It's ridiculous!

[Sundae]

I miss Croques in Leicester so much that it almost hurts.
My favourite wrap from there had onion marmalade in it.
Yes, I think it must be a fruit. Never again will I say I'm not a fruit person.

Nom, nom, onion-breath, nom.

BTW, the EU aren't stupid. They're a bunch of intelligent people who have to work as a committee. What is a camel? a horse designed by a committee. See?

Oh and peas SO are a vegetable.
I don't care what horticulturalists think - Mum put them on my plate and told me to eat my veg. Subject closed. Next you'll be telling me potatoes are tubers or some such rubbitsh.

[ZenGum]

What about mushrooms? [/shitstirrer]

[DanaC]

They're on the 5 a day list too!

*smiles* it's clearly worked out in a very non-vegetably-fruity way, in order to achieve the best spread of vitamins, nutrients and anti-oxidants. The beans that are included tend to be the highly coloured shiny ones. Sweetcorn is the only 'grain' included, which given its colour and texture I can see how that might offer similar advantages to a brightly coloured fleshy veg.

The purpose, after all, of eating five veg and fruit a day, is not that you eat 5 fruit and veg, but rather that you get the various goodies contained within those fruit and veg. No point getting too hung up on definitions, if something that isn't strictly speaking either a fruit or veg nonetheless offers the same goodies as peas and apples. Nobody would deny that potatoes and other tubers and roots are a type of vegetable, but some are and some aren't included on the list. Parsnips and carrots are, potatoes aren't. They're not attempting to redefine what is or isn't a veg or fruit. They're just trying to collect together a category of intake and the imperfect designation of 5 fruit and veg a day is an easy and convenient way of doing so.

[ZenGum]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: sugar is a vegetable. eat up, kiddies.

[DanaC]

except for brown sugar...that's clearly a grain...

[dar512]

Originally Posted by DanaC

My usual strategy is to make sure I always have tinned fruit in the house (I can rarely persuade myself to eat fresh fruit but tinned fruit goes down easy and counts to 5 a day), so that usually takes care of at least 1 portion a day. A glass of frut jiuce is a 2nd.

You have checked to make sure that neither the tinned fruit nor the juice has added high-fructose corn syrup, right?

[DanaC]

*Shakes head* we don't get so much of the corn syrup over here. I usually get Del Monte tins, some of which come in 'light syrup.' The stuff they make for the British market is made from sugar and water; looking online I see that the same product on the American market is made with corn syrup.

[Madman]

Wanna lose some weight without having to starve yourself?

Become a vegetarian. Ever see a fat vegetarian? They are like tapeworm skinny!

Eat fruit until you can't crap real crap anymore. Water... lots of water (zero calories).

[Aliantha]

I've seen plenty of fat vegos. Well, the ones that eat dairy anyway, but also, nothing stops them from eating lots of fried foods such as vegetarian spring rolls or hot chips (fries) etc. You can get fat no matter what your personal choice on animal products is.

eta: oh and eating a high carb diet (breads, rice, pasta, high sugars) with little excercise s likely to make you fat too.

[Pooka]

I've never had an issue getting my veggies in... I was a vegetarian until Flint Jr. came along.... portion control in general has always been my weakness... carbs to be specific... I could live on them... I have an undergrad in Holistic Nurtrition, yet I have managed to pack on the pounds and not lose them all yet... and I'm talking about 60 pounds I have to lose... not that Flint is counting... he likes some meat, but I do not... not on me anyway.

V-8 is an easy way to up your veggie intake, but I HIGHLY recomend getting the low sodium variety. Too much salt will lead to water retention and it is much easier to exceed your salt limit than you could imagine. A nice broth based soup before a meal to help fill you up. I also am a fan of a good colon Flush. If your colon is clean you absorb your nutrients better and thus require less food to meet your body's nutritional needs. An average woman can lose about 25 lbs from an effective flush. And is is all literally crap gumming up the intestines. I can't do it yet, as I am still breastfeeding...

If you have the Lifetime Channel... the new Cook Yourself Thin is really well done and the recipes are pretty terriffic... and I've tried most of them... lost 7 lbs so far...

[Pico and ME]

Cloud, servings arent as big as you think, for example, an apple is actually two servings.

[DanaC]

Over here it's 1 small, or half a large apple. Though, I honestly find that rather a lot of apple to eat...

It's whne you get to veg that the portions get difficult. 3 tablespoons of peas? or beans? That's a huge amount. To try and get more than one portion of veg into a meal is hard. I don't eat large quantities on the whole (unless it's 'empty' cals, like sweets and biscuits!) . If I get a full portion of peas, a full portion of broccolli and a full portion of courgette (zuccini) into a meal, there's precious little room for anything else. I invariably end up leaving most of the (tiny amount of) pasta or rice and picking out the remaining veg before I get half way through.

I guess the way to do it is to eat more than one meal...but I rarely manage that. I graze a little (bit of fruit, a couple of biscuits, a drink of chocolate milk) and then one meal at night...sometimes not even that. Often enough my night time 'meal' is a slice of ham straight from the pack and a couple of spoons of sweetcorn and cottage cheese, from their respective tin/tub. I'm getting better at it though. I;d say the last three weeks, I've eaten at least one proper meal most days and on some of them two!

[joelnwil]

Well, this "portion" or "serving" stuff is just crazy. If a serving is half an apple, what do you do with the other half? In the morning I generally have a large glass of low sodium V8 with 2 olives stuffed with garlic cut up in the juice. But a "serving" of olives is 1.5 olives. Does anybody ever eat just 1.5 olives? What do you do with the other .5? I suppose you could save it for tomorrow - it would keep.

As far as I am concerned, a serving is however much you eat until you don't want any more.

My grandmother was told by her doctor to eat half a banana every day. She was very frugal, and did not know what to do with the other half. Finally, she decided just to walk to the back of her large lot and leave the other half for the birds. I really do not think that she would have been hurt by eating the whole banana, or by just eating one every other day. She lived to be 99 years old, after all. Well, maybe it was the half banana, who knows?

[DanaC]

I think the point isn't that you only eat single portions of stuff...rather that it gives you a minimum that lets you know iof you've covered that one :P

[Cloud]

3 tablespoons of peas is a huge amount? (scratches head). I don't think 3 T of much of anything is a lot.

Plutonium, maybe. Certainly not peas.

I agree though--portion size is crucial, tricky--and ridiculous!