The Department of health is running campaigns to encourage us all to eat more fruit and vegetables in our diet. There is good evidence that doing this can help reduce the risk of getting certain cancers, including cancer of the stomach, cancer of the colon, cancer of the rectum and possibly even cancer of the breast. It also helps reduce the chance of having heart attacks or strokes and can help in the control of some other illnesses like asthma and diabetes.
The advice is to takes five portions of fruit and vegetables in our diet each day. Fresh, frozen, chilled canned and dried fruit and vegetables all count, as does 100% fruit juice. (With fruit juice, although a glass of juice counts as 1 portion you are only allowed to count juice as 1 portion, however much you drink, because it has very little fibre in it, and it often contains natural sugars. So dinking, say, 4 or 5 glasses of fruit juice in a day still only counts as ‘1 portion’.)
Potatoes don’t count in the ‘5 a day’ portions, because they are too starchy. Beans, and other pulses, such as chick peas and lentils, only count as 1 portion a day, however much you eat, because although they contain lots of fibre they don’t have the same mix of vitamins and minerals as fruit and vegetables.
The Department of Health gives a complete list of portion sizes for different fruits and vegetables on it’s web site at
These are some examples:
Fruit and vegetables making up 1 portion include:
1 fresh apple
3 whole dried or fresh apricots
½ an avocado pear
1 banana
2 clementines
8 segments of canned grapefruit or ½ a fresh grapefruit
150ml of a fruit smoothie
2 medium plums
6 canned prunes or 3 dried prunes
1 tablespoon of raisins
7 fresh strawberries or 9 canned strawberries
5 spears of asparagus
3 heaped tablespoons of broad beans
2 spears of broccoli
8 Brussel sprouts
1 cereal bowl of mixed lettuce leaves
16 medium okra
1 medium onion
3 heaped tablespoons of fresh, frozen or tinned peas
8 spring onions
1 medium sized fresh tomato or two whole tinned tomatos
On some food packets (but not all) there is a '5 a day portion indicator'. It shows how many portions of fruit or vegetables are found in a typical serving.
The logo shows 5 squares, each representing 1 portion. For example, if one square is coloured in, you will know that 1 serving of this food counts as 1 portion towards your 5 a day target. If 2 squares are filled in, 1 serving counts as 2 portions and so on.
To get the best out of a ‘5 a day diet’ you should really take a mixture of different fruit and vegetables to get a good balance of all the vitamins and minerals your body needs for a healthy life.
Eat and enjoy!