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?

It can be quite easy to get your kids to eat 10 portions too!
I don't feed my children things like pasta or bread or white potatoes because they're just fillers with no nutritional value. If you replace those with fruits and lots of veggies it can quickly add up

What's wrong with bread and potatoes?

I think this attitude is really damaging. My 100 year old grandmother lived on bread, potatoes and meat. Supposedly all the things we shouldn't be eating.

As for white potatoes having no nutritional value.....

I don't think my attitude is damaging. And I don't think that we shouldn't eat bread, pasta or meat at all! I just believe that things like bread and pasta don't provide the same nutrition as other complex carbs and veggies- and so I feed my children those instead which means they can easily get more portions in. Nothing wrong with a bit of everything in my opinion, but this is just my personal preference and how I feed to family!

I like veg (most fruit doesn't like me) but would struggle to eat 800g of it a day.

I don't feed my children things like pasta or bread or white potatoes because they're just fillers with no nutritional value. If you replace those with fruits and lots of veggies it can quickly add up.

Wholemeal pasta, seeded bread and potatoes have plenty of nutritional value

So that would be 14 button mushrooms, 7 cherry tomatoes, 3.5 inches of courgette?

Left to my own devices, I'd probably eat double that raw whilst chopping up the stuff for cooking.

Pity it's all getting so expensive, as that makes it much harder to just munch on stuff with lower calorific value by weight, compared to pigging something with bulk and calories.

How do you poo 💩 if you don’t eat enough fruit & vegetables?😬

I usually eat ten fruits/vegetables a day but I'm not convinced it's always 80g, so today I had a slice of toast, and Greek yoghurt with strawberries and blueberries for breakfast probably 100g or so of fruit which looks quite a lot but isn't two portions, i also had a small glass of fresh orange juice, so 2.5 portions.
Lunch I had a salad with lettuce, baby spinach, cucumber, tomatoes, beetroot, spring onion, radish, grated carrot and some chicken , so a lot of variety but definitely not 80g of each a fairly big bowl of salad I didn't weigh it but I'm guessing salad veg doesn't weigh much, maybe 240g so three portions.
Dinner I had salmon with couscous which had peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, chilli, onion, roasted cauliflower and beetroot, chickpeas, courgette, asparagus and some chopped up baby corn, again a lot of variety but maybe another two portions.
I think I've eaten pretty healthily today and have probably hit 5-6 portions. I might have a tangerine later but that's only half a portion.
I think ten is a lot, if you're talking full 80g portions.

That's probably true, I'm not a nutritionist but I just believe whole foods provide better nutrients than processed foods like pasta and bread, and are a great way to get closer to upping portions of fruit and veg

Surely a portion depends on your size? And I think the point of all the fussy rules is to stop people counting suprious things towards 5. It's less of a bother if you are counting to 10 so you can do the exceptions like counting potatoes, beans, smaller portion size, etc.

If I eat the way I was brought up I can easily get 10.

• Fruit (1-2 types) with a plain type of cereal or some yoghurt for breakfast
• "Picky" or sandwich type lunch with 2-4 salad type veg and/or fruit (just had this for dinner and counted 5, if potatoes count and I can count gherkins and cucumber separately) or an omelette with 2-3 veg in.
• Dinner including 2-3 veg min as side dish - either boiled/steamed/roasted veg, or a stir fry, or ratattouile kind of thing. Commonly a veg or two incorporated in the main part of the dish - onions, mushrooms, potato.
• Fruit juice or smoothie to drink
• Grapes, berries, banana, melon etc as snack sometimes

Unfortunately we tend to eat very differently these days meaning we can easily go a few days without eating much fruit or veg at all. Now DS2 is eating food and is a much more adventurous eater than DS1 I might get back into it, if I don't get lazy. I do admit to finding so much fruit and veg prep tedious like a PP and I don't want to buy ready prepared.

I love fruit and veg though and would happily live on nothing else (ideally: with the occasional addition of meat, milk, eggs, cream, coffee, sugar, cocoa/chocolate, butter, decent bread and rice)

So we should eat NO pasta, bread or meat at all??

God, I wonder how the Italians survive.

I just believe whole foods provide better nutrients than processed foods like pasta and bread

How is bread processed? Sure, the pre-sliced stuff might be, but a freshly baked loaf of bread is full of goodness.

No, as I said, pasta bread and meat can obviously be enjoyed by anyone with no damage! I was just replying to the op to say a great way to get more fruits and veggies in is to cut down on these.

Oh gosh there's nothing better than freshly baked bread is there!!! I can't bake for shit so if my family have bread it'd be a load of warbys haha

bread is made from ingredients, therefore it’s processed, same with pasta and white rice etc- it’s been “processed”

@ivykaty44 so every meal is "processed" then? If it's made from "ingredients?"

I hate fruit. It is so sweet I can feel the sugar coating my teeth

As for porridge - bleugh

I will never be as worthy as you all, but the stuff you eat in my opinion is minging

I would rather eat eggs, tomato, salad and ham - also cheese and plenty of other veg and meat

Do you really all sit there counting the numbers every day?

Madness

Fruit and vegetables aren’t processed, if you eat them as they are, neither is a lump of meat

A veggie Moussaka made from scratch would be "processed" though?

As for white potatoes having no nutritional value

I know right? This is some fucking ridiculous nonsense that now gets trotted out everywhere by the ignorant.

White potatoes (with milk and cabbage) single handedly nourished the Irish for a century. They are an immensely nutritious food.

In answer to the OP. I suspect it’s not too difficult if you’re veggie. I just about manage five. I’m bad at snacking on fruit and veg during the day though I’ll always have one or two portions with both lunch and dinner.

The flour in a bread is the problem nowadays. Bleached and otherwise processed compared to the past. Read a interesting papaer which claimed the process we are now using may be partially responsible for higher number of people with gluten issues.

Italians have a lots of fresh produce and veg with their food

Really I don't think it matters . All most of us can do is try our best to eat healthily and get exercise and fit it in with the rest of our lives! Some days I eat 10 portions some days 3. I have plenty of variety and am happy with my diet.

I have no desire to dedicate my life to what I eat.

@LaurieMarlow and potatoes with sauerkrat saved many in central and Eastern Europe. Sauerkrat rules!

I guess just eat more where you can. Like I did a pasta bake tonight which had extra veg compared to the recipe - so garlic, chopped tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, onion
I eat a banana for a morning snack every day and an apple on the way home from work, and mostly eat those steam bags of frozen mixed veg
But if you cook something like beef stew you can add in extra veg and then eat it with veg too

Try buying no snacks biscuits or sweets for 2 weeks and lots more apples and carrots and cherry tomatoes. You'll be up to 10 pretty quick.

Potatoes have plenty of nutritional value. The reason why they’re not counted in the veg intake is because most people already eat plenty of potatoes and/or potato products. They are trying to promote a wider range of vegetables.

The average person on a typical western diet now does not live the kind of life, nor eat the kind of overall diet, that people did even a couple of generations ago. If you walked everywhere, spent all day scrubbing your house, washing laundry by hand and cooking every single meal from scratch, and only had sweets here and there and in much smaller portions, you could eat far more of the bread/potatoes/pasta side of things, than the average person can afford to do now, healthwise. Life just isn’t comparable, and so diet isn’t comparable either.