To think the current advice of eating 10 portions of fruit and veg a day is unrealistic?

[BooseysMom]

I thought it was current advice but I read the attached info in the Women's Health Bible dated 2004. So it seems this is old news. But just how realistic is this? I can just about manage five portions.. but 10?! The first issue is cost. What if you are on a low income and have a family to feed? And how about really fussy eaters? I can just about get my 5 yo to eat half an apple a day! What do fellow mumsnetters think?

Lots of talk of ALDI having loads of cheap fruit - not everyone lives close to cheap supermarkets like that!

Where I work we have Tesco Express, Spar and Co-op. That's it. No decent sized supermarket let alone something like ALDI. The nearest one to me is 40 minutes drive from work, which sounds okay, but not when you consider it's about 90 minutes from home as I live in the opposite direction. There is one 40 minutes from home, granted, but it means another 80 minute round trip after work to get there.

Luckily cost isn't an issue for us so we can still afford fresh fruit and veg, but if you don't drive or don't earn much, I can see how eating like that is totally impossible for some people.

But after eating all that would you even want to eat anything else? What about other nutritional requirements like calcium and essential fats?

Yes you need time, energy and money to achieve this.

Exactly. People don’t eat like this everyday. And as a PP pointed out, people are massively over estimating how much they’re eating- that omelette would’ve needed about 14 eggs to bind together 4 portions veg. It would’ve fed 6 people

One thing I did realise was that although I was buying lots of fruit, as it’s expensive and comes in small punnets, dc were getting it first and I wasn’t getting much. A prolonged bout of infections and slow healing made me realise that I needed to eat more fruit as well as buying it.

I am fairly confident it can be done on cheap. Lots of it can come from frozen, dried or canned stuff.
For example frozen berries are MUCH cheaper than fresh or dried and reduce waste since they won't go off in 2 days.
My meals are basically veg and meat/fish/cheese/egg. Bakery stuff is an occasion treat (belly is not keen🙄), rice and pasta in minimum amount. I do feel much less bloated and more energetic and slowly losing weight. Lots of fruit, veg and protein and fat. I will go bankrupt on butter though....

I agree OP, and I suspect many of those saying they hit it do not have big enough portions to count. So I add veg to things all the time e.g. carrots, mushrooms, but they rarely are a portion each. The only time I regularly hit 10 a day is when I was vegan.

I can't even manage 5 due to my dodgy digestive system let alone 10! Most fruit is too acidic so I avoid it and too much veg makes me bloated

I struggle even with the original '5 a day' recommendation. Most days I manage 3 - 4,but it's a rare day I manage 5. Does it count if you eat 2 portions of the same fruit/veg? I've been told that only one portion of fruit juice counts,i.e. you can't drink 5 glasses of orange juice and count it as 5 portions. Also,do olives count as vegetables? seriously pushing my luck here

Not even going to bother trying. I don't want to eat proper meals with vegetables 3 times a day. Sometimes I just want a sandwich or cheese or egg on toast without stuff on the side.

The 10 a day portion size is smaller than the 5 a day portion size though- I remember llkkj's thread. Lots of variety is allegedly good, though I can't see that matters so much on a daily basis, as long as you get variety over a week.

I am fairly confident it can be done on cheap. Lots of it can come from frozen, dried or canned stuff.

If you don't drive, and the only supermarket you can easily access is a Co-op or Budgens or Spar, it won't be that cheap! Lots of the smaller corner stores don't even stock things like frozen berries, or tins of prunes, or bags of frozen Mediterranean veg.

James Wong tweets a lot of examples on this...I think it might be a psychological tactic as much as anything else, tell people to aim for 10 portions and suddenly 5 portions sounds do-able and the more fruit and veg you have the less "bad" you'll have appetite for, so anything from 5 upwards even if you don't get to 10 is a good result?

Also,do olives count as vegetables

Apparently not due to the salt content.
It counts if 2 portions are the same, but the best is to eat all different things so you get varied vitamins and minerals. I have for example 3 portions of tomato in 1 day, but next day I have a different veg so over the week it balances. I think that's the point of the 5 a day. To encourage to eat different things for nutrition not just 5 bananas every day. But imho if you balance it over the week I don't see a problem with few portions in a day being the same🤷‍♀️

It's meant to be aspirational, I suppose. I'm in awe of those who say they do it, I don't always manage 5. I'm not sure I even eat 10 different vegetables, I've always been a bit veg-phobic.

I don't think it's helpful to fixate on arbitrary limits of five portions of 80g a day, or 10 of 60g, or whatever. There is nothing magical about those numbers that means you will be healthier if you hit them.

Variety is good. Different colours are good (means you're more likely to get a range of vitamins and minerals). Trying to include fruit or veg in each meal or snack is good. Obsessing over arbitrary limits is not good.

If you don't drive, and the only supermarket you can easily access is a Co-op or Budgens or Spar, it won't be that cheap! Lots of the smaller corner stores don't even stock things like frozen berries, or tins of prunes, or bags of frozen Mediterranean veg.

You can order online. Delivery for a pound is still cheaper than Spar. Hell even for a fiver. I always hated spar...
If you have "foreign" shops nearby I recommend checking them out. Always used to get great fruit and veg and cheap in them.

I don’t think 10 a day would be sensible for me. I get IBS, I eat between 3-7 portions a day. The more veg the more time I spend on the toilet (sorry for the overshare).
My dad’s worse, has to have white bread not brown or it upsets his stomach.

Olives are a fruit surely
Probably the only fruit with any fat in it apart from avocado (and coconut-or is that a nut)
If sweetcorn gets to be a vegetable (it’s actually a cereal grain) then I’m counting olives

Yup, I've just made a curry with tomato, onion, garlic, courgette, aubergine, spinach and ginger. There's no way you'd get the recommended amount of each one though.

Also, what sort of foods give you lots of easy variety- curries, frittatas, stir fries... Maybe stews but neither me nor DS eat them.

i eat three small meals plus a couple of pieces f fruit in the evening. I couldn't simply eat the volume of food recommended nor I do feel any need. So breakfast is usually small bowl porridge made with water, blob of low fat yoghurt and a banana. Lunch typically some home made hummus or slivers of cheddar cheese, a big salad dressed with lemon juice and two or three crisp breads or rice cakes, dinner, which i don't manage to fit in Mon to Thurs due to work pattern would be a fillet of smoked mackerel and loads of veg. Mon to Thurs I eat fruit after work. Fri I eat a small dinner, Saturday I make up for dietary sparcity the rest of the week and eat breakfast at the beach cafe with wife and dog and we have take away dinner or eat out. I couldn't physically eat 10 80g portions of anything every day.

fasting is supposed to be good for you so between fasting and eating 800g of veg I don't know what we should be doing really.

I'm going to have to admit here, from that link above, I never knew chickpeas and lentils were classed as vegtables...

We couldn't afford to eat 1.6 kilos of veg every day

If I ate 10 portions of fruit and veg a day, I'd never get off the loo! confused ...Exactly

Thanks everyone. So many good posts. Yeah I think it's unrealistic going on the 80g portion size thing. How can you cram 4 or 5 actual portions in a single omelette?

This is the book I found it in.. it's by the editors of Prevention whatever that is. DH found it packed away a box. It stinks of mould. I never bothered with it before and probably won't now