Fruit and veg portions shocker!!!!!

[margoandjerry]

So last night I had one of my fave quick dinners (boiled new pots, flaked smoked mackerel, half a packet of watercress snipped up small and all mixed together with a splodge of mayonnaise).

Anyway, I noticed on the pack that one entire pack of watercress (you know, the prewashed supermarket bag type) only equals one portion of veg out of your five. I love watercress - but a whole bag? How is this possible? It won't even fit on a plate.

I imagined that it was concentratedly good so although you had to eat more than a few sprigs, a healthy couple of handfuls would do you. But a whole bag???

So your watercress last night was 1/2 a portion - not so bad. You do need to eat a fair bit of greens for a portion. A small bowl full of salad greens is roughly one portion I believe. Cooked spinach is a fairly easy way to ingest a portion, as well.

There's more details about portion sizes link{http://www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/HealthAndSocialC areTopics/FiveADay/FiveADayGeneralInformation/FiveADayGenera lArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4001494&chk=0W4wiyhere . Follow the link at the bottom to get detailed information.

god my links are crap this week

here

I love watercress too, often make a salad lunch out of it - snip the whole bag of watercress, add maybe a tomato, a bit of avocado, or cucumber, olives, tuna or some grilled goats cheese, dress in olive oil and eat it out of the mixing bowl cos it's so bulky.

I would still only class this as 2 - 3 portions.

Another way is to blend it with a little cream cheese, creme fraiche or mayonnaise to make a gorgeous sauce for salmon or other fish.

I sometimes find the portion thing tricky too. I am having roast veg for lunch because I have rather od'ed on salad. So I have roasted one aubergine, 3/4 smallish yellow pepper, one largish tomato, two giant spring onions. Would you call that 3 portions? It covered a baking tray when I put it on.

I often weigh my veg just to get a rough idea of portions - so last week I did pasta with a roasted veg sauce and I used over 1 kg of veg, so approx 13 adult portions (80g per portion) between the 5 of us.

Takes the guesswork out of it.

"A small bowl full of salad greens is roughly one portion I believe."

See that's what I don't understand. How does a small bowlful of salad count whereas this would have to be a washingup bowl full?

Am going to try again tonight (making watercress sauce to go with salmon) and see how much I can get through. Maybe whizzing it in my whizzer will make it more manageable.

Have already had 2 bananas today so on my way (I ignore the whole "different fruits" thing as I figure one day I have 2 bananas, next day I have 2 apples and it all evens out - I sound like The Very Hungry Caterpillar!)

Ah, but did you know that for children it counts as a portion of veg aslong as it is on their plate, even if they don't eat it?

Honest it does!