The five a day diet

Back in 2005 the Guardian did a focus on healthy living (although I have no doubt that they've looked at the subject since). One piece challenged 3 volunteers to eat nine a day and see how they got on. Amit's comment really sums it up for me

"To fit in nine portions, you have to have breakfast, otherwise you end up with too much to eat later in the day. You have to drop the junk snacks, which I am fond of. You can't even think about a nice bag of crisps when you've still got an apple or a banana to eat on top of your lunchtime sandwich. "

Fitting in five a day has been on my mind recently. I was really very keen on a few years back when I looked at my (then vegetarian) diet and realised that I wasn't consuming much in the way of fruit and veg. After a few months I had gotten into the habit and stopped worrying abut it. However, I recently purchased Glamour (just for the Benefit lip gloss - this was before the days of The make up diet) and it had an article about five a day.

I realised to my horror that I had slipped. This was mainly due to eating more than five on some days and rather less on others. I got to work on making a few alterations to my diet and discovered that if you are eating your quota you don't have room for much else.

The problems of what a portion was has continued to plague me. I have a handy portion guide on the side of my fridge. However what do you do when you have a bunch of 18 radishes and (according to the chart) a portion in 10? Do you eat 9 on each occasion? Or 10 in one go and 8 later? Eat all 18? Buy more radishes? What exactly does a bowl of salad look like and how does a bowl translate into the square, deep container that I am putting my lunch in?

After faffing around with bowls and the like a simple solution presented itself. I would just weigh the stuff. My 8 radishes that I prepared as a snack for today turned out to be well over the required 80g. I rather suspect that yesterday's carrots were a great deal more than 80g.

So I'll carry on using the scales, work at that 5 a day and maybe (very unsure about this) try 6 a day at some point in the future. I do agree with Helen in the article though - eating this takes some planning! But do Iahve anything that much better to do???