Fruit and Veg.

[ceejay123]

There is an ongoing campaign to get us to eat 5 "pieces of fruit/veg per day and I can't get me 'ed round what exactly they mean.
Is it five different fruits IE Apple Orange Banana Pear Grapefruit? Plus five items of veg???
What constitutes " PIECE"
My wife and I do eat a lot of F & V each day but I wonder just what the "thought police" want us to eat??
Confused

[Jugglering]

It's five pieces of a mix of fruit and veg (but potatoes don't count as a vegetable because of their high carbohydrate content)... so, for example, a healthy diet would incorporate a glass of fruit juice, a whole apple, a whole banana, a handful of peas, a handful of sliced carrots every day (just vary the fruit and veg) .... not too hard to include those I wouldn't have thought.

Loads more info on this site:- http://www.5aday.nhs.uk/

[ceejay123]

Thanks Juggler just what Ineeded to know.
Chris

[sqad617]

ceejay, you have hit on one of my "sore points" What if you only had 4pieces of food or veg daily. Would you live less long. What if you had 6pieces of fruit or veg? People go on holiday and "demand" 5pieces of friut daily, so I ask would their life be shortened if they did not have those 5pieces of fruit that week. Sorry ...this is a total OBSESSION. Fruit and veg important BUT 5pieces daily? Nonsense.

[ceejay123]

I agree entirely with you "Sqad".
I was brought up in the fifties and school dinners, mums and canteens etc all served "balanced" meals with plenty of veg and a sweet which contained some fruit.

The kids were far healthier then(this is not nostalgia!!)
as a result.

Nowadays through successive governments dumbing down education, domestic science in particular, we have a generation who Cannot Cook!!!!!!!

So the powers that be have to campaign to get people to eat something other than PIZA......BURGERS....etc.

Now they have got old folk like me thinking I don't have a proper diet when all the time I have a perfectly good diet!

So now I have stopped smoking (1st July) and have put on 2 stone as a result. I will have to eat ALL F & V to lose weight or I will get fatter and get diabetes or die through over eating.

I drink at least 44 units per week and I have no intention of cutting them down. " Life's a bitch, then you die."

[sqad617]

Well said Ceejay, what we need here is common sense NOT dogma.