Lyric Waiwiri-Smith is a lifestyle reporter who drinks 3L of water but is not getting her 5+ a day.
OPINION: After spending a number of days trying to figure out if plant-based food alternatives count towards our 5+ a day, I was met with a very troubling realisation: I am not eating enough veges.
We’ve all been taught the golden 5+ a day rule – eat three vegetables and two fruits a day, and you’ll be on the right track to achieving a healthy lifestyle.
As it turns out, the recommendations on eating and living well are a little more complex than shoving greens into your gob.
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The Ministry of Health’s (MoH) Eating and Activity Guidelines contain recommendations for daily servings of grains, proteins, and milk products as well as fruits and veg, and the number of suggested servings differs between gender and age groups.
As a 22-year-old female, I’m supposed to work in five servings of vegetables, two of fruit, six servings of grains, two and a half servings of protein, and another two and a half of milk products – every day.
Proteins in the MoH’s guidelines include “some legumes, nuts, seeds, fish and other seafood, eggs, poultry and/or red meat with the fat removed.”
I’m also meant to limit the amount of salt, saturated fats, and sugar, focus on wholefoods and get in 2.1L of water a day.
A regular day of eating for me would see me get half my recommended veges and grains. My protein serves were fulfilled but my milk product servings would often go overboard.
I made it my mission to target whole veges and grains in my meals.
I have a tendency to lose my appetite in the middle of the day if I’m stressed or dealing with a busy work day, which means I often skip lunch (although I always have breakfast and dinner). Missing a meal made it near impossible to get in the full list of recommendations.
At one point I was so worried about not meeting my daily vegetable intake I ate corn with porridge for breakfast (it actually tasted pretty good).
Another day, I counted avocado as part of my veggie serve and didn’t realise until after it’s actually a fruit.
Cottage pies and curries became regular menu items as they contained as many as three servings of vegetables and two serves of grain, while smoothies helped me meet my milk, grain, and fruit serves.
While my fruit and vegetables were successfully on the rise, my grains were still lacking.
The idea of needing to double my usual intake was easily the most daunting aspect of this healthy eating, and I never managed a day when I ate all six servings.
Grains aren’t exactly a food group that is found in abundance in my household. My boyfriend has coeliac disease (he can’t eat gluten) so our pantry only consists of gluten-free pastas and white rice (do gluten-free alternatives have different serving sizes?).
It wasn’t just fitting the grains into a meal that caused issues. I deal with frequent painful bloating, and after eating each meal I felt like my stomach was swelling up to the size of a balloon.
Unfortunately, the discomfort and bloating didn’t ease up the whole week.
Because I was so focused on veges and grains, I often ignored working milk products into my diet unless it was the yoghurt I paired with my morning cereal.
On average, each day of my trial week, I would eat four servings of vegetables, one serving of fruit, three servings of grains, two servings of proteins, and one and a half servings of milk products.
There wasn’t a single day when I managed every recommended serving from every food group.
Nutritionist Lillian Morton says the MoH base their guidelines on a wide range of research to see how our portion sizes in food groups can improve our health.
“It’s based on a whole truck load of research that they’ve pulled together and said, ‘if you do this, this will keep you healthy’.”
Morton suggests my method of suddenly increasing servings may have stressed out my gut.
“The gut is quite a complicated organism, so when you eat a lot of something there are all these receptors in the stomach and the gut that your body regulates,” Morton says.
“When you don’t eat a lot of grains, and you suddenly introduce new foods to your diet, your stomach actually takes a while to recalibrate.
“Whole grains have a lot of fibre, and fibre is amazing for the gut, but it does make you feel bloated because it ferments in the large intestine. You’ve also added more fibre with the fruit and veg, so you’ve got way more fibre and that takes a lot of digestion.
“It does come right, it’s just how your body works … you get a bit symptomatic and think ‘grains don’t agree with me’ rather than just persisting.
“Going from nothing to a hundred is quite a lot for the gut to deal with. Maybe go for three grain serves and two vegetable serves if you’re starting from nothing, and then increase it slowly.”
She says her simple hack to sneak more whole foods into our diets is to make every meal colourful.
“My phrase is ‘touch the rainbow, be the rainbow’, so include colour at every meal,” Morton says.
“Many Kiwis have what I call a ‘beige diet’ – pasta and mince, bangers and mash – it’s just about adding some berries to your breakfast, having some salad ingredients in your sandwiches and wraps, adding mixed veges if you’re having tuna and rice. Just try to have colour at every meal.”
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