Fruit & veg intake

[thewanderer03]

How much fruit & veg would you say you eat per day? I'm generally not too bad but I do find the atleast 5 portions per day hard sometimes. A typical day for me would be banana in morning, a fruit salad at lunch (on a good day) and then one or two veg with tea but that's not always the case.

Me and dh will be ttc soon and I'm really wanting to make sure I'm getting my eating right for when hopefully pregnant and long term when we have dc so I am feeding them as much fruit & veg as possible.

How much would you say you have and do you have any tips on easy ways to introduce more into your diet?

It sounds like you are already doing a good job so don't be hard on yourself

I have at least 5...probably more most days - kinda as follows

Breakfast - Porridge with berries
Lunch - I will have a sandwich or wrap with some cherry tomatoes, chopped cucumber and carrot on the side OR a salad OR soup (soup is a good way of cramming them in!) with an apple or a couple of satsumas after
Dinner - Tends to have at least 2 different veg and often has beans/pulses/lentils so that counts as another portion

Then I quite often have another piece of fruit before bed - current favourites are baked apples with yoghurt or an apple with some peanut butter

The key thing for health now is not too much fruit because of the sugar content. I read something recently that said aim for your 5 a day to be vegetables of different colours and allow 2 optional servings of fruit in addition to that

I think I do OK because I love salad, DH is terrible and eats beige food, DS is a fruitaholic but I'm not too worried because he has next to no processed sugary stuff, just the odd biscuit. He just desn't like the taste... yet.

I think one veggie stir fry could do the 5 - baby corn, capsicum, mushrooms, bok choy, mangetout.

A big curry with veg. I make mine primarily on butternut squash and thrown in capsicum, spinach, and whatever else you like really.

A big frittata is a great way to get more veg in - shaved zucchini, mushroom, tomatoes, but of mozzarella on top with a big salad on the side.

Of course winter veggie stews and soups are great for this too.

Can you tell i’ve just started a healthy eating kick? Honestly, I feel amazing now i’m packing in the veggies.

Just to add though, don’t be too hard on yourself if the morning sickness kicks in and you can’t stomach all the healthy food you want to be eating. Get a good pregnancy multi just in case.

I have no sugar apple compote every day. Literally just apples simmered with water then pureed. I eat it with yogurt.

Big salad and or veg with dinner. Two types of veg, roasted or steamed.

Lots of veg and lentil soups, casserole with veg, curries etc. I'll make veg soup and include onions, carrots, red pepper, swede, spinach, lentils so lots of good stuff.

Eat raw carrots as snacks. Carrot cake, banana bread, courgette cake.

DH recently went through a phase thinking he was Hyperglycaemic a hypochondriac more likely and after research it turned out I was in fact right all along and his Beige diet was causing him digestion issues - it's the small joys in life.

As a result we've boosted our veg and fruit intake.

Breakfast is usually cereal/toast/granola bar etc with some fruit.
Lunch is homemade soup with lots of veg (Mushroom, Pea, Vegetable, French Onion) or a salad or sandwich with obviously lots of vegetables and another piece of fruit.
Dinner is some main meal with either a salad or veg.

We're trying to instil healthy eating into DS.

and eat loads of crisps after he's asleep

Last year they announced it should be 10 a day. I think 6-7 portions should be vegetables and 3 fruit.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/23/five-day-10-portions-fruit-veg-cut-early-death

This is an interesting article to help you add in more veg to your diet:

www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/things-you-find-out-when-you-start-eating-10-day

I try and eat a third of each meal as vegetables (not always successfully!).

I have found the best way to improve my intake is to rethink breakfasts. I tried some Joe Wickes stuff about a year ago and changed what I have most days.

Last year I started having one or two soft boiled eggs scooped out onto a slice of toast plus a tomato or two and a portion of brocolli or mangetout cooked in microwave saucepan. I'm now trying to increase pulses as well so I have substituted the bread for frozen Edamame beans cooked in with the veg. I also have two Joie microwave egg boilers to do the eggs. The key to this is that using the microwave makes the timings really easy whilst you're doing other stuff in the morning.
That's 3 portions of veg just for breakfast.
If you'd asked me a couple of years ago then I'd never have thought I'd be doing this sort of eating.

I did the ten-a-day challenge for a month on Mumsnet last year. You need to make sure you know what a portion is - it is a surprising amount of some things. Yoghurt with 2 fruits for breakfast, snack of hummus with lots of crudites, big salad for lunch - you'll be at 6 portions before dinner. Then make half your plate at dinner vegetables. I found 10 tricky but 7-8 was easy if you focused on it. I kept up 7-8 for a while afterwards until early pregnancy got in the way. Now I'm getting back on track but gestational diabetes means I'm not meant to have much fruit.

Get a nutribullet!

I agree with peachy. I start off my mornings with a nutribullet smoothie. I have a banana, half an avocado, a teaspoon of wheatgrass, an apple, a handful of kale (I had to train myself to like this stuff though), chai and flax seeds and any berries or pomegranates that are to hand. Sometimes I chuck a beetroot in to give it a bright red colour. Everything can be prepared in advance and frozen, I just chuck it all in and top up with water.?

I feel sluggish on the days I don't have it!

And I usually have a stir fry or a curry on an evening.

Your bowel with thank you for it!

I’m not a big breakfast eater so usually have a bowl of melon. I don’t eat bread so Occasionally I’ll have grilled mushrooms (in the place of toast) with tinned tomatoes on top.
I really get my fruit and veg hit at lunch though. I always have a salad with a base of lettuce and grated carrot with peppers, celery, cucumber and tomatoes with a piece of protein.
Dinner again is veg heavy and I often have a veg based dish I.e veg stew, veg chilli etc with a veg side.
I guess I’m just lucking that I really like veg! It’s not really an effort.

I'm sure I read that smoothies only count as one portion no matter how many fruits / vegs you put in them and no matter how many smoothies you have a day? And I think soup counts as a maximum of two... something to do with all the plant fibres being broken down?

I think that's juicing? Either way, it's a start. I eat between 7-10 a day over lunch and dinner so can afford to risk it.

I eat around a kilo of fruit and vegetables a day or 10-11 servings

You lose a lot of the hoodness when juicing but with the nutribullet everything remains inside the blitzer

Gosh ours is very low compared to some of these. I thought I was doing reasonably well in the grand scheme of things by adding lots more vegetables into things. So for example at the weekend I used one pack of minced beef and made a family size lasagne, a family sized bolognese and a family sized chilli. Meat is clearly there in the meal but the percentage of the meal made up of vegetables is much higher than the meat percentage. DCs still eat it because the taste is still very familiar to them (although DS2 can spot a courgette a mile away and stage a protest).

I find it much easier to get the vegetables in in this way than to laden their plates with traditional steamed/boiled veg.

I never eat breakfast in the week, don't really fancy it so early, at the weekend I have brunch and that is usually eggs, grilled toms avocado and either spinach or kale depending on what we have in.

Lunch in the week is a smoothie bowl, today I have tinned unsweetened apple, blueberries, iceberg lettuce, spirulina powder and cashew butter with green tea for liquid so that is 4.

At the weekend I will either have soup or salad or something on toast if I am home, if out then I will just have whatever I fancy.

For dinner tonight we are having a white bean casserole/stew thing, butter beans, leeks, cabbage, courgette, sage, stock and olive oil, so another 4 there...

At the weekends we have similar things if we are in or if we have been out in the day we might just have something little like soup or something on toast, occasionally we just have a cheeseboard in front of the telly!

So in the week I probably get in 8-10 with the same at the weekends depending on what we eat....

I am veggie and DP eats what I cook so that might make it a bit easier?

You’ll think I am exaggerating!

6/7 apples
Watermelon
Punnet of blueberries
Punnet of rasperries
Huge of broccoli and cauliflower
Bowl of courgetti
And 3-4 raw carrots
Huge pile of salad (pic attached. It’s my lunch)

That’s in a day. I mainly eat fruit and veg

Oh an large portion of fresh soup that apparently is 3 servings of veg.

So in a day 17 portions?!

And for what it’s worth, I’m very underweight (always have been. I eat very well but just never junk), my periods are very light and in fact I go many months without one.

However I fell pregnant very easily twice. I think my diet helped. Pretty much all organic aswell

Wow Alittleconcerned1980 I wish I could afford to eat like that! Surely that's £10 a day on fruit?

AlwaysPondering

Sometimes more than a tenner a day.

But I drink once maybe twice a month. And no junk food, and never ever a take away and very rarely in restaurants.

Alittleconcerned1980 that's a good point; I'm sure if I cut out the chocolate and the coffee pods, the odd takeaway etc. then although I still couldn't eat like that I could definitely put the money towards the better stuff.

As for the veg, how do you eat it? Raw, steamed? Any seasoning?

I love, and I mean LOVE, steamed veg. namely cauliflower, broccoli and Brussel sprouts.

I am unusual because I’d be happy with a large bowl of that veg for dinner, and do mainly have that in fact. With a very big squirt of sugar free sweet chilli sauce!