The idea behind eating a minimum of five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is to help maintain a healthy immune system and it is an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet. Eating your five a day can also help to avoid certain diseases from developing such as diabetes, heart disease and certain forms of cancer.
Your five portions do not need to be made up from fresh fruit and vegetables, frozen and dried fruit and vegetables all count towards your daily allowance. In order to get maximum benefit from your five portions of fruit and vegetables you should aim to include a variety of colours of fruit and vegetables because the colours in the fruit and vegetables specify different properties and they all have different levels of fibre, vitamins and minerals so make sure your daily intake is as colourful as possible.
Fruit is an appetising and wholesome snack, not only is it low in fat and calories. It also has other properties that are known to help you eliminate toxins from your body and they can also help to enhance your energy levels.
Any of the following count towards you reaching your goal of a minimum of five portions of fruit and vegetables per day:
- All fresh fruit and vegetables.
- All frozen fruit and vegetables.
- Any canned fruit and vegetables. Try to use the ones that come in natural juices or in water as these are better for your health.
- Dried fruit, such as currants, dates, sultanas and figs. These can be slightly higher in calories than fresh fruit so be careful
- Any meals you are making from scratch, any fruit or vegetables you use in that dish will count.
- A small glass of unsweetened fruit or vegetable juice will count towards your daily intake but not as much as fresh fruit does as the juice contains less fibre, vitamins and minerals due to the skin being removed i.e apples are peeled before being made into juice.
- Beans and pulses.
The world health organisation suggests that we eat a minimum of 400 grammes of fruit and vegetables a day, this means one portion is roughly 80 grammes and therefore one piece of fruit does not necessarily equal one portion.
As a guide line to what counts as a portion of fruit and vegetables, see below:
Fresh fruit
With the smaller fruits such as plums and Satsuma’s you will need to eat two of these to class it as one portion. An apple, a banana and an orange all count as one portion. With the bigger fruits then you are looking at one or two pieces to be classed as one portion.
Dried fruit
A portion of dried fruit is around 30g. This is smaller than the portion for fresh fruit, again because dried fruit tends to be higher in calories and should be eaten in smaller quantities.
Vegetable portions are similar to the way fruit portions are worked out, if they are raw you need to eat less to get your required amount, however, if they are cooked vegetables then you need to eat more as they lose some of their nutrients during the cookery process.
As you can see it is very easy to get all the vitamins, minerals and nutrients you need on a daily basis - all you need to do is eat a minimum of five different fruit and vegetables a day.
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