As someone who helps clients with towards peak Mind-Body, Personal & Professional Interactions and who is studying both Nutrition and Naturopathy, I often get asked by clients who want to be more healthy (or who are trying to slim down), what the ideal number of fruits and vegetables that they should eat is.
Well, up to now, the accepted idea was that “five a day” was the healthy ideal. In fact, we often see written on products being sold all over the place the message “one of your five a day”, so it’s no surprise that we assume that the “five a day” (meaning five portions a day of fruits and vegetables — mainly veggies by the way) is accurate and complete. So you can imagine my surprise to find a study published on the NHS website no less claiming that actually what we need to be eating is closer to “ten a day” to ensure our healthy survival and to significantly cut our chances of serious illnesses leading to premature aging or death. The main surprise, however, was that this study was more than a year old, but yet not much had changed in our beliefs around how many fruits and vegetables we should be eating daily. You can find the NHS article below.
https://www.nhs.uk/news/food-
For those who want to understand a bit more around what a “portion” actually is, the study states that we are safe with 800g of fruit and vegetables (concentrate on the vegetables) eaten daily. Portion size explanations for different fruit and vegetable sources can be found here:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/ eat-well/5-a-day-portion- sizes/
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/