Do blended veg sauces count as more than one of five a day?

[summerdodododododo]

I've come across a 'hidden veg' sauce on the BBC Good Food website. I know with smoothies they can't be more than a max of two of your five a day due to the fruit being blended.

Surely this is the same for hidden veg sauces too? I take it if you leave it chunky it would count for more portions of your five a day, obviously depending on what you've put into it?

I don’t know the answer but would have thought that the biggest loss from blending would be fibre. It would still have the vitamins and minerals of cooked veg so would still be pretty good especially if you were making up for the lost fibre elsewhere in your diet.

The issue with fruit smoothies is that they reduce a quantity of fruit you wouldn't eat whole to a glassful. There's a lot of sugar without the same dietary fibre. Veg don't contain as much sugar.

All things are relative. If it's for your children and they won't eat chunky sauce then it's better than no hidden veg. I think you'd struggle to eat a portion of sauce that contained more than 2 portions of veg anyway.

Long term 5 a day should be whole fruit/veg, but any increase in veg is good.

The "rules" are a bit arbitrary. The fruit juice thing is because in a juice you're not getting ALL the value of the fruit. Arguably, from a vitamin and mineral perspective, juice or whole fruit is the same. But you lose out on fibre etc. Also, they want to discourage you from getting all your fruit and veg in juice format as that would be high sugar.

Similarly, I'd argue that hidden veggie sauces are fine. The key thing is also quantity. We eat loads of fruit and veg so I've never paid much attention to exactly what constitutes five a day, but, for example, if you land up with a normal portion of sauce over pasta, for example, the concern for me would be quantity - eg 1 mushroom, a quarter onion, 3 tomatoes and a quarter courgette does not, as far as I know, constitute 4 portions of veggies, but combined that might well be roughly what is in the sauce? If you see what I mean?