  • 2 pasture raised eggs
  • ¼ tsp sea salt
  • ¼ tsp black pepper
  • ½ tsp dried basil
  • ½ avocado

Directions:

  1. Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk well. Set aside.
  2. Heat a medium sized stainless steel pan and add the avocado oil.
  3. Add the onion and garlic and saute until translucent, about 3 minutes.
  4. Add the bell pepper and sliced mushrooms and continue to saute a few more minutes until all of the veggies look softened.
  5. Add the salt, pepper, and basil and stir well.
  6. Pour in the whisked eggs.
  7. Stir the mixture to create the scramble and cook the egg through.
  8. Add the spinach when the scramble is almost finished to warm and wilt it.
  9. Plate the scramble and top it with the avocado.

References:

  1. Heber, David, and Susan Bowerman. What Color Is Your Diet?: the 7 Colors of Health. Regan Books, 2002.