Five portions a day?

crazyhazy

crana999 wrote:

Smoothies only counting as one sounds like garbage to me, I even emailed the DOH site to ask why they said that as it made no sense.

If you're serving something like macaroni cheese it is fairly easy to just heat up some frozen/tinned peas or sweetcorn to have with it, or some boiled/steamed broccoli, carrots, or similar... or salad, even just sliced tomatoes. Makes the meal a bit nicer too

I think the smoothie and fruit juice only counting as one is for ready made stuff, ie not smoothies you make yourself. For instance when i make smoothies, the whole piece of fruit goes in and is just blended so therefore if it had a banana and strawberries it would be 2.

I've just been on the nhs website and actually made a list of all the fruit and veg I do like and what makes up a portion. This should make is easy to get my 5 a day in. Today already I think I've had 3, so will have some salad as a starter tonight, will also help fill me up and some fruit juice with dinner then that's my 5! Am really going to make an effort now and hopefully I'll start to feel the benefits soon. As for the water thing, I think I usually manage 8 glasses a day, cos I drink alot at work, I just find it harder at the weekend when I don't have a cool machine next to me!

filigree_2

I think the reasoning behind the smoothie/juice limitation is that by pureeing fruit you smash up the fibre content. Also, pureeing releases the sugar from the cells and raises the GI number of the food, and low GI meals are better for you. A whole banana is better than a pureed banana, although the pureed banana isn't bad for you. You can have juices or smoothies but they only count as one portion, however much you have.

Same with pulses. They only count as one portion no matter how much you eat, because your body primarily uses them as a source of protein.

Potatoes are healthy eating but they don't count in Five a Day because they are mostly carbohydrate.

Dried fruits only count once because of their high sugar density (even the non-sugared variety).

Although the limitations sound silly, I believe they exist for a reason. They serve to stop someone eating a whole pack of prunes in one day and not touching another vegetable - the "only one portion of xxxxxx" obliges you to eat a variety and not gorge on your favourites.

Does the orangey bit of a Jaffa cake count?

crana999

The site doesn't imply it's only ready-made ones. If you make your own fruit juice, it still only counts as one.

If >1 portions of whole fruits go into the smoothie it should count as >1 portion whether home made or not, imo.

MATH

Well as we're all posting our daily intakes I though I may as well post mine cos most people thinks my eating habits a bit wierd;) but in my family most of us can't stomach food before 6pm


Breakfast - Nothing

Mid Morning - Nothing

Lunch - Nothing

Mid Afternoon - Nothing

Dinner - Chilli Potato Pie with green salad. Rice Pudding with dried fruit.

Supper - A Bowl of Porridge with Apple, Banana, Kiwi, Grapes.

lipidicman

filigree wrote:

I think the reasoning behind the smoothie/juice limitation is that by pureeing fruit you smash up the fibre content. Also, pureeing releases the sugar from the cells and raises the GI number of the food, and low GI meals are better for you. A whole banana is better than a pureed banana, although the pureed banana isn't bad for you.

Is this fact? So you dont chew your banana up then? Fibre helps your digestive system pass waste matter, it doesnt do anything for you as you cant digest it. So as long as you have enough, smashing some up wont take away the nutrition from a banana. Also, your digestive system is pretty efficient at removing the sugar from the cells. Nutritionalists are part of a branch of pseudo science, they change with the seasons. I dont buy into this at all!

tru

lipidicman wrote:

I dont buy into this at all!

Me neither

crazyhazy

troo wrote:

Me neither

Me too, for example take one banana mash up and eat = 1 portion, take strawberries, mash up and eat = 1 portion BUT take said banana and strawberries, chuck in a blender with some milk and =1 portion!! Nope doesn't make sense. Can see why it applies to shop bought ones cos there's generally a lot of sugar and other stuff thrown in to make them last longer, therefore sense says they can't be as good, but am really sure it doesn't apply to smoothie you make yourself. Fruit juice is different cos you're only drinking the juice and not eating the rest of the fruit so hence the fibre is removed.

squeaky

I'm old enough to remmber way back when where salt was good for you...

..then it got bad for you...

..then it got good again...

I have no idea where it is now.

I've seen so many fads come and go that I've settled for doing things in moderation and trying to have as varied and balanced a diet as I can cope with.

And chocolate

crana999

lipidicman wrote:

Is this fact? So you dont chew your banana up then? Fibre helps your digestive system pass waste matter, it doesnt do anything for you as you cant digest it. So as long as you have enough, smashing some up wont take away the nutrition from a banana. Also, your digestive system is pretty efficient at removing the sugar from the cells. Nutritionalists are part of a branch of pseudo science, they change with the seasons. I dont buy into this at all!

I think the idea is that having food which releases the sugars more slowly is better for you because it leads to less sharp peaks and troughs in your blood sugar levels. It's not to do with whole or pureed food having more or less nutrients than one another.

Thus if you have a pureed banana it does release sugars more quickly than a whole banana that you just chew and swallow, and according to this idea is less good for you.

crana999

crazyhazy wrote:

Can see why it applies to shop bought ones cos there's generally a lot of sugar and other stuff thrown in to make them last longer, therefore sense says they can't be as good, but am really sure it doesn't apply to smoothie you make yourself.

I think the idea behind the "Five a Day" thing is to try and make sure you get a minimum of nutrients and fibre which should be supplied in 5 portions. That's why you're meant to have only one of juice (otherwise you wouldn't have enough fibre), and so on.

If you add sugar or whatever to your fruit and vegetables, it doesn't remove any of these nutrients (except in some cases like adding bicarb to vegetables..) so they should still count as a portion, whether you add sugar and stuff at home or you buy them with the sugar already added.

Obviously this has to go hand-in-hand with a general "healthy eating" ethos which includes trying to avoid unnecessary sugar, salt, and so on, but my thinking on it is that:

1) no matter how much added sugar etc. something has, if it has the same nutrients/fibre as would be expected in an unprocessed version, it counts as a portion. However, the nutrients have to come from the thing itself, because we don't yet know whether vitamins/minerals added synthetically are used by the body as efficiently as ones found naturally in food. Thus if there was some processing method that stripped all the iron out of spinach, adding extra iron to the spinach and putting it in cans would not make it exactly equal a portion of normal spinach.

2) this doesn't mean people can eat 5 portions of fruit a day smothered in cream and sugar and claim to be eating healthily because they have their "5 a day". "5 a day" has to be used within the context of the entire diet, not on its own. There is nothing wrong with having a "treat food" as an occasional thing, which may be processed/not that healthy but happens to contain x portions of fruit/veg. That portion would still count towards the 5 a day target... it's not "cancelled out" by whatever unhealthy things it's served with.

An example to make this a bit clearer: most of us have too much fat (especially saturated fat) in our diets and should eat less. But if we cooked carrots at home and put lots of butter on them, most of us would still consider that a portion, but we'd know that it isn't very healthy to put loads of butter on stuff.

Similarly if we have a salad and then icecream for pudding, the ice cream doesn't "cancel out" the salad and make it not count as a "proper" portion of fruit & veg.

I hope my thinking on this makes sense to someone!!