To think that the vast majority of people can't afford or won't buy 7 portions of fruit and veg a day

[LaurieFairyCake]

After listening to the debate on radio 5 yesterday Richard Bacon was making the point that it was easy as the portions were small.

No, they're really, really not!

I've just looked at the Daily Mail run down of how much you have to eat and I think it's actually prohibitive financially.

2 nectarines,
3 heaped tablespoons of sweetcorn,
Quarter of a big broccoli or cauliflower,
3 heaped tablespoons of mangetout
7 spears of asparagus
Half a pepper

All one portion

Seriously no one can afford that. In Aldi it's only 4 spears in a portion to buy for 79p so I need £1.60 to buy one portion of asparagus - obviously I wouldn't as I'm not an eejit.

Eating seasonally not so easy either as you can only get your nutrition from one thing twice in a day. So only two apples.

I reckon shopping in Aldi I'm going to need to spend about £8 a day for a family of 3 adult eaters for fruit and veg. So that's £56 a week just on fruit and veg.

Yup. Don't blend/juice your fruit and veg.

Yes, my understanding would be you need to eat more veg, but that is not what these researchers are telling us, they've ignored the sugar question completely (apart from juicing) as far as I can see.

Stealth - yes as you loose the skin, same with an orange, really bad for your teeth too, you need to eat fruit as a whole not smoothies.

My understanding was juiced fruit = bad, but juiced veg = good

Remember that the portion sizes will be different for age/ size

Ie if they say 2 large broccoli florets is one portion for an adult, that's 1 large one for say a 7 year old, and one small one for a toddler.

Same as its always been. They aren't expecting you to be forcing a 7 month old to eat a whole parsnip!

Blinky - I still don't get it. Say £18 is for two, that's max £36 for 4 allowing for everyone of adult size. If that's the main thing your buying that sounds a bargain for a weeks shopping. If your budget for 4 was say £60 you would still have £24 to buy milk/ grains/ some meat/ fish. If the bulk of your food is veg/ fruit say at least 50% of every meal, then everything else you buy will be in much smaller portions

Wow. So soup is fine till its blended. I dont care about smoothies, dont really like them but the dcs eat loads of soup, blended is the only way theyll eat it and I didnt thinkit matteeed :(

Does add more emphasis to the blw argument too. Apparrntly puree fed babies only ever have one portion per day!

Really!? :( oh no. I make loads of blended soups. We aren't keen on the lumpy ones. Parsnip and pear, Curried swede, Tomato and red lentil, Cauliflower and cumin etc. All blended up. So does that mean they aren't any good for us?

No matter how many bowls of puree they have u mean. It all jut counts as one. All day

Blended soup is fine as far as I know.

isnt it dont blend raw veg? I think when you cook veg it looses goodness anyway so who cares if you blend your soup. ignore it! do your best eat more fruit and veg however you like eating it..use it to bulk out meals and eat less sugary carbs and meat. thats what we do no way could I follow a strict portion guide I would literally go bananas. I always thought the size of your palm was a portion and im sticking to it!

Blending only breaks the fibre down slightly and is far better than juicing or cooking fruit/veg!

I THINK it means if you have 6 bowls of pureed veg that doesn't count as 6 portions, you need the variety,happy to be corrected though.

So this advice is raw veg only then?
Think I will just eat salad from now on!

Asparagus is ridiculously expensive for anyone on a budget. Savoy cabbage, OTOH, is more like 15p a portion.

Cooked veg is still miles better than no veg

Blended soup is a good reason not to get too worked up over the guideline number/day. Blended soup is good for you, and good for your children! Blend away. Yes, it's probably only worth one portion of veg, but that really doesn't take away from the fact that it is nutritious and filling and yummy. (Also, one wonders if blending red lentils really breaks them down any more than just cooking them already does...)

I think the difference between blending and juicing is that juicing you throw away the fibre and just drink the juice; blending you chop the fibre into tiny bits ands till eat it. So- not as good as bigger bits of fibre, but not as bad as chucking it out.

Fruit juice rots your teeth through a combo of acid, sugar and being much too easy to chow down gallons of it.

But that's my gripe with it. Advice contradictory and illogical.
and this blending thing is the biggest argument for blw I eseen so far. If aall puree is just one portion.

Beast - were tLking about smoothies not juicing

£36 for a weeks veg to feed 4 of adult sized could look a decent amount to pay but when you don't have the budget for that then it is a lot of money. Also the £36 is when you are buying from aldi/lidl which is great if you have access to those shops.

Its easy to buy cheaper fruit and veg in markets, especially if you can go around 3pm. Even if you work in the week, you can get to a market at the weekend if you choose to. Frozen veg is just as nutritious as fresh much of the time, and it isnt expensive. There will always be some study or other saying this is good for you this is not, & it will change somewhere along the line + someone will go on about pesticides etc so I cant be bothered to overthink re. the merits of fresh vs frozen.

A £1 bag of veg from Iceland has loads in it. Its not as if you have to buy pre-packed fancy wrapped veg where you're mainly paying for the packaging veg or that the availability of veg is limited. Even Costcutters etc normally have people selling bowls of fruit and veg outside.

Life being what it is, people will often make excuses as to why they can't buy healthy food such as fruit & veg when they very likely spend triple the amount on other stuff. Which is fine, each to their own buy what you want - but the pretence that fruit and veg has somehow reached such astronomical prices as to render it unaffordable has worn thin now.

Smoothies are limited to 1 a day, I think, more because of the concentration of acid on the teeth and the high sugar content.

Its easy to buy cheaper fruit and veg in markets, especially if you can go around 3pm.

Not easy- most ppl are either at work, or doing school pickup then.

But a smoothie could contain one apple one banana and a handful of berries

Which separately from uld count as 3