I’m going to try to keep a list this week

30 different plants would be a lot harder than 30 different portions me thinks. That's about 8 different plants a week.

Original poster said “30 plants a month” - not in a day or a week. That means servings.

Easily achievable, even in a week. But tea and coffee as a plant serving? Only if you want to cheat. It’s a liquid, plant based, but has no fiber or nutrients. And then there’s cream/sugar added sometimes.

Also beware of your inclusion of processed food which can be plant based but has gone through the wringer in its production.

I am going to look into this book. I’m interested in expanding my consumption of more natural foods. (But I can’t resist chips 😜 your crisps(?)

Make a Ministrone Soup once week and throw in everything you can find, plus herbs and spices (which count towards your 30 a week) mixed nuts and seeds on yoghurt and salad and your there!!

I have started buying Sauerkraut from Tesco.
It comes in tubs and is flavoured with garlic and dill.
It’s live and naturally fermented.
I find it very tasty and I think it’s helping my gut health a lot.

LovesBach

Skydancer

We try to eat as much fruit and veg as possible but only organic. If you read what is put on the soil in normal farming practices it is horrifying. Human faeces are often spread on fields. With the overuse of drugs and antibiotic in humans this is not a pleasant thought. One of our local MPs is trying to get this practice banned. Organic farms do not allow this.

This is quite stomach turning, I agree. An elderly allotment grower informed me that tomato seeds pass through the human system, and evidently superb tomato plants grow in abundance around sewage farms. Oh yuk yuk.

😁
Many plants you see in strange places may be grown from seeds passed through birds. The perfect growing conditions .

Wouldn’t it be simpler just to eliminate meat and dairy?

Skydancer

We try to eat as much fruit and veg as possible but only organic. If you read what is put on the soil in normal farming practices it is horrifying. Human faeces are often spread on fields. With the overuse of drugs and antibiotic in humans this is not a pleasant thought. One of our local MPs is trying to get this practice banned. Organic farms do not allow this.

This is quite stomach turning, I agree. An elderly allotment grower informed me that tomato seeds pass through the human system, and evidently superb tomato plants grow in abundance around sewage farms. Oh yuk yuk.

I thought that the most important part of eating fruit and veg was to eat a wide variety of colours.

Have been doing 30 plants a week for a year now and feel so much better and fitter. Just got back from three weeks in Canada and it was impossible to do whilst away. Eating out everyday was hard to find enough plants. Felt unfit when I got back, so last week managed 60 plants in a week and already feeling better.
I use an app called Plantverisfy which is really easy and keeps count each week for you. Lots of things count, tea, coffee, green teas, herbs, spices etc etc.
Think Zoe is interesting but expensive and don’t want to get obsessed over what I am eating so not joining that. Also think it is beginning to become a little bit of a money spinner??
I really notice the difference in energy and health, the three weeks I wasn’t eating so many vegs though, so going to carry on.

PamelaJI. In your original post you stipulate 30 in a month and later your say 30 in a week.
I’m assuming 30 in a month is too easy??

If we're being pedantic about fruit or not fruit, many people refuse to acknowledge that tomatoes, bell peppers, chillis, squashes and many more are fruits! If it contains seeds, it's a fruit but it may not necessarily be sweet. A coconut isn't a nut, it's a fruit...and most nuts are also fruits. Whadayaknow! 😅 (Google has the dibs on everything!)

knspol

I could easily manage 30 portions a week but 30 DIFFERENT portions a week I would find very hard as I do tend to eat the same things - must try harder!

It is in fact incredibly easy. Two of mine, today, to be added to the 20 I ate yesterday., are 1/8 teaspoon of cummin and a very small quantity of capers, both used in the topping on a piece of fish 9with other ingredients.

By the time you count up all the odd ingredients you add when you assemble a dish, plus condiments - jams, chutneys, horseradish, mustard etc - it really adds up very quickly and easily.

Quizzer

Just being pedantic, rhubarb is not scientifically a fruit!

Oh dear. Wrist slapped.

grandtante I haven’t costed it but perhaps fruit and veg are cheaper here, I don’t know.
You don’t need a lot of anything for it to be counted. I’m finding that so far I’m not buying anything that I wouldn’t normally. Dried/frozen fruit and veg will count and pumpkin , sunflower seeds, desiccated coconut also have a reasonable shelf life if they are kept in jars.
A teabag counts as does a sprinkling of herbs or spices. I counted the nutmeg on my rice pudding last night, unfortunately it’s still rice pudding weather here!
lizzypopbottle asked about carbohydrate dense plants. Yes they all count. I hadn’t thought about sugar but I suppose it is a plant. I never think of it as being good for me so don’t add it to much, still there was some in the pudding so one more tick.😂
For those of you, and there seem to be a lot, who suffer from IBS it must be quite difficult all round. It never occurs to me that a food might upset me, I am lucky.

And then there's chocolate - from the healthy cocoa bean

mabon1

I have read that organic fruits and vegetables are no better for us than the less-expensive "ordinary" fruit and veg.

DH’s brothers oncologist told him to never eat carrots that weren’t organic because of what they are sprayed with.

Just being pedantic, rhubarb is not scientifically a fruit!

I could easily manage 30 portions a week but 30 DIFFERENT portions a week I would find very hard as I do tend to eat the same things - must try harder!

Some foods are very high in food miles! Avocado is one of them. Good for individuals, bad for the world! Perhaps the prof should set a better example...

There is a ZOE podcast showing how you can follow their eating plan on a budget. I know I take a Macusave capsule daily because, in Trust Me I’m a Doctor they said it would cost a fortune to eat the things that would provide the vitamins and minerals they contain..I have looked at Tim Spector videos showing what he eats and thought well my daily budget was used up with the avocado you had for breakfast. I do think that ZOE is the way forward when it comes to making us healthier as a nation and I hope that he will work with future governments in much the same way that Jamie Oliver tried to regarding school meals.

Would you consider publishing what it cost, as well, please?

Fruit and vegetables must be very cheap in the Uk, if you can afford this.

Here it would be impossible. I certainly cannot eat as much as one plum or orange a day .

I doubt too that any shop sells thirty different kinds of plants in one month! Never looked as cannot afford them anyhow.

I am all for a balanced diet, but if I eat cabbage for instance, I don't have potatoes the same day - the housekeeping money does not run to it. I treated myself to some plums that had reached their sell-by date last week, cooked them and had them as a great treat for three or four days. First time in months I have afforded such a luxury.

I wish these advisors would consider the cost of food before publishing these guidelines.

SillyNanny321

I am another who has to avoid eating very many plants thanks to IBS. Even some that will have no effect a couple of times will suddenly aggravate & I am stuck not leaving the loo for a couple of days. Eating out is awkward as I have to try to tactfully find what may be lurking in something that I would love to eat! My son has an even worse time as he has Crohns & has to avoid even more plant foods than I do. This kind of upset seems to run through our maternal family as both my DM & GM both had serious problems. My GM had similar symptoms to those that my son had but Crohns was not a recognised illness then. She was told that she had bleeding ulcers. She had to avoid eating certain things too. This was in the early 50’s when I was very young. No idea of my fraternal family as, sadly, were lost during the war!

My biggest trigger is bread which I should avoid but still slip into the habit of eating. I did read years ago that we should always eat fruit before everything else as it digests quicker and if you’ve ate something else beforehand it sort of overtakes it and pushes everything through.

PamelaJ1

keepingquiet
Perhaps if we all ate a very varied diet we wouldn’t need the type of probiotics that some people buy?
Better to do it naturally ? I have never bought a probiotic for myself but did tell my DD she should take them after a course of antibiotics.
Eating healthy food is silly?
You may know a lot already about a good diet and good gut health but look around, so many people haven’t got the message yet.

No, you still need the pre and pro biotics. They then need the varied foodstuffs to feed off. ( or something like that!)

PamelaJ1 do you know if the prof includes carbohydrate dense plant foods in his recommendations? Grains are plants, so popular foods like bread, rice and pasta are from plant sources, as is sugar.

I counted 20 different plants in a typical week and several are repeated on five days every week i.e. oats, four different seeds, two kinds of nuts, apple and prunes for breakfast. This takes a typical week's total to about fifty four, way more if you count tea and coffee and a splash out on summer fruits. I'm neither vegan not vegetarian.

I suppose I should read his articles. There are plenty of them!

I am another who has to avoid eating very many plants thanks to IBS. Even some that will have no effect a couple of times will suddenly aggravate & I am stuck not leaving the loo for a couple of days. Eating out is awkward as I have to try to tactfully find what may be lurking in something that I would love to eat! My son has an even worse time as he has Crohns & has to avoid even more plant foods than I do. This kind of upset seems to run through our maternal family as both my DM & GM both had serious problems. My GM had similar symptoms to those that my son had but Crohns was not a recognised illness then. She was told that she had bleeding ulcers. She had to avoid eating certain things too. This was in the early 50’s when I was very young. No idea of my fraternal family as, sadly, were lost during the war!