Ever since you were a kid, you've known that eating your veggies was important (especially if you want dessert!) Now that you're grown up, you are probably eating them more for your health and their taste than just to get to the cookie waiting at the end of the meal, but nonetheless, you continue to eat them. And that's good! But are you eating them correctly?

If you aren't doing this one simple trick, you are probably only absorbing a small fraction of the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals sitting inside your veggies. So what's this hugely important step that you've apparently never heard of and probably aren't doing (at least not every time)??? Adding olive oil.

In a recent study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers found that participants who added olive oil to their salads and veggie dishes absorbed significantly greater amounts of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals than those who didn't. How much more? Those who didn't add olive oil unfortunately absorbed almost none of the nutrients that their olive oil drizzling friends were getting. It was almost as if.. they hadn't eaten a pile of healthy veggies at all. It's that important.

If you're going to eat veggies, you deserve to benefit from their natural effects, but in order to do that, your body has to be able to absorb them.

So why can't I absorb them, and how does olive oil have anything to do with this? Monounsaturated fats have been found to be crucial to veggie nutrient absorption. Olive oil is rich in these kinds of fats.

So what should you do? Make sure you're stocked with a nice big bottle of virgin olive oil, and integrate it into your veggie meals. Drizzle it on your salad or use it to saute your vegetables. Not only will it help your body absorb these valuable nutrients, it will also kick up the taste!