Quezi

Eggplant Salad (photo by yomi955 - CC-BY)

“Five a day” is a campaign being run by the UK Department of Health and backed by Cancer Research UK. It encourages people to eat more fruit and vegetables by reducing it to the simple slogan of “five a day”, i.e. eating five portions of fruit or vegetables per day.

People who can manage that are likely to reduce their risk of many cancers, including mouth and stomach cancer, and also to reduce their risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. This diet is also thought to help with cataracts, asthma, bowel function and diabetes.

Obviously the overall diet is what counts, but a “five a day” program is likely to help with many aspects of the diet: increasing fibre intake, reducing fat intake, maintaining healthy weight and reducing consumption of refined sugar.

The “five a day” program counts each serving of fruit and vegetables (fresh, frozen or canned; raw or cooked) as one of the five, assuming a serving size of around 80 grams. Pure fruit juice and beans count, but each only for one of the daily portions no matter how much juice you drink or how many kinds of beans you eat in a day.

Potatoes and other starchy vegetables don’t count, which is not to say that they are unhealthy, just that they should be eaten in addition to fruit and other vegetables.

Although the message is sound, the official publications are often bland and patronising. For example, the NHS 5 A DAY webpage says one of the “5 great reasons to eat 5 portions” is: They taste delicious and there’s so much variety to choose from.

Their 5 a day made easy PDF booklet does this too. The section on Tips for your man already assumes that only women care about diet: “Encouraging your man to eat more healthily can often be as much of…a challenge than it is to convince children“. Bleah! Their first suggestion is to let your man cook vegetables on the barbecue. Hmm … it’s below freezing outside as I write this, hardly barbecue weather. Their final suggestion is a guilt trip: “Make him feel guilty and tell him…to set a good example to the children!”

Oh well, Nanny knows best I suppose.