Top 5 Dietitian Tips for Summer Fruits & Vegetables: Eat Fresh, Cook Smart, Stay Healthy

diet

eieu5683 - 2025년 07월 05일

Make the most of summer produce with 5 dietitian-approved tips! Learn how to select, store, prep, and cook seasonal fruits and veggies—with healthy recipe ideas too.

Summer Produce Power: 5 Dietitian-Approved Tips for Fruits, Veggies & Easy Recipes

Summer is the perfect time to fill your plate with fresh, colorful fruits and vegetables—but are you getting the most out of them? Whether you’re shopping at the farmers market or grocery store, or harvesting from your garden, these top 5 dietitian-approved tips will help you make the most of seasonal summer produce. From smart shopping and menu planning hacks to food waste tips, plus simple, healthy recipe ideas, this guide has everything you need to turn summer’s bounty into delicious, nourishing meals.

Enjoy this gorgeous flower and herb festooned Midsummer Ring Salad for summer.

Summer is here in all her glory! Aside from beach trips, vacation destinations, and outdoor grill days, summer marks the best time of the year to enjoy produce in season. After all, summer is when nature offers its prodigious bounty of fruits and vegetables in every size, shape, color, texture and flavor. It’s time to pack each and every meal with summer vegetarian recipes while the produce is at its very best. So, in honor of summer produce, I asked some of my favorite dietitian experts for their top tips on how to make the most of the season. Let’s dive into a season of flavor, freshness, and feel-good eating!

Top 5 Dietitian Tips for Summer Fruit and Summer Vegetables

Get creative with more veggie options in recipes, such as this Roasted Tempeh Summer Salad.

1. Let the Summer Veggies Inspire You!
Let the seasonal lineup of vegetables—eggplants, tomatoes, summer squash, green beans, peppers—help fuel your creativity in the kitchen. “Most of us plan meals by choosing the animal protein that will headline the meal. Instead, challenge yourself to plan a meal around a vegetable that inspires you. A picture on social media, trip to the farmer’s market, peek in your CSA box or a few moments in the produce aisle at your grocery store are all great places to start. You can even survey your family to find out their favorite vegetable, or choose a vegetable that’s new and interesting to you,” says Katie Cavuto, RDN.

Grilled Corn and Potato Salad with Crispy Sage

Try These Summer Veggie-Inspired Recipes:

Put those produce scraps to good use in smoothies, such as this recipe for Compost Green Goddess Smoothie.

2. Don’t Waste a Thing!
With so much summer produce in your kitchen, don’t overlook creative ways to use the whole fruit or vegetable, including roots, stems, leaves, and peels. Turn those nutritious offerings to gold! “Don’t waste the less sweet part of melons close to the rind because your family won’t eat them/turn up their noses. Cut the parts close to the rind and use in juices or smoothies. They can even be frozen and used later. Freeze/save your ‘might get overripe before we get around to eating it’ fruits and veggies as well. Freeze on cookie sheet, then put in freezer bag or container. Shake out as addition to juice, smoothies, muffin, pancake, cereal or even soup,” says Jan Patenaude, RD, CLT.

Try These Food Waste Friendly Recipes:

Use up those extra zucchinis with my Chocolate Zucchini Cake.

3. Increase the Diversity of Summer Produce
Go absolutely crazy with summer produce! Increase how many fruits and vegetables you fit into your daily meals, including breakfast, lunch, and snacks. And push the variety of produce you’re selecting, moving beyond the basic tomatoes and corn (though we love those too!). Find intriguing ways to use up all that produce in clever recipe ideas. “Summer is the best time for beautiful produce! I love adding seasonal fruits to salads, breakfast foods and desserts, and even salsa—mango and watermelon anyone? Any leftover vegetables I’m not grilling or mixing in whole grain dishes I toss into omelets and even gazpacho!” says Katie Pfeffer-Scanlan, RDN.

Avocado Papaya Salad with Lime Ginger Dressing

Try These Biodiverse Recipes:

4. Save Some Produce for Later
With so much summer bounty, why not save some for later in the year? When the cooler months take hold, and fewer produce offerings are available, you’ll be glad to pull out an endless summer of home-preserved produce. You can freeze, can, jam, dry, and ferment summer fruits and vegetables. “Preserve it so you can have fresh produce all year round! It’s really easy to freeze or can summer fruits, and many people don’t know that a lot of their veggies—even greens—can be frozen. You simply need to blanch them first so they keep their quality in the freezer. Try looking for sales on seasonal produce at the grocery store, buying in bulk from a farm, or doing ‘you-pick’ to get the best prices and have enough to freeze or preserve,” says Kate Lee, MPH, RDN.

Try These Recipes Using Preserved Summer Produce:

This recipe for Kimchi Veggie Udon Noodle Bowl features fermented produce.

5. Do Try Fermentation

Try fermenting or pickling some of your summer produce. It works for a wide variety of vegetables and even fruits, such as cucumbers, cabbage, green beans, peppers, olives, and watermelon rinds. “I love capturing summer’s bounty through picking and fermentation! I love doing quick pickles of onions, radishes, okra, kohlrabi and even fruit like watermelon rinds! I keep the jars in my fridge and add pickled veggies to salads,” says Christianna Gozzi, MA, MS, RD, LD, CDN, plant forward dietitian.