Never eat my 5 a day...

Might be a good idea to try to pin point what it is that you don't like about fruits and vegetables, and try to work around that. For a lot of people, it seems to come down to texture. Specifically, not liking the crunch and texture of raw vegetables or fruits. Is it something like that? Or certain tastes? Or the acid in fruit?

I agree with previous suggestions that you can 'sneak' veggies into a lot of meals. Grated carrots, zucchinis, sweetcorn, tomatoes and onions into pasta sauce or veggie chilli. Roasting vegetables does wonders if you don't like the texture or raw taste. Soups are a great idea. Blend them up so that there is no chunkiness, just creamy goodness. Add a bit of lemon juice to make them super yummy.

Also, in my experience, people who don't like a particular thing haven't tried it in years. You might want to revisit a few things, just in case your taste buds have changed. Mine certainly have, I discovered a love for papaya a year ago after thinking it tasted like feet for five years.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Whatcounts.aspx might help and has an enquiry email at the bottom.

5 a day is mainly about getting a range of micronutrients and chemicals that help your health - the sugar in fruit is no more helpful than the starch in a potato (which doesn't count in 5 a day) but it's the "other stuff" in the fruit that works. Berries are low sugar / calorie and in general eat things of different colours.

I am wondering what you do actually eat :-)

Potato counts if you eat the skin as well.

I throw a big plate full of frozen, mixed veggies into the oven, covered, (toaster oven actually haha) and douse them in garlic powder, onion power, chilli powder, a little bit of olive oil, and depending on what I'm eating them with (alone/rice/noodles), other misc spices. No salt! After 30 minutes at 400 degrees they just taste like flavorful pieces of garlicy, oniony, spicy deliciousness, instead of frozen vegetables.

Also, just add stuff to your sandwiches. Add some sprouts and avocado, easy enough. Personally I'm not a huge fan of avocado, but I just eat it anyway.

I am a vegetarian, but don't like many vegetables. I love fruit and eat a ton of that, but I don't like the taste of most vegetables. So I find things I do like - sweetcorn is ok, and I quite like squashes and sweet potatoes and sorrel, and eat them, and things which I don't actively like but I can cope with like courgettes, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower and beans, and have them in things like stir fry, or curry where you can't taste them much. Some days, though, the sheer thought of eating a vegetable makes me wretch. It varies from day to day.

I call the days where I don't eat enough veg as a vegetarian my 'dairytarian' days. The reason they want you to eat a variety of different veg is that different things have different micronutrients- vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, etc. I would suggest taking a multivitamin if you don't already to cover your bases.

The other posters have made some really good suggestions- salsa on eggs is great, beans are great but I tend to count most of them as starches rather than veg, baby carrots make a great snack, v8 I think is delicious- particularly spicy v8, you could ribbon zucchini in with your pasta, I like your olive idea, onion is easy to sneak in to a lot of food as its great flavor, and I know this isn't really what you're looking for, but frozen unseasoned stir fry mixes are great- you can stir fry the veg with soy or teriyaki sauce, ot whatever you like really, and get a variety of veg with no prep work and like 5 minutes of cooking. Green giant also makes these healthy colors steamers that are an easy side dish that you just pop the whole bag in the microwave for 5 or 6 minutes and are pretty low cal but very tasty. Aiming to get a good variety of color tends to mean that you get a good variety of nutrients, as many similar color veg have similar nutrients.

Eta: I just want to clarify- I wouldn't stress out too much about the 5 a day bit, just try to get some where you can, and mix it up with different veg, preferably some different colors. Eating 5 serving a day of broccoli wouldn't be 'bad' for you, but it won't help balance your nutrient profile much- broccoli just being an example.

I know you said you don't like fruit and veg but (I'm making the assumption that you live in the UK) it's worth trying to get your hands on a Carol Vorderman detox book which are all over the charity shops - everything in there is vegan (I think) and though not everything will appeal to you there are some nice interesting things in there. For example, a mixed bean salad (tin of mixed beans in water), and chop up some salad veg you like - beetroot, cucumber etc. Make a dressing from cider vinegar, wholegrain mustard and oil. If you take that to work with you, you can get away with having a lot of it in one sitting.

If you can't stand most things try and sneak them in - if you make a Quorn cottage pie, chop up carrots small and a portion of peas. I'm not great at eating veg as in broccoli and peas but I have a salad based lunch and try to get everything in in one meal. In the winter I will make a load of veg soup in a pressure cooker and freeze portions and generally I can get all of the portions in just one meal!

Good luck

You can hide your veggies too. (I'm a mom so I have to be crafty sometimes). For example, spaghetti already contains tomato sauce and diced tomatoes but it also hides the rest of the veggies pretty well too. I dice up zucchini, eggplant, carrots, onions, squash, olives, etc. My boys never knew the difference until one day they saw me doing it. It might not equal a serving of ONE thing but it's got multiple things in it and it adds up!

Oh and I love love love Quinoa Tabboleh. Try to experiment with veggies mixed in stuff. Stuff that would ordinarily take on a stronger flavor of something else. I'm not sure this one would qualify but you get the hint. That's why you put spinach in the omelet. You know it masks it fairly well compared to regular cooked spinach.

The other day I made a chicken and rice soup. I know you don't eat chicken but the point is I put spinach in it. It sounds like it wouldn't go but because it is masked very well by the broth, it actually does very well. I put some cabbage, zucchini, etc. in it too in smaller amounts. (The recipe actually came from food network).

I have tried all kinds of new foods since I started this journey. Some I liked, some I didn't. Be adventuresome. Try to experiment with veggies in different ways. I realized one day that I grew up on canned veggies and have a hard time converting to anything else. I still have canned veggies but I realize that I just don't know how to make it any other way. I've learned to experiment using different recipes, different methods and different stages (fresh, frozen, canned). I'm still not great at it and I don't necessarily torture myself with it but a few times a week I try something new. (That includes fixing fish for the first time, quinoa was new, adding black beans to stuff, finally finding a Greek yogurt I like, never had chick peas until recently, learning to roast and steam veggies, etc.) You don't have to force yourself daily to eat stuff you don't like but you can find some solutions to work around and you can experiment occasionally. It's an adventure!!

Oh and nobody says you have to make absolutely everything fit in your diary every single day. I do, however, like that you are trying to get a variety in your diet and willing to look for solutions. That's awesome!

Oh also - I saw a documentary about the Five A Day thing a while back, and it had a couple of interesting points.

First was that (apparently) when the Govt originally did the research they found that for real benefit you needed to eat more like ten portions, but they thought that would seem so unattainable it would put people off so they chose five as a better-than-nothing option.

The other thing was about potatoes. We're often told they don't count because they're a starch, but they ARE a vegetable, and they're full of vitamin C amongst other things.

First was that (apparently) when the Govt originally did the research they found that for real benefit you needed to eat more like ten portions, but they thought that would seem so unattainable it would put people off so they chose five as a better-than-nothing option.

I heard the same thing. Apparently in Finland the saying is '11 a day'...