Your Five a Day ?

[Nature's Babe]

We all enjoy growing our fruit and veg, I just wondered if that leads to us all getting our five a day, not counting potatoes ? Often on TV only one or two veg are served up with a main meal, and a lot of people seem to skip breakfast.
Personally, I do, often starting with breakfast, fruit with cereal, or grilled tomato and mushroom on toast, or in an omlette, left over veg heated through in piperade but my partner is more of a carnivore and not a great veg eater. Today my fruit and veg were tomato, runner beans, peppers, sweetcorn, pear, raspberries, herbs thyme and parsley, onion and garlic, oh and cape gooseberries as a snack too, all home grown. Soups and salads are a great way to squeeze in those extra veggies.

[Monika]

We probably have three of our five for breakfast: large glass of fruit juice (grapefruit or 'breakfast juice'), home-mixed muesli sprinkled on stewed fruit (not home grown but, if possible, locally grown, like apples and plums at the moment), dried apricots and figs.

Unless we go out for lunch, it's always home-made soup made with home-grown vegetables during the week - today I made "green soup" (leek, florence fennel, runner beans, a few broccoli florets and herbs, thickened with potato) and "red soup" (tomatoes, sweet pepper, carrots, parsnips, Jerusalem artichoke and red lentils) which will be eaten Monday and Tuesday.

As we had braised beef for Sunday lunch with home-grown vegetables (roasted root veggies and broad beans), for tea it was just a a cheese sandwich, but with three home-grown tomatoes!

I think there are very few days we don't get our five or more.

[peter]

Five a day was a figure plucked out of the air for a publicity campaign.

A varied diet with less meat and more veg & fruit is better for us, but I doubt many would want to return to the best diet the UK ever had.

It was called rationing and I think some of our older members may remember it, just.....

[Nature's Babe]

I think most folk realise it is a guide Peter, both Monika and I probably exceed that most days, but as you say variety is important too. I do just remember rationing, and one of my earliest memories is being in an orchard, the smell of the fruit, the buzz of bees, and the landgirls laughter as they picked fruit. As a small child my diet was restricted even further due to allergies which thankfully I grew out of.

[peter]

Therein lies my point.

It is not a guide as it has no correlation to fact, it is an arbitrary figure, might just as well be three a day, which would have been a better initial target for the wider population.

[Nature's Babe]

Actually Peter the five or more a day was recommended after epidemialogical studies in community health and there was a correlation with reduced risk for every portion above two portions. This is recommended globally by the WHO.

http://blog.bodykind.com/healthy-diet/f ... in-the-uk/

Also the food pyramid could do with updating in the light of more recent research, refined carbohydrates should be at the top of the pyramid not the base and veg and fruit should be at the base, with whole grains next in the pyramid, the mediterranean pyramid being closest to a healthy diet

http://www.diet4uonline.com/med/mediter ... yramid.htm

[Geoff]

I agree that the concept is fairly arbitrary, always found the exclusion of Potatoes odd when say Parsnips and Sweet Potatoes are OK. I have no doubt I get through five a day. My breakfast is usually muesli with plenty of fruit and nuts (mix my own) moistened with fruit juice and washed down with a glass of fruit juice. Lunch usually includes salad or home made soup (does home made wholemeal bread contribute?) followed by fruit, usually our own. Main meal is often traditional meat and several vegetables followed by a pudding based on fruit.

[Tony Hague]

The exclusion of potatoes only makes sense if it is there to prevent you counting chips as a portion of veg. Presumably if two dessertspoons of raisins count, a good slice of fruitcake should too ? When I make fruit ice creams, e.g. strawberry, it is 50% fruit - can I count that ?

I largely agree with Peter, the 5 is pretty arbitrary. As well as the arbitrary size of a portion, and fuzzy edges as to what counts - Potatoes, though vitamin rich, do not. Appletizer does according to the manufacturers, Baked beans may, and in the US it has been argued that tomato ketchup should - it would make the US statistics a whole lot better (a huge proportion of their tomato production are paste types for ketchup !).

[Nature's Babe]

It would seem that those who grow veg here as I thought are having a healthy proportion of veg and fruit in their diet, however quite a high proportion of the general population have under three portions a day and in many populations this shows in poor health statistics.

An interesting area is sea vegetables, which the japanese consume a lot of, these are the only vegetables that actually supply all 56 minerals necessary for health which many soils are lacking, which is a good argument for adding seaweed and its products to our growing plots.

[alan refail]

Five a day was a figure plucked out of the air for a publicity campaign.

Reminiscent of the setting of "safe drinking limits".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... iewed.html

"Government advice here is based on recommendations from a committee of doctors in 1987, which set out weekly limits of 21 units for men, and 14 units for women.
Since then, one of the members of the Royal College of Physicians' original working party has admitted the figures were "plucked out of the air" in the absence of any clear evidence about how much alcohol constitutes a risk to health."

[glallotments]

To add to the confusion Denmark have a six a day, in Finland and Sweden it is half a kilo a day, France started off at 10 a day and now say at least 5 a day.

Then http://www.patient.co.uk/ which has advice that is provided by GPs and nurses say:
"Healthy eating includes eating at least five portions, and ideally 7-9 portions, of a variety of fruit or vegetables each day. Fruit and vegetables include fresh, frozen, tinned, or dried varieties, and fruit juice. On average, people who eat lots of fruit and vegetables tend to be healthier and live longer".

Other advice is that you should eat a variety of colours of fruit and vegetables as different coloured items provide different types of nutrition.

Then for some fruits/vegetables double portions counts as two but for others no matter how much you eat it can only count as one a day!

Baked beans count but not potatoes (although in some information it says these do count). Apparently, according to the NHS site, this is because potatoes are eaten as the starchy part of your diet instead of bread, pasta or rice whereas parsnips etc are usually eaten in addition to the starchy part of the meal!

Confused?

If the government are serious about healthy eating then they should try and do something about the cost of fresh fruit and vegetables for people less fortunate than us who can't grow their own. As it stands the lower your income the less fruit and veg you will buy.

[Tony Hague]

Apparently, according to the NHS site, this is because potatoes are eaten as the starchy part of your diet instead of bread, pasta or rice whereas parsnips etc are usually eaten in addition to the starchy part of the meal!

Intriguing that the nutritional value of food appears to be affected by the intention with which you eat it, not it's vitamin or fibre content ! Sorry, where potatoes are concerned they have not a leg to stand on, it is pure prejudice against chips !

The other thing I wonder is how processed a food can be before it ceases to count as a vegetable - hence the comment on tomato ketchup above. Actually cooking some vegetables increases the nutritional value of them, because it allows them to be more readily digested and absorbed. Tomato paste products make the lycopene more available to the body than raw tomato, for example.

[Nature's Babe]

You are right about the lycopene Tony, I often bottle tomatoes when I have a surplus or make ratatuille. Potatoes can vary, homegrown in good soil they have substance and flavour and vitamins especially under the skin. Bought potatoes can vary, I only grew new pots this year so have been buying maincrop, this week we had some delicious king edwards, last week I purchased some that looked fine on the outside, but almost dissolved in the cooking water and were absolutely tasteless, they seemed to have no substance at all.
However vitamin loss can occur for many reasons eg heat depletes vit c,
some vitamins are soluble in water, which is why it is better to wash greens and salads quickly rather than leave them to soak, exposure to air depletes some vitamins so last minute preparation is preferable to buying ready shredded stuff. Overlong storage also depletes some vitamins. Recommendations to preserve vitamins include: utilizing foods when fresh; using steaming in preference to boiling; and avoiding overly long cooking times.

[Nature's Babe]

Gallotments, I agree the government should put their money where their mouth is, it's no good spouting about food being good for our health if it is out of reach of some, though that is not just finances, it also requires education. Government depts particularly the Dept of Health and DEFRA could do more. A lot of hospital food is very poor, did you see the recent TV programme about hospital catering...all packet and frozen stuff and cooked and heated till it's pretty inedible.

[glallotments]

NB: Yes I did it was very interesting but tucked away at 9:15 a.m. Fortunately we spotted it and recorded it. Packet soups, Angel's Delight and frozen omelettes, solid custard -all approved by their nutritionist. Then they wondered why there was so much waste and patients being malnourished.

I wonder how long they will keep up the new regime though now James Martin has left them to it!

Anyone interested then it's on Iplayer here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b014grz5/Operation_Hospital_Food_with_James_Martin_Episode_1/