"Seven a day"

It might work, in chunks...

Yes, my body trained me out of chocolate, not my brain. It gives me dreadful heartburn. Apparently it irritates the sphincter muscle, it is horribly painful but just occasionally I think the pain is worth it!

Of course potatoes count as a vegetable. If more people ate potatoes which are nutritious ( more potassium than bananas) they would be healthier.
I suspect that it is the fine fruit industry behind this. Potatoes are cheap perhaps only a quarter or less the price of blueberries etc.

Eat what you like and relax. the stress osf trying to live on fruit and veg if deep down you don't want to, must counter act the good the 7 portions are doing you

I've eaten healthily for most of my life, and now I eat what I feel like. Sometimes that's a couple of Ryvitas and sometimes it's slow cooked chicken.
I love vegetables and fruit, and I eat them too.

Moderation in all things except chocolate

I'm nearly 68, still fairly fit and I'm fed up with this nanny state.

Aka, I'm sure your pasta sauce balances out, portion-wise, despite the paucity of carrots!| I hadn't noticed the weight guide.

Although how a 2" piece of cucumber can weigh the same as one large parsnip, I fail to understand! I'd have thought cucumber was mostly water anyway

They say it's variety that matters, and I don't see that we have to have seven a day. we could have one a day, changing it every day for a week and still get the same results. I suspect it's just a guide.

Potatoes aren't counted because they contain so much carbohydrate. Which turns to sugar very easily so becomes a danger to people with diabetic tendencies. Also, if you like mash, people tend to eat far more of it than they should, as a boiled potato is far greater in volume than mash, so it's easy to eat three times as much as you usually would, plus butter/salt etc.

I only eat mash for the butter I can add

Well quite...

Changing diets is REALLY tough, but I know I must. The Mediterranean diet suggests eating red meat only one a week, I would like to know who can afford it much more often than that! But it's actually going to be less often than that in our household. DBH has managed it for a couple of years now, I have done it far more gradually because I do love old-fashioned traditional foods, but there's no denying I cannot carry on as I have been.

But oh, how I long for a thickly- iced Belgian bun... Just one a day.. make that two...

Chill , people! Thickly iced Belgian buns are actually good for you now and then [as a treat] we all need the feel good factor of a treat now and then, but a daily diet of thickly iced Belgian buns may be pushing it.As others have said, the Nanny State is annoying, we know what to eat but will not be harried like a bunch of sheep all the time. Lots of cultures and countries actually ENJOY their food, why are we always made to feel guilty?Ignore all these diktats.

I doubt if it's the fruit industry that's behind this recommendation. The researcher I heard on the radio yesterday said that the emphasis should be on vegetables. Which reminds me - I have a butternut squash waiting to be made into tasty and nutritions soup.

nutritions nutritious

Not my statistics Aka, I merely quote
Now here's another article by the same nutritionalist, just to keep the debate going
www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/04/the-perfect-five-a-day/

Very interesting link, NannaAnna - thank you. At least we now know who came up with the 5 a day idea!

"Five-a-day was invented at a meeting of fruit and veg companies at a meeting in California in 1991. The term has since been trademarked by the American National Cancer Institute. It was not evidence based..."

Hmm...

Zoe Harcombe sells diet books. Rcently in the Daily Mail she was explaining that fruit and veg are actually no good for you. There’s a fascinating conversation to be had about the evidence base on the relationship between diet and health but would you start with Zoe’s work?
We all rely on heuristics, or shortcuts. Trusting an authority is one. Zoe boasts that she is “studying for a PhD in nutrition” but she admitted that she’s not registered for a PhD anywhere (although she is thinking about doing one in the future).
Does it matter? We read a precis of research as a shortcut, but once you lose trust, to double check whether someone has fairly represented an entire field, you’d have to read that field’s entire canon, and after many years of work, whatever your other conclusions were, the strongest would be that any timesaving benefit from reading a precis has plainly been annihilated. Given that this is the case, I know it’s harsh, and you may disagree, but in a busy world, I’m not sure I see the point of a Zoe Harcombe.

Extracted from Bad Science.

Whatever we eat, it's fairly obvious that as each country becomes more dependent upon ready meals, their cancer and obesity and heart attack rates go up. DBH went to Sainsbury's last week to buy some ready meals for us as we were both singing in concerts all weekend. They were fish based, from Sainsbury's - and vile. Glutinous messes of carbs, and although he bought a variety, in each carton there were only 8 small prawns, and each carton containing mange-touts only had four small ones. Along with perhaps four baby spinach leaves which wilted down to nothing, that was all the protein and veg they contained. One had roughly a dessertspoon full of small slices of chicken. Lots of people live on these things, with the sauce being almost solid carbs and about ten times as much noodles/rice/spaghetti as protein or veg. Veg negligible, in fact. I was so disappointed.

Oh, I skipped the nutrition part of the article, Aka - most people must realise we'd find it hard to live on a diet of just fruit and veg!

It was the origins of the 'Five a Day' mantra which I found interesting!

Aka, not suggesting that Zoe Harcombe knows the 'truth' and everyone else is wrong, but when a statement about increasing our fruit & veg to x, y or z portions a day is issued and widely accepted without much question, it's interesting to look at a totally different perspective .
Interestingly, I know 2 people who have qualified as nutritionalists in the last couple of years, and some of what they each advocate puts them poles apart ! More and more, I feel that no-one has a clue when it comes to the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of food and nutrition!

Just googled this and it seems that whilst the term 'dietician' is a protected and regulated title, the term nutritionist has no clear meaning and anyone can describe themselves as such. There are a few courses of different types and a few voluntary registers but there is no requirement for practitioners to be registered or bound by any professional code of practice. I have actually consulted a nutritionist in the past for raging allergies, but would now be far more cautious after reading this.

Only just come to this thread as I have been away for a day or so.

On Wednesday I ate:
Breakfast: Small fruit juice, marmite rice cakes with soft cheese and sliced cucumber (2)
Lunch: Beef and squash stew, more squash than beef, but meaty and tasty, spring greens and potatoes, stewed rhubarb, (3)
Supper: Frittata made with courgettes, sausage and cheese, grilled tomato, apple (3)
Total: 8

This was not planned intentionally, I just love vegetables and have recently been reducing the amount of meat I eat for ethical reasons and replacing it with extra veg.

All this fuss about superfoods and expensive fruit is ridiculous, root vegetables, brassicas, frozen peas and sweetcorn can all provide people with a plenty of vegetables without spending huge amounts of money on exotic fruit and veg.

My father lived fit and well to 92 and never ate fruit or vegetables if he could avoid them.

My husband's mother is the same as your father, Flickety, although she's not exactly fit and well at the moment. She'll buy a ham salad, thinking it's healthy, eat the ham and leave the salad.
My husband and I took part in the Epic study. He will not be included in those who died of cancer despite eating loads of fruit and veg because he died in 2012 and the study finished in 2010.

How many of you eat chicken livers and sardines? A strange way to prove a point.
The idea of complete proteins went out with the ark in nutritional circles. We all eat enough protein in this country - or we used to before food banks proliferated - to cover the essential amino acid gap.

Flickety did you have 5cm of cucumber (1 portion)? Did your veggies total 3 heaped tablespoons (1 portion) and as yams and plantain don't count, does squash? I lost heart when I found that one large parsnip - or 4 heaped tablespoons of French beans (FOUR heaped tablespoons!) - or 8 (EIGHT) cauliflower florets only count as a single portion and it takes 8 cherry tomatoes to equal an ordinary one. I just can't eat that much veg. (I'd be jet propelled for a start!)

A site I have just looked at, says that 7 portions of F&V is 400grams a day. I cannot see how I could eat that much each day, but it will give me a figure to work around.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26818386

Today I have eaten small quantities of the following in no particular order and no particular amount, just what I found comfortable:

oats
wheat flour
butter
sugar
dates
apricots
apple
milk
egg
cheese
oatcake
tomato
leek
broccoli
parsnip
chicken
bread
mushrooms

If it ain't right according to the blah blah, that's too bad. Do I look bovvered?

Oh, I forgot! I ate a small orange as well.

And I fried the chicken and the mushrooms in beef fat.