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?

Today I've had cabbage, tomatoes, butternut, onion, carrot, courgette, lentils, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, apple, nectarine, banana and pomegranate. Probably some others I've forgotten. We've had vegetable curry and pasta bolognaise

I’m not a big fan of fruit either Captain. I think it’s bred to be extremely sweet. The exceptions for me are berries which I do enjoy.
Potatoes are not so good if you have blood sugar issues. They are very starchy and along with cereals they cause weight gain for me so I eat cauliflower and lower starch veg instead. I love the humble cauliflower it is very versatile, UK grown and pretty cheap.

just had this for dinner and counted 5, if potatoes count and I can count gherkins and cucumber separately

No potatoes are not one of your 5 a day. Neither are gerkhins if they are pickled but if you had 2 inches of cucumber that does count as one.

www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/nutrition/5-a-day/not-5-a-day

Yes, blood sugar issues is exactly why I don’t eat potatoes, nor the other typical carby foods.

There really is no need to eat potatoes. By all means do, if you want to, but you would be absolutely fine for nutrition if they were replaced with any number of other veg. And given that blood sugar diseases are some of the biggest dangers faced by people in the western world, I certainly don’t think it’s a bad thing if more people gave them a miss more often.

I eat 7/8 most days (a portion is surprisingly small).

Nowhere near 10 here. We barely hit 5 a day some days.
For example
Friday - breakfast was tea, toast and peanut butter for both me and DD.
Lunch was (again same for both of us), tuna/pasta salad which had some chopped cucumber, sweetcorn and red onion in it. Plus a yoghurt. Probably 1 portion there in the salad.
Tea was sausages, mash, peas and green beans. Two portions there.

I assume lots of people who try to really keep up with lots of veg and fruit hit some health issues. Like I did. Tbh I basically reverted into how I used to eat when I was growing up. Just less bread and potatoes. My diet has gone to hell when I moved to UK

If I have a stir fry, I will put in a combination of 3 different coloured peppers, courgette, tomato, mushrooms, sweetcorn, cauliflower, broccoli, spring onion and I will have spinach filled ravioli with it- that's up to 10 veggies in one meal! During the day, I will have had a couple of pieces of fruit, at least, and maybe a salad filled roll for lunch. I could have 15-20 fruit and veggies a day, albeit in small portions. It's not that difficult and I'm not even a vegetarian.

Same here: having prawn stir fry tonight, carrots, mushrooms, red onions, white onions, red/yellow peppers, baby corn, bean sprouts, mange tout. Blueberries with breakfast, glass of juice and salad with lunch, job done and not an hardship.
Some weekdays probably only the 5 but generally quite a bit more.

My mother's generation (who are currently doing extremely well in terms of longevity and I believe are going to do better than their children and grandchildren by some predictions) were children during WW2 and grew up with rationing, so their diets were veg heavy from the start.

However, they absolutely did not ever have the luxury of eating 10 portions of fruit and veg every day! Not even when they grew up to adulthood and had children of their own.

My 94 year old grandmother and 87 year old mother didn't (and don't) eat 3 or 4 different fruits and 6 vegetables or whatever!

They would have a variety of vegetables with every main meal and maybe some tomatoes and cucumber with a sandwich (rather than a packet of crisps) and perhaps and apple every day.

They were less obese, did more physical exercise and quite a lot of them quit smoking when the bad news about cigarettes came out.

that's up to 10 veggies in one meal!

But you need to eat significant amounts to qualify as a portion.

I love making stir fries with lots of varieties of veg, but I’m sure it wouldn’t count as more than 2 of my 5/10 a day.

Quizqueen but you aren't eating 15-20 portions a day unless you have your food delivered to you in a wheelbarrow! It would be mountains of food.

Eating 800g of fruit and veg a day fills me up to much. I couldn't maintain my weight when I tried it, too full to eat enough calories in other things.

It’s really not hard to eat that much veg when it’s the main part of every meal. I hit it pretty much every single day. And again, fruit is actually supposed to be a minority of that - it’s supposed to be mostly veg and the odd bit of fruit (preferably berries).

I’m travelling tomorrow, but the day after I will happily weigh out what I eat and make a visual note of what that amount of veg looks like for this thread.

I've just had 6 veg in one meal (roasted peppers, courgette, garlic, red onion and cherry tomatoes) plus green salad. I mentally totted that up as 2 to 3 portions. I had some grapes today after lunch (which was an egg sandwich on wholemeal). I've had 4, perhaps 5 at the most. I very rarely drink fruit juice as it's supposed to be as bad for you as crack cocaine. Unless I snack constantly on fruit and raw veg I'm never going to get up to 10 portions a day.

I tend to do it, but we eat mainly plant based diet. I'm not overly fussed about making it 10 different types as it equals out over the week.

Example meals would be

• a chilli made with 3 different types of tinned beans, 2 tins tomatoes, 3 tablespoons of tomato puree, 2 onions, 2 peppers, 1 bulb garlic and bunch fresh coriander.

• roast pasta sauce made with 1 aubergine, 2 courgettes, 3 onions, 2 peppers, 3 tins tomatoes, 1 bulb garlic, 1 bunch fresh basil.

• letntil curry with 3 types lentils, 2 tinned tomatoes, 2 onions, 1 bag spinach and turmeric roasted cauliflower as a side.

Always a side of salad or veg, veg soup for lunch, or wholemeal wraps with chickpeas, whole grated carrot and rocket with side of tomatoes and cucumber.

Snacks may be edamame, sugar snap peas, fresh peas etc.

Even with jacket spuds we make a homemade coleslaw.

We do eat take out once a week though which isn't good, and a lot of ginger nuts!

The kids eat at least 10’a day - partly because they eat school meals prepared fresh in school kitchen instead of packed lunches. School break snacks are fruit. They eat fruit and veg at breakfast, and 2-4 portions at tea time. Even if they’re eating something prepared like a supermarket quiche or pizza i’ll Put broccoli, cucumber, carrot etc. On the side.
Once you get used to the idea that every mean includes several veg or fruit it really does become habit.

Meal!

Yesterday. Salt & Pepper Squid and kung po chicken with spring onions, chilli, beansprouts, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, onions, carrots, peanuts and some fruit juice.

Half a punnet of cherry tomatoes. And two corn on the cob halves when I felt peckish much later.

Today.

Cherry tomatoes, Lettuce, gherkin, cucumber, cheese, French Bread.

Chicken, potato mashed in their skins, unpeeled roasties, courgettes, more tomatoes, onion, cauliflower, chard from the garden. When I have some space, as the plate was piled high with veg, I'll probably have some frozen cherries and raspberries from last summer's crop warmed through with a dollop of clotted cream.

It's definitely the most I've had to eat in total for a couple of months, but it's really not that hard to have a lot of veg/fruit if you focus your meals on veg plus something, rather than something plus veg - if you can afford to get lots of different things at once or build up a stock of things in the freezer, that is.

For example a grilled steak with 2 grilled tomato, 4 spears of broccoli (I assume it's the yummy young one) and the little asda bag of mangetout beans is a perfect dinner, filling but not heavy at all and has 5 a day in it.
Obviously it wouldn't work for everyone. I do love my veg and am a greedy bastard sometimes.

For example a grilled steak with 2 grilled tomato, 4 spears of broccoli (I assume it's the yummy young one) and the little asda bag of mangetout beans is a perfect dinner, filling but not heavy at all and has 5 a day in it

How is that 5 portions? I’d say 2.5/3.

I spent a week weighing food last year to get an idea of what a portion of fruit and veg looked like. It's a worthwhile experiment, I found 80 grams was a lot less that I thought. It's about half a pepper or 12 cherry tomatoes. I was surprised to find that an average granny smith apple weighed 150 grams. I found it easier to aim for 800 grams made up of ten varieties but not all portions would be 80 grams if that makes sense. A salad with equal weight of spring onions or radishes to say tomatoes or cucumber probably wouldn't taste great. I did cut out obvious carbs to make room for it though which to be honest was no real hardship. I also took to using white beans (haricot, cannelloni etc)as a base for dips rather than yogurt or mayo, it works quite well when blitzed in a blender with other ingredients. I'd then eat the dip with veg for lunch.

@LaurieMarlow

www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-counts-five-day

www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/what-counts-five-day

I must say that doesn’t make much sense to me.

So 1 tomato is a portion but you have to eat 7 cherry tomatoes for the same? That’s far more.

And 2 spears of broccoli counts but you have to eat 8 Brussel Sprouts for the same?

Weird.