10 portions of fruit and veg a day

Options
123468

Replies

  • crzycatlady1
    crzycatlady1 Posts: 1,930 Member
    Options
    Great tips, thanks Ann!
  • RuNaRoUnDaFiEld
    RuNaRoUnDaFiEld Posts: 5,864 Member
    Options
    I've tried so hard today and made it to 525g

    Next week will be a huge challenge!

  • crzycatlady1
    crzycatlady1 Posts: 1,930 Member
    Options
    I've tried so hard today and made it to 525g

    Next week will be a huge challenge!

    I'm under 500g for the day, with no more veg/fruit planned, darn it lol.
  • fitmom4lifemfp
    fitmom4lifemfp Posts: 1,575 Member
    Options
    Tum22 wrote: »
    Will anyone be following the new advice of ten 80g portions of fruit and or veg a day? (UK) It used to be five and now it is recommended to eat ten portions a day to avoid deaths from cancers/strokes and heart attacks. And what do you think is the best way to do this?

    I dunno but I sure won't be attempting it. I put all those foods in my calculator and I get 630 calories....just for fruits and veggies. Yeah not happening.

    How did you come up with 630? I used carrot as proxy, being a middle of the road calorie veggie (things like cauliflower and broccoli would be even lower) and I came up with 329 calories for 800 grams. Have you used a fruit in your calculations?

    I put the exact items in that was picture in the link.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
    Options
    Tum22 wrote: »
    Will anyone be following the new advice of ten 80g portions of fruit and or veg a day? (UK) It used to be five and now it is recommended to eat ten portions a day to avoid deaths from cancers/strokes and heart attacks. And what do you think is the best way to do this?

    I'll just continue doing what I am doing and not stress about it.
    I try to have vegetables or fruits with my meals and snacks.
  • crzycatlady1
    crzycatlady1 Posts: 1,930 Member
    edited February 2017
    Options
    Tum22 wrote: »
    Will anyone be following the new advice of ten 80g portions of fruit and or veg a day? (UK) It used to be five and now it is recommended to eat ten portions a day to avoid deaths from cancers/strokes and heart attacks. And what do you think is the best way to do this?

    I dunno but I sure won't be attempting it. I put all those foods in my calculator and I get 630 calories....just for fruits and veggies. Yeah not happening.

    How did you come up with 630? I used carrot as proxy, being a middle of the road calorie veggie (things like cauliflower and broccoli would be even lower) and I came up with 329 calories for 800 grams. Have you used a fruit in your calculations?

    I put the exact items in that was picture in the link.

    It's really going to vary based on what veggie/fruit combinations people are eating. I'm putting together my plan for Monday and so far I'm up to around 600 grams, and it's only around 187 calories. That's for 227g of lettuce (going to make a taco salad), 148g of tomato, 118g of banana and then 100g asparagus.
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    Options
    Nope. Don't like vegetables enough to force the amount for every meal and don't regularly eat much fruit.

    Because I cook just for myself, I often eat the same thing for a week or more. If my meals turned over quicker, I would probably get the recommended amounts regularly now. As it is, I'll have weeks where I'll get only 2-4 servings per day, but then there will be weeks where I get probably double or triple the recommendation every day.

    It's the difference between meals of chicken sausage and mixed grains, and meals of split pea soup.
  • VeryKatie
    VeryKatie Posts: 5,937 Member
    Options
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    VeryKatie wrote: »
    '
    (snip by reply-er)
    Also... 80 g of lettuce would be a lot of lettuce.

    Nah. Yesterday's spinach salad had 95g of just spinach, just a nice salad bowl of it - not even thinking about the 132g of tomatoes and 202g of cucumber.

    Sadly, I only had 65g of Spinach left for today's salad. :(

    Edit then: A lot for me. Salad is not a favourite food of mine.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    Options
    I'm very encouraged by this. I slacked off veg over the year I was losing weight and practically stopped fruit completely.
    Since maintaining weight the last 6 months I increased vegetables and having been a vegetarian, lacto ovo, for many years, I've been missing that way of eating and getting keen by the day to get back to it. I have no problem eating 10 servings of veg now that I regularly roast them, plus evening suppers we often have avocados. I think I can just add a few fruit in place of bread and make fruit and veg st least 1000 grams a day easily. Now if chocolate were a fruit, that would really help me.
  • ActivatedAlm0nds
    ActivatedAlm0nds Posts: 169 Member
    Options
    Packerjohn wrote: »
    Lot of outliers here. According to the CDC, only 10% of Americans eat the recommended amount of fruits and veggies.

    https://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/centers-for-disease-control-news-120/only-1-in-10-americans-eats-enough-fruits-and-veggies-cdc-701213.html

    I'm kind of surprised at how many in this thread eat the amount of veggies and fruit that they eat, I don't know anyone in real life who eats close to that (my husband for example doesn't eat fruit or veggies at all-as in NONE). I actually forwarded my mother-in-law the article link, and she responded back that she maybe gets in 3-4 servings a day. And she's someone who I consider very healthy/eats healthy.

    I still don't know how I'm going to actually fit in 800 grams a day for my little challenge next week. For those who do hit that (or close to it), how many meals/snacks do you eat a day? I typically only eat twice, with an occasional afternoon snack, so that breaks down to around 400g per meal. I don't know if my stomach can actually handle that much :p

    I eat 2-3 meals a day but snack a lot in between. My snacks are mostly raw tomatoes and sometimes other veggies too but I do end up with a few pieces of fruit too by the end of the day. My biggest meal usually contains most of my veggies. If roasting or doing cooked leafy, I often go with about 500-1000 grams of raw veggies, or 100-300 grams of leafy veggies. It sounds like a lot of food but it really isn't. I like my cauliflower and eggplant well-roasted so a kilo shrinks down to barely a bowl. If I'm making soup or raw salad it ends up being less per serving than I would do for roasting. My other meals also always contain veggies in some form but in smaller quantities. People eat popcorn when watching TV, I randomly munch on raw lettuce, cauliflower or cabbage leaves right off the stem because I love the crunch.

    ETA: I often end up with anywhere between 15-40 servings of veggies a day if I'm not eating out or fasting, so the way I eat is not representative of what it would take to eat 10. Trust me, it won't be hard.

    Do you have any idea how much you spend on produce a week? Another thing I'm thinking of is the cost of eating more veggies and fruit.

    It wouldn't be representative. Most fruits and vegetables in season are not that expensive here (some go as low as 10 cents per pound)
    That's amazing.

    Kroger has a dollar bin of cheaper produce and the 99cent store is chock full of stuff.

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,372 Member
    Options
    I agree that it's probably a good recommendation (I'm definitely less hungry if I have a lot of veggies in a day), but I just can't see it happen in my house... I just really don't like veggies so much and would rather spend the calories on something else...
  • gemini0007
    gemini0007 Posts: 27 Member
    Options
    All I do is aim high on my vegetable intake - I try my best to have vegetables at breakfast, lunch and dinner most days. That is good enough for me.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Options
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?
  • crzycatlady1
    crzycatlady1 Posts: 1,930 Member
    Options
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Probably, but spinach in a taco salad is just blech :p I am planning a spinach, bacon and sweet pepper salad for one of my meals on Tuesday though!
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,294 Member
    Options
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Depends on the type of lettuce. Iceberg is not nutritionally amazing, but it does have some vitamin K (30% of DV in 100g for 14 calories), vitamin A (10%), folate (7%), and vitamin C (5%), along with smaller amounts of other micros, and 1.2g fiber. 100g is not a huge amount - 72g shredded is supposed to be 1 cup.

    Other lettuce types (leaf, romaine, butterhead . . .) have substantially greater amounts of a wider range of micros, and (IMO) are tastier.

    Yeah, spinach is "better", but lettuce isn't bad . . . for the calories, especially.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    Options
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Depends on the type of lettuce. Iceberg is not nutritionally amazing, but it does have some vitamin K (30% of DV in 100g for 14 calories), vitamin A (10%), folate (7%), and vitamin C (5%), along with smaller amounts of other micros, and 1.2g fiber. 100g is not a huge amount - 72g shredded is supposed to be 1 cup.

    Other lettuce types (leaf, romaine, butterhead . . .) have substantially greater amounts of a wider range of micros, and (IMO) are tastier.

    Yeah, spinach is "better", but lettuce isn't bad . . . for the calories, especially.

    Ahh ok. I did the nutritional comparison of iceberg V spinach. I remember someone once telling that that you may as well eat water if you go with iceberg lettuce lol

    @crzycatlady I've never had a taco salad, off to google recipe now :smiley:
  • crzycatlady1
    crzycatlady1 Posts: 1,930 Member
    edited February 2017
    Options
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Depends on the type of lettuce. Iceberg is not nutritionally amazing, but it does have some vitamin K (30% of DV in 100g for 14 calories), vitamin A (10%), folate (7%), and vitamin C (5%), along with smaller amounts of other micros, and 1.2g fiber. 100g is not a huge amount - 72g shredded is supposed to be 1 cup.

    Other lettuce types (leaf, romaine, butterhead . . .) have substantially greater amounts of a wider range of micros, and (IMO) are tastier.

    Yeah, spinach is "better", but lettuce isn't bad . . . for the calories, especially.

    Ahh ok. I did the nutritional comparison of iceberg V spinach. I remember someone once telling that that you may as well eat water if you go with iceberg lettuce lol

    @crzycatlady I've never had a taco salad, off to google recipe now :smiley:

    Taco salad is a lot of fun! I do shredded iceberg lettuce, seasoned ground beef (with taco seasoning), sliced black olives, diced tomato, diced onion, shredded co-jack cheese, sour cream, hot sauce and then crushed tortilla chips-all mixed together in a big bowl! It's a bit time consuming to put together but it's a big hit with the family (and I can knock off a few grams of veggies for my challenge lol).

    eta: you can also switch out the ground beef for chicken and do French dressing instead of hot sauce.
  • Gianfranco_R
    Gianfranco_R Posts: 1,297 Member
    Options
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Variety is key.
    For side salads, I usually buy mixed salad bags (which may contain baby spinach).
    Cooked spinach is a staple in my diet, yet I try not to exaggerate, since it is high in oxalate, and I don't want to find out I am prone to kidney stones...
  • peleroja
    peleroja Posts: 3,979 Member
    Options
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Depends on the type of lettuce. Iceberg is not nutritionally amazing, but it does have some vitamin K (30% of DV in 100g for 14 calories), vitamin A (10%), folate (7%), and vitamin C (5%), along with smaller amounts of other micros, and 1.2g fiber. 100g is not a huge amount - 72g shredded is supposed to be 1 cup.

    Other lettuce types (leaf, romaine, butterhead . . .) have substantially greater amounts of a wider range of micros, and (IMO) are tastier.

    Yeah, spinach is "better", but lettuce isn't bad . . . for the calories, especially.

    This. We eat tons of romaine in our house but don't really like the earthy flavour of spinach in most salads. I dress most of mine with lemon juice and I don't like the combo with spinach much. Unless I'm using bacon pieces, goat cheese, or a fruit vinaigrette, spinach just isn't for me (and it always gets kinda slimy much faster than the whole heads of romaine we buy, which I can often have in the fridge up to two weeks and still have them fresh and crisp.)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,294 Member
    Options
    peleroja wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    To those counting lettuce as a serving, wouldn't you get more vitamin/mineral bang for your buck using spinach instead?

    Depends on the type of lettuce. Iceberg is not nutritionally amazing, but it does have some vitamin K (30% of DV in 100g for 14 calories), vitamin A (10%), folate (7%), and vitamin C (5%), along with smaller amounts of other micros, and 1.2g fiber. 100g is not a huge amount - 72g shredded is supposed to be 1 cup.

    Other lettuce types (leaf, romaine, butterhead . . .) have substantially greater amounts of a wider range of micros, and (IMO) are tastier.

    Yeah, spinach is "better", but lettuce isn't bad . . . for the calories, especially.

    This. We eat tons of romaine in our house but don't really like the earthy flavour of spinach in most salads. I dress most of mine with lemon juice and I don't like the combo with spinach much. Unless I'm using bacon pieces, goat cheese, or a fruit vinaigrette, spinach just isn't for me (and it always gets kinda slimy much faster than the whole heads of romaine we buy, which I can often have in the fridge up to two weeks and still have them fresh and crisp.)

    Stunned the heck out of me, but I've found that spinach from local folks at the farmers market, especially the Winter/early-Spring spinach*, keeps way, way longer than store spinach. I've had it stay at salad quality for as much as two weeks in the fridge . . . and I'm pretty picky about salad.

    * I suspect the Spring spinach only keeps better because it's cooler in the truck on the way to the market (small time farmers, some use regular coolers, some don't, but no refrigeration), and also cooler in the (indoor) market in Winter than it will be later in Spring, let alone the early-summer outdoor version.