I recently watched a video on nutritionfacts.org about the percentage of people who lead a healthy lifestyle, defined for the study in question as 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week, not smoking, not overweight, and getting five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
It was 3%.
I mentioned to Greg how glad I was that we were in that three percent, and he said “are you sure?” So we counted our servings for that day.
A serving of fruit or vegetables is 1/2 a cup or 1 medium fruit, and 1 cup for leafy greens.
The day we saw the video I’d eaten:
- Whole grain french toast made with soy milk & banana batter (maybe 1/4 serving of banana each?)
- Burrito bowl with brown rice, black beans, tomato salsa, lettuce and cilantro (probably 1 serving of vegetables total)
- Whole wheat pizza topped with mushrooms and green peppers with blueberries, carrots and tomatoes on the side. (1-2 servings of vegetables on the pizza)
That’s conservatively 2 and 1/4 servings from the entrees. In order to meet my daily fruit and vegetable requirement I’d have to consume an additional 2.75 servings, or about 1 and a half cups of combined carrots, blueberries and tomatoes at dinner.
I probably ate at least a cup, because they’re delicious and our family of 4 consumed this entire plate.
So on a day selected at random, I’m not sure I even made it.
Granted, these are approximations, and I could well have had more green pepper and mushrooms than 1/2 a cup since I ate three slices of that pizza.
But the point is, I’m not sure. And we only eat plants. It’s easy to assume because we eat primarily whole foods, that we’re getting enough fruits and vegetables. This just shows that there really isn’t room for empty calories.
What about the kids?
If we’re just making it, what about our kids? Their serving size is 1/4 cup because they’re smaller, but to get to 5 you still need to have them eat more than one serving at every meal of the day and another one for snack.
How often am I even putting a serving in front of them at breakfast? Andrew eats a serving of frozen wild blueberries on his oatmeal almost every day, but Will prefers cereal or granola on almond milk yogurt.
I’m not into over-analyzing food and making it a numbers game, but occasionally doing a check to see what you’re really serving (and what the kids are actually eating) can be a good reminder to keep putting those fruits and vegetables on the table alongside whole grains, beans, nuts and seeds.
Ways my kids love to eat fruits & vegetables:
- apples and carrots with peanut butter for snack
- sliced fruit or berries with breakfast
- red peppers and hummus
- cucumbers, snap peas or carrots as is
- kale chips
- raw broccoli dipped in braggs liquid aminos or soy sauce
- vegetable soup where we play the “guessing game” and they try to name vegetables they’re tasting with their eyes closed
- veggies with white bean dip
Slice / wash & serve:
One of the best ways to get vegetables and fruits in is to keep serving them, and I’ve found the easiest way to do that this time of year is to keep vegetables on hand that I can serve raw as part of snack or on the side of meals.
When you’re making snack, can you add fresh produce and reduce the number of crackers?
Before dinner, can you put out a plate of fresh fruit or sliced vegetables as an appetizer? (This is a great way to get more into kids because they’ll be hungry.)
Can you get in the habit of serving fruit with breakfast?
We had Dreena Burton’s amazing spinach and artichoke dip for lunch yesterday and I served sliced radishes, carrots, red peppers and cucumbers along side the tortilla chips for dipping. Using vegetables to eat vegetable based dip? Good way to add up those servings.
How many servings did you get yesterday? How about your kids? Any favorite ways to eat them?