10 fruit & veg a day - is it really possible long term?

[SplinterSplit]

I'm mulling over a diet change as I've 2 stone a bit of weight to lose. We're all familiar with the '5 a day' rule but the nhs says 10 would be better.. Could you, do you, eat 10 portions of fruit/veg a day? What would your daily diet look like breakfast/lunch & dinner? I'm interested to hear what others think? I bet it'd make a massive difference to my aches & pains & how I feel overall. I think I'd find it very hard though. Last time I tried a major diet change I lasted 3 months & fell off the wagon.

Inspired by this thread I actually weighed all my fruit and veg yesterday and it's a huge amount, particularly of things like kale and spinach. I would find it very hard to have them all be unique and it would be expensive to have variety. I use frozen berries, spinach and a banana in my smoothie each morning which weighs about 250/300g. Lunch was a big salad which contained 400g and for dinner I mixed peas and olives into pasta which was only 90g so I was nearly there I think.

To get 10 full portions I find I’m chomping through vegetation for ages, like a cow.

I hate salads, I simply don't like eating leaves. I can still get 10 a day through using purees, soups, dhals, compotes, 1 portion of juice or smoothie and generally adding more veg and/or pulses to cooked dishes.

If I had to get 10 a day through masticating huge quantities of leaves, I'd be miserable too! But I hear you on the bloating, still waiting for that to equalise out, if it ever does

@Madeleine - a tip for salad leaves is to grab a pair of scissors and chop the leaves very finely, then add a bit of salt, oil & vinegar/lemon. Yum.

Madeline I did veganuary this year (kind of) and was really surprised that actually by the end of the month the bloating etc had really lessened considerably.

Soup can be your friend - a good way to get lots of different veg, and you can vary it in all sorts of ways.

Not smoothies though; too much sugar to do 10 portions of fruit in a sitting!

I have no idea how I would transport or store 280 portions of veg a week for my family. Let alone pay for it all

Perspic it does sound a huge amount put like that! I think children can probably eat much smaller amounts, I would prob think 40g is a child's portion 60g for a teen etc (totally unscientific though). Based on that you would get 3 or 4 child portions from one pepper, 5 or 6 from a cucumber or head of broccoli etc. A 200g bag of dried fruit would give about 10 portions. A 500 g bag of carrots about 10 portions....a kg bag of peas - 20. Still a lot of veg over a week - luckily my dc eat nowhere close to 10 a day

My eldest is 6 foot tall! No mini portions for her.

ahhhh that puts paid to that theory! The 10 a day book says that every portion added makes a difference - going from 0 - 1 a day actually makes the biggest difference and some of the studies set the optimum amount of portions at 7 rather than 10. I am happy if mine are eating some veg and some fruit every day to be honest.