Number of servings of fruits and vegetables

jdunphy15

Although I don’t use it, I do like the idea of being able to track the of 8 ounce servings of water every day. In the same way, I think it would be great to be able to track the number of servings of fruits and/or vegetables every day. There is such a focus now on eating at least five a day but it’s hard to know if I have that! It would be especially useful if it would convert grams or ounces to a number of servings. For example, yesterday I shredded brussels sprouts and carrots, and stored them in a container in the refrigerator. Today I weighed out 3 ounces or 84 g but I don’t know if that is considered one or two servings of vegetables. Perhaps my pal could count this automatically for us, or a way I could check a box (similar to checking glasses of water) every day so I could keep track of how many servings I have

AnnPT77

I'm not MFP, but in case it helps (as a workaround, not a substitute for the proposed feature), this is how I think of it:

The US recommends something like 2-3 Cups daily, UK recommends 5 80 gram servings daily, WHO's recommendation is that 400 grams as a minimum, and some other big countries' health organizations recommendations are similar to those examples.

Since I weigh my food - sounds like you do, too - it's easy for me to look at the full day of food in my diary and add up the number of grams of veggies and fruits. I shoot for a minimum of 400g, and prefer to get 800g+ or close to it. I don't worry too much about breaking that out into servings, though I do try to make sure I have variety over a day or few.

I'm not arguing with your feature request, though I do think it would be challenging for MFP to assess accurately. If I log soups or casseroles or something - like a commercial packaged food that has partly veggies and partly other things - they're not going to have the data they'd need to figure out how many veggie servings is in that.

My approach isn't perfect for that, either, but I have a chance of approximating it by eyeballing the food when I eat it, close enough to keep myself in that 400g-800g+ range I aim for.

I have to admit, I don't add it up every day anymore. I've focused on remodeling my routine eating habits to reach my nutrition goals semi-automagically just by eating the way I like to eat - not all the same foods all the time, but some generally typical patterns. I have a good feel for where I stand on veggies/fruits, so nowadays only bother to add it up if I think I might be a little short, but have calories I could choose to spend on more of those or more of something else.

YMMV.