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 doesn’t have to be 10 different f&v a day as long as you get variety over the week/ month/ year. And there is no evidence for the 5/10 a day, it’s just marketing to
Encourage more f&v eating

LizzieSiddal I see your point. Maybe that's why it's best to go by the handful rather than measuring in grams as generally speaking, a 6ft man would have larger hands that a 5ft 2 woman.

@LizzieSiddal do you have some link to it? I would like to read what they are really basing it on

I think handfuls are a more helpful measure than grams because then it will be proportionate.

I also expect there is an element of ‘recommend ten and maybe people will eat seven’ as well. Nobody is going to die or be unhealthy just because they don’t eat 10 portions of fruit and veg in a day, but everyone will be better off if recommending 10 means people up their intake as much as they are able.

I prefer a ‘mostly plants’ approach and don’t stress too much. It is more prepping but you can simplify (chop up or cook anything left from last week when you clear the fridge for the new shopping, cook 3 portions (eat one, keep one, freeze one).

I am loving dd2 choosing to be vegetarian, and the more natural unprocessed food you eat the more you want.

I cook bulgar wheat, cous cous/quinoa and lentils up together in stock add roasted sweet potato and other roots/ veg and keep in the fridge, adding lightly blanched greens like broccoli or spinach and lemon juice/harissa or similar for an easy delicious lunch. Or just chop up spring greens, lettuce, raw càrrot/peppers/fennel tops/grated beets, add a dollop of houmous and olive tapenade. I’m spending about the same, buying less meat and less packaged stuff and have gone for a small local veg box delivery. I generally have 2 apples and a banana a day.

TheAverageJuror, I've just started reading this book "Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men"
by Caroline Criado Perez (Author) and have heard the author talking on several radio programmes.
Women and their biological differences to men, are often not considered in many areas, and I wondered if this dietary advice was one of them. It just seems so ridiculous to say an average male and an average female should eat the same amounts.

I guess that someone eating close to 10 portions of vegetable (and some fruit) every day is likely to be healthier because they will not have so much room / appetite for 'unhealthy' foods.

So if you're breakfast is nut-based granola (no sugar) with raspberries and yogurt, your lunch is avocado, tuna, green bean and tomato salad, and your dinner is a bowl of vegetable soup followed by chicken, onion, pepper, courgette stir fry (with snacks of hummus and veg) then you won't have much room for doughnuts, crisps, sugary-salty-fatty snacks (which are what damages our health long term).

@LizzieSiddal that sounds interesting. Would be cool to see the groups they used for this.
I don't know if vitamin and mineral needs are too different for 6 foot man and 5.4 foot woman though.

I think they are upping it to 10 a day because lots of the fruit and veg in supermarkets do have much lower nutritional value than it used to be. It's all bred to grow fast and last long. The longer tomato lies somewhere the fewer vitamins it has left from what I heard. I always pick the freshest batch. I am the weirdo digging in boxes behind the first ones.

We have an add-an-extra thing here - whatever we’ve cooked we add an extra veg, pudding comes with extra fruit. I’ve also heavily marketed to DC the idea that green leafies make your brain grow, so they are now eaten by the fistful.
Meals are plant based - I occasionally have fish if we’re eating out but DC completely veggie.
I think we easily do 5, often 10 without too much bother.

I don't know if vitamin and mineral needs are too different for 6 foot man and 5.4 foot woman though.

Yes me too. It's all very interesting.

Kale is really nice - chop it up and roast it in a little oil, sea salt and chilli flakes or rapidly boil in water until it goes luminous green, drain and then stir through mashed potato and add lots of gravy. Or just get chard or other cabbage if you prefer (blanching whole savoy cabbage leaves and using them as wraps for mince, carrots, rice, cooked swede, peas, etc, and then baking in the oven briefly, for example).

I wouldn't say it's super easy (and I would include beans and passata etc as a portion) but We get about 5 in the evening meal and then maybe 2 or 3 at lunch meaning that an apple and banana with a glass of juice for breakfast would get you there.

@Siameasy do you often use 1/3 of a vegetable in a meal? 1/3 of a bell pepper is nothing...

Sorry, haven't rtft but I think the biggest problem is the term 'portion'. It is so vague and could mean almost any amount of fruit and veg. If the message was that you should aim for 800g (or whatever the equivalent is in lbs) people might find it easier to know what that looks like.

But I agree with those that say that any amount is better than nothing.

@BloggersNet look through last few pages. It is truth that it sounds like a lot.

I used to til I got post-infectious IBS.

The main thing was when someone told to think of a portion size as what would fit in the palm of my hand, that made sense to me, as a portion for a 5’4” woman of 9 stone can’t be the same as for a man of 6’3” and 13 stone. So the overall quantity of food reduced quite a lot.

Then used to have vegetables with every meal- one or two at breakfast, two or three at lunch, three of four at dinner, plus a couple of pieces of fruit a day as snacks. Meant used to take leftovers to work as lunch not sandwiches, that was the main change.

It’s easier in the summer, and fairly straightforward for a willing adult, but in winter or with a reluctant child - very hard work.

A lot of nutritionists will give quantities for some supplements as “you need x milligrams for every 50lbs of bodyweight”, so there is some variation.

The recommended daily guidelines for vitamins/minerals vary a lot from country to country (and a lot of nutritionists will say guideline amounts are far too low in any case), so I wouldn’t;t get too hung up about that.

There’s starting to be a lot of information about how gene expression affects how we react to different vitamins and minerals as individuals, so any ‘one size fits all” approach is a rule of thumb at best.

I’ve just added up ds(10) normal day and I think he eats 4 or 5.

Toast & apple or a couple of plums for b/fast, . School lunch with 1 portion veg.

After school snack - cheese & cherry tomatoes, 1 portion. Supper with one portion veg. Pudding of fruit crumble or pear & ginger nuts. Or variations on same theme.

We’d never manage 10

DD and I are veggie so don't find it difficult but I can see why plenty of people do. I don't buy into guidelines, which are made up and seem to change all the time, but just use your common sense.

And you can take a recipe too far away from its origins, to the point where it looses its special flavour, e.g. If you are cooking a Spanish chicken dish with onions, pepper, chickpeas and saffron/paprika, if you start adding sweetcorn/mushrooms etc it completely dilutes the flavours and somehow becomes less than the sum of its parts

Now that's a really good point. It hadn't occurred to me before. No wonder I don't like it when DH adds loads of diff veg to a simple stir fry recipe.

I can only just about to get DS (5) to eat a cut up apple a day. He might eat the heads of two tiny broccoli spears if we're lucky! He never eats any more than 2 a day and it's an endless battle

Well I don’t have my vegetables by just randomly adding loads of veg that shouldn’t be there into whatever I’m making. If I’m making a specific recipe I make that recipe. Vegetables are eaten as part of the overall meal, not juts plonked into whatever’s cooking.

I think once you get into the habit of it, it gets easier.

One or two portions at breakfast - a glass of OJ and some berries or chopped banana on cereal or baked beans on toast and a banana milkshake

Two or three at lunch: an apple, carrot, cucumber and pepper sticks
or a soup made from carrots, squash, leeks, red lentils etc.

Three veg at dinner: sweet potato, peas and broccoli or a pasta/chilli/chcken sauce made from some of these: onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, kidney beans or lentils and frozen spinach or courgettes.

Snack on a pear, slices of melon or clementines.

It's not cheap but if veg is bought at the market or a budget supermarket like Lidl, is in season or reduced on its sell by date then it's affordable for most people.

Whether it's realistic depends on tastes, I guess, I'd struggle with my low appetite issues, but looking at the numbers of the EAT-Lancet report (often called the "planetary diet", meant to balance human and environmental health), the recommendations it gives are 200-600g of vegetables per day and 100-300g of fruit (with with potatoes & other tubers and legumes listed separately, each listed at 0-100g per day so any kind of bean or potato are viewed as separate from veggie count though some of those are often in other group's veg counts).

So 2.5-7.5 portions of veg and just over 1 (a large apple) to 3.75 servings of fruit. 5-7.5 is probably better for most people, but I find it interesting how wide the recommendations can be in a report that is focusing on health, but it's still not recommending 10 and between that and other things, I really wouldn't sweat it.

Hi everyone, I'm the OP. Some great comments on this thread ..thanks all. I think the last word goes to BiBabbles with .
So 2.5-7.5 portions of veg and just over 1 (a large apple) to 3.75 servings of fruit. 5-7.5 is probably better for most people, but I find it interesting how wide the recommendations can be in a report that is focusing on health, but it's still not recommending 10 and between that and other things, I really wouldn't sweat it.

Some truth in this comment from a pp..

I think they are upping it to 10 a day because lots of the fruit and veg in supermarkets do have much lower nutritional value than it used to be. It's all bred to grow fast and last long. The longer tomato lies somewhere the fewer vitamins it has left from what I heard. I always pick the freshest batch. I am the weirdo digging in boxes behind the first ones. blush
Really good point there. Scary in that there is most probably some truth in it although they don't actually come out and say so therefore causing mass riots!

I do think plenty of us can incorporate a bit more veg into our usual meals, but lots of people on here are eating tons of veg, v low fat & being a bit snooty about anything starchy/carby. We are an active family and eat as a family, that means balancing the needs of our young child, who needs plenty of carb as well as healthy fats, with good choices for the adults. 10 fruit/veg in a day tends would have us all running to the loo & DS loses too much weight eating too low calorie a diet! Veganism/low carb etc might be ok for some but isnt necessarily the healthiest choice for every one.