Only 6 per cent of adults and 8 per cent of children eat the recommended serves of fruit and veg. Given how few people manage it, what are their secrets?
How on earth do the few who manage to meet the recommendations do it? How do they afford it and how, practically speaking, do they get those serves in? What does a serve even look like? And how does anyone manage to get their kids to eat that much veg every day?
Tara Di Versi, the president of Dietitians Australia, agrees. She explains that one cup of vegetables – about the size of an adult’s fist – equates to about two serves and a standard carrot or zucchini is one to two serves. But she adds that there is no need to stress about perfect serving sizes or to be exacting about getting five in every day.
Bulk-buying food from markets and then splitting the costs with her extended family is another cost-saving exercise, and involving her kids in cooking engages them in the process, meaning they are more likely to eat it, she says: “We don’t push the veggies, we don’t make a big deal about it.” New research by The Fruit & Vegetable Consortium, co-led by Nutrition Australia and AUSVEG, found 72 per cent of people surveyed said affordability is the main reason they are not eating enough vegetables, and 44 per cent said the short shelf life was a barrier to buying vegetables.
“If our veggies are soft or old, we’ll throw them into a frittata, casserole or soup,” she says. Uneaten vegetable sticks from the kids’ lunchboxes end up as afternoon snacks or in dinner. “We’re not throwing away as much produce, but also we’re able to save on our overall grocery spend, which is important to us.”
Make your own “bag salad” by grating broccoli and cauliflower stalks, using beetroot leaves rather than throwing them out.
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