The current 5-a-day guidance is a bit vague in places if you ask me. I’m sure a while ago there was guidance that you had to have 5 different pieces of fruit or veg, indicated by the every more exotic (and expensive) range of fruits in the suggested eating- mango & papaya for example.
It’s depressing to hear that two thirds of the country don’t even meet the 5 a day, however arbitrary it is in numbers, portion sizes and everything else. At least it’s a starting point.
I don’t think we fall into the two thirds, although wifey may beg to differ. Seldom a day goes by without the kids having an apple or pear, some raisins, and a banana. Ned has even developed a fixation with melon, that regular readers will be aware of.
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| Gardening. Sort of. |
The problem is though, the provision of all this fresh fruit and vegetables isn’t exactly cheap. There are 5 of us in the house. We must get through a bag of apples,a bag of pears and a bunch of bananas every single day. And that’s before we start looking at melons, oranges, satsumas, grapes, strawberries, raspberries or blueberries, all of which are probably a weekly purchase. Same with vegetables- a large cauliflower isn’t much less than a pack of sausages.
We spend far more on food than the amounts I see disclosed by a lot of bloggers. Part of this is because we have made the choice to buy ethical meat, which means no “two chickens for a fiver” offers for us but buying plenty of fresh fruit and veg isn’t cheap either. We grow our own too- peas, strawberries, raspberries, goosberries and rhubarb but I’m under no illusion that it’s much cheaper than buying them by the time we’ve spent on compost and gardening accoutrements.