Do you find it easy to eat your 5 potions of fruit and veg daily?

[CatteryCatss]

I have a yoghurt bowl for breakfast each day with at least 3 portions of fruit in (usually strawberries, raisins, raspberries and banana chips)

Then I’ll have around two portions of veg with whatever I’m having for dinner e.g. mixed salad and corn on the cob with a burger or green beans and carrots with cheesy pasta.

I think I’d really struggle if I ate my five portions individually, though!

tea and coffee don't count as part of 5 a day. They don't have any vitamins, minerals or fibre, especially.

They count if you're doing the 'Zoe' plan of 30 different plants a week.

I think maybe some posters are conflating the simple advice of 5 fruit/ veg a day. and the Zoe 'goal' of 30 different plants a week, where tea , coffee and wine count because of the polyphenols.

Yes and 30+ is what we were talking about, and what I was referring to. It's easy to overlap the two approaches. 🙂

I've obviously missed reading the middle of this thread.

The thing to remember with the 30 plants is it's different plants.
Not 30 portions of broccoli (am sure you know that)😂

Heheh yes I do know that! I'm simplifying things a bit so I'm probably not doing a great job of being clear...

The discussion morphed a bit. Hopefully @CatteryCatss doesn't mind!

It’s definitely a portion of each fruit for breakfast. I buy the little boxes of raisins, which are a portion per box. I have one of those each day with my breakfast. Same with banana chips, which are a portion per handful. I count the individual berries. I probably should weigh them, but I’m too lazy

Yes pretty much

A serving is 3 florets of broccoli / cauliflower or 80g peas etc so last night I had all that plus carrots and sprouts. Half my plate was vegetables.

Have a banana most days with breakfast and maybe some blueberries, lunch is usually a salad or homemade vegetable / lentil soup so I manage at least 5 a day

Of course not!

At the ripe age of 67 I have very rarely eaten vegetables. By that I mean only if they are on a plate when eating out or at someone's house and even then it's only a spoonful to be polite.

I eat fruit in my Greek yogurt along with nuts and seeds etc. Rarely eat meat unless it's in a lasagne or cottage pie. I stick with eggs, beans and fish for protein.

I know I'm an outlier, but it doesn't seem to have done me any harm so far (touch wood). All my bloods are spot on, I don't have heart disease (checked with cardiac CT as part of a health check), no diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, etc. etc.

Last time I was at the GP was to get my Winter vaccinations. Next visit is in May to get the pneumoccocal vax and the shingles vax.

I could be an outlier, but that is the truth. So no, I don't struggle to eat 10 portions of F+V a day because I never have!

A tea cup isn't a handful for me! That would be at least 2 handfuls

I have just weighed my apple - it's nearly 200g and not much of that is core

I think there are more people like you than people might think.

Nutrition really doesn't have to be complex and lots of people do just fine without adhering to lots and lots of rules about how much/how often to eat X Y and Z. Pp aluded to this by mentioning the fact that our forbears didn't have access to hundreds of different fruits/plants/nuts/etc and special charts about what foods are good/better/best. They lived, by and large, a healthier life because their lives were closer to the earth and whatever nutrients they could easily access would have enough for their needs. And they weren't clogging up their bodies with loads of manufactured 'foods'.

It's really important to guard against the lure of Big Wellness, IMO. Eat what you can of the healthy things, minimise intake of the not-so-healthy things, don't drink too much, move your body as much as is realistic for you and try to get good sleep. That will be plenty good enough for a lot of people to live perfectly healthy lives.

When you chose not to eat much fruit are veg you are greatly increasing your chance of having unpleasant illnesses

It doesn't prove anything that some people are ok

Out of 20 people 10 will get cancer but if they had all had healthier diets then only 6 would have gotten cancer - that's quite a notable difference.

( note that is not fruit and veg specific- alcohol, generally overweight , processed and red meats are the big three - however fibre is explicitly associated with digestive system cancers and fruit and veg heavy diets are associated with healthy weight )

I normally get a bag of mixed organic leaves and maybe add a few leaves from the garden e.g mint or nasturtium (you can also eat the flowers of these). I also add some of my own sprouts (lentils or brocolli) which I do in jars in the kitchen. I generally also add carrot ribbons, beetroot, pomegranate seeds, a few nuts and mini bell peppers. I generally have a dressing of evoo and apple cider vinegar, sometimes with dijon mustard too if I can be bother to pre mix. I will also have a spoonful of saukercrat alongside.

With exceptions of course, most unhealthy people will generally make it to 67 - whether they do 77 or 87 in similar nick is a different matter. Glad to hear your vitals are on track, but the state of your microbiome - a key influencer of mental and physical health - is not routinely tested for, and is probably not in the greatest of shapes on that basis.

Personally I really struggle to comprehend a diet with out vegetables. Even the most traditional of English diets includes things like beans on toast, tomatoes and mushrooms on a fry up, meat and two veg, various side vegetables with a roast, etc.

What do you eat on a daily basis, if you don't mind me asking @delvar ?

Why is broccoli 2 servings?

@BatchCookQueen my dad doesn't eat much. He likes sprouts and peas and doesn't really eat fruit. Was a very plain eater as a child and he has branched out a little bit now!

On a daily basis he would eat

A sandwich for lunch - maybe a ham or cheese or fried egg one or a pasty

Tea - meat and potatoes, possibly some baked beans or sprouts. Doesn't eat pasta or rice. Will eat more veg like onions and carrots if he makes a casserole
Sometimes has a cooked tomato or some pickled onions or beetroot especially in summer

Annoyingly he's in ridiculously good health

My friend eats no fruit or veg - so he will eat fajitas but it's just chicken and a wrap or a burger with nothing else on it. He's currently the no 1 in his age group at a particular sport (very outing so not including)

Why is broccoli 2 servings?

Because she likes a lot of brocolli? If I'm having something like 'spag Bol' I'll have a relatively small amount of spag and about 1.5 'servings' of brocolli.

It's technically 2 servings but you can only count it as 1 of your 5 a day no matter how much you have of it

It's technically 2 servings but you can only count it as 1 of your 5 a day no matter how much you have of it

Says who?

I've explained, so I won't repeat it.

But further, getting bogged down in offcial servings muddles the waters a great deal and ultimately, becomes counterproductive for a lot of people.

If it suits someone to eat 5 servings of peas one day, 5 of red peppers the next day, 5 of carrots after that, 5 of aubergine and so on and so forth for let's say 2 weeks and then repeat, they will still get a good variety of nutrients over a week/month/year/whatever.

I'm not going to list out all my meals and/or other foods had under that regime as it would take way too long, but believe me it was well varied and all nutrition bases were covered. I was also very active and fit, often going to the gym twice a day. If I chose to have only one veg at one meal on some days but a bigger portion it may not have fit the 5-a-day guideline but it would certainly have been very healthy and nutritious.

It's only a guideline meant to a) demonstrate a minimum to work towards and b) ensure that people understand that it's better to vary your veg intake.

NHS, if you're going off the traditional 5 a day meaning

Otherwise you could just eat 5 portions of carrots and say you're getting your 5 a day but it's about the variety. I mean I don't see an issue if it's over a week so 5 carrot portions one day and 5 broccoli the next
But for the thing that is most well known as 5 a day you can only count 1 thing once

The NHS.

Having 5 x 80g of broccoli technically only counts as one of your five a day. You're supposed to be eating a variety - so 80g of 5 different fruits or vegetables.

Ohhh my mistake! I was wondering why everyone was querying it...I missed out a vital bit that I had thought in my head and didn't actually write!

I had meant to say, if it's hard to visualise eating more veg than you currently do and you want to increase it, but gently, just double up on the ones you do routinely eat, or work up to triple, and when you've incorporated that amount into your diet, introduce a 2nd or 3rd one to make up 1 serving of each. That's what I did as I changed my eating habits, appetite and the way I constructed my meals.

So in the case of 2 x peas you could add in something that goes nicely, for example you could make braised lettuce and peas (really good over rice with leftover chicken) or you could do peas and broccoli with your fish, or whatever.

A fresh grated carrot salad, just add in parsnip or celeriac or beetroot. It's not more in volume than you were already used to but you've now got 2 different veg instead of the 1. Or 3!

I like a warm salad and basically just throw anything in there that goes together well. Roast it all up and job done. Beetroot, squash, tomatoes, courgette, peppers, red onion, are staples.

Similarly I make a fresh salad with pretty much anything I can find in the fridge - the more variety there is the more you'll find that random things actually go very well together.

If I have either of those for dinner it can easily be 4 - 6 (true, official) servings plus extras like aromatics, herbs, nuts and seeds.

And of course chunky soups are great too.

I guess it helps a lot that I've always liked most veg. It's obviously going to be much harder if you're not actually keen on them and are just trying to eat them for your health's sake.

I really need to use fewer words. 🙄

Having 5 x 80g of broccoli technically only counts as one of your five a day. You're supposed to be eating a variety - so 80g of 5 different fruits or vegetables.

I'm not sure the nhs guidelines do dogmatically state double of one veg in the same day 'doesn't count'; they do advise variety and only counting one juice or beans serving.

In reality it's not an exact science and both variety and quantity matter.
A variety of different nutrients (both directly for you and also for your microbiome) but also quantity for fibre and feeling fuller. More broccoli, less pasta.

A little box of raisins
Dred banana chips

I really don't think you can count those as vegetables - they are basically sweets.

Are the berries fresh/frozen or also dried?