Eating 30 plants a week- what portion size is enough to count?

[CormorantStrikesBack]

Is it like 5 a day veg and it needs to be a handful or because it’s more about gut health is a smaller amount enough ?

I’ve just had a ready meal and figured I could count the brown rice. But what about all the smaller amounts of veg?

That's crazy! I bought kefir grains a year ago and I've been making a litre a week since for the price of milk. It's probably just made from a powdered culture too.

@Sunshineandrainbows23 I don't really care about him making money - why shouldn't he after all? - but I do think it's more of an indictment on how the 'health/lifestyle' sector is just one huge money making machine in general. I don't know that's always for the benefit of people's health.

So today I've had
Banana apple satsuma
Soup with carrot onion butternut squash garlic ginger sweet potato
Wheat in the bread roll
Bolognese with soya pepper mushroom tomato courgette.
Grapes in my glass of red wine.

So that's sixteen.

Not many veg in my kitchen that are different to those though. I'll have potatoes, peas, cucumber, beans and broccoli at some point in the week I expect, so that makes 21. May have rice. May have cabbage in coleslaw. I guess if i can count tea, coffee, chocolate, nuts, herbs I'm nearly there.

I'll have the same soup most days as i make a batch on a Sunday.

Same veg, but different colours count too! I think it's a good way to increase gut health, although I wasn't counting spices.

You are right - the sector makes money, and not all the advice is sound. Some of it really concerns me with quick fix "solutions" that can be damaging.

As a whole though, as long as it's decent advice or whatever I'd much rather people made money from helping people get healthy than putting money into the hands of people who make big bucks from basically making us ill from and addicted to highly processed rubbish disguised as food.

I also think it's far cheaper for us all as a society (I know fresh food can be expensive to individuals and I wish it wasn't) to spend money on fruit and veg that make us well, rather than having to sort out the problems caused by faux food with expensive pharmaceuticals and procedures ...

I agree with you and I'm never going to count my plants on a spreadsheet, but I do think it's helpful to have 'plant variety' on your radar while making shopping and meal decisions.

Since hearing about it I just do a few simple things to up my count, e.g.:

• I have fruit/nuts/seeds on yoghurt for breakfast every morning, and now rotate every couple of days instead of always having the same ones.
• buying more mixed salads/slaws rather than making a plain one myself.
• always stocked up with fresh herbs, garlic, ginger, chilli, lemon and lime and take every possible opportunity to put them on whatever I'm eating.
• choice of a few herbal teas in the cupboard.

Was Tim Spector involved in that show at all? I'd be interested to hear more scientific voices than just his plugging the 30 a week.

I am a big fan of the Zoe podcasts and do make diet and lifestyle changes based on their advice, but was very disappointed to see Tim pop up on the latest Netflix documentary which promoted all sorts of UPF fake meats and cheeses. Yuck. (And hypocritical AF.)

He is a medical doctor and research academic, he isn't just someone who set up with no qualifications.

No, it was Michael Mosley. Who I suppose if we’re being cynical has books to sell on the topic h8mself. 😀

30 different plants per week is very easy. I think it would be hard not to. All you have to do is vary your 5 a day:

Day 1 apple, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, broccoli,
Day 2 blueberries, banana, red and yellow peppers, courgettes
Day 3 orange, avocado, salad leaves, aubergine, chard
Day 4 grapefruit, pear, butternut, red cabbage, fennel
Day 5 melon, raspberries, spinach, sweet potato, cauliflower
Day 6 blackberries, mango, kale, parsnip, peas
Day 7 tangerine, strawberries, beansprouts, sugarsnaps, pak choi

Add brown, wild, red rice, quinoa, various nuts, fresh and dried herbs and spices, onions, leeks, garlic, pulses, beans, chickpeas etc and you are easily past the target.

What was the comparison of though, was it compared to eating fewer portions of plants/ fruit and veg, even if those fruit and veg were a limited variety, or was it compared to her eating less amounts of fruit and veg all over?

So she could have had 30 portions of fruit and veg/plantstuff but that be limited to 10 different types over the week

Or she could have 30 portions of fruit and veg/plant stuff where every one of those is different

The main issue is cost, your list is very expensive.

Wild rice is about 6x the price of the cheapest rice you can buy.

Plus things are going to be duplicated. A melon is going to a few days. As is a net of tangerines. And you're not going to eat a whole cabbage in a day.

Could work with a family of 6, but not two.

processed food is also expensive though. I usually buy berries frozen - scatter some on yoghurt or porridge and put the bag back in the freezer so there's no waste. Same with spinach.

Fruit lasts several days stored in the fridge - so you could have melon a couple of times and then wait a couple of days.

You can cook red cabbage and freeze it. But it too lasts a week or longer if stored in the fridge. I used soem the other day in a coleslaw that I'd bought for Christmas Day and it was still absolutely fine.

A couple of the things on my list are a bit expensive but most are bog-standard weekly fruit & veg. I see the more expensive items as being treats to replace treats like biscuits, sweets, snacks, ready meals etc. I bet a high fruit & veg diet doesn;t come in as more expensive long term than a menu that usually includes processed food and takeaways etc.

Tim Spector said even things in tiny quantities like herbs and spices count. It's about variety not the actual quantity.

Compared with less varied fruit and veg, it's likely to cost more. Not compared with processed food. I would end up with too much food from your list as I can't buy a single serving of much of it. There's prepackaged fruit and veg like baby corn and mangetout but that would add up quickly. Some, yes, is easily frozen, but some isn't.

Our local shops sell cut portions of many fresh things. I often buy half a red cabbage or half a melon (or 1/4 if watermelon in summer).

I also rarely buy whole nets of fruit. It’s just Ds and I at home this week, so my food shop was things like 2 kiwis, 2 loose tangerines, 1/2 cantaloupe melon, 4 bananas, couple vine tomatoes. I only buy whole bags of one thing if we have people staying or if I plan to batch cook something.
Usually we eat something fresh 1-2 days max, and then if any left it gets frozen for another week. Ie we have broccoli florets 2 days in a row maybe, then I make broccoli cream soup from the stems (and potatoe/ onions/ herbs )and that’s in freezer for a quick lunch another week

Halves being available would be good! I never see that, only whole or else expensive prepackaged fruit and veg. Many things are not available loose either.

My local fruit and veg shop is also hideously expensive too. There's an Aldi about 5 mins walk away and the price difference is just huge. For the cost of 1 apple, I could get a six pack at Aldi.

One thing I think of in relation to 30 a week is that there has always been seasonality, and since we have been farming there have been gluts. More courgettes and beans than you know what to do with, as many blackberries as you can pick, for a short season. You preserve some, but you also eat a lot of the same foods for a period of time. Stewed rhubarb until strawberry time, then raspberries then blackberries, then plums and apples, apples keeping through the winter.

The halves are just local supermarkets ( not uk), no where fancy, Sainsburys equivalent. I think lidls do half sizes also, I’m sure I bought 1/2 pineapple there once. We can also buy 1/2 a loaf also, so bread used when fresh, then just buy another. So we swap easily between rye bread, spelt, sour dough etc

@Caspianberg Australia? We don't get halves in major supermarkets here. It's a whole melon or a two serve sliced mix of melon for more than a whole melon.

@Kalevala Morrison's often has halves of cabbage or melon.

@Kalevala - no, just mainland Europe

kind of like this picture (except our local supermarket is tiny so we just have a few pieces of each pre cut, and they just cut more in supermarket once bought)