Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

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Mo
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Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

Post by Mo »

I was reading the Guardian this morning and this article includes the statement
If you have a diverse, balanced diet, aiming to eat 30 plants and vegetables a week – not a problem.
I'm not sure what it means. Is it portions / week, and if so what is a portion. Or 30 different plants.
It set me trying to count. I tend to eat the same things each week.
Bread (wholemeal, granary, or seeded) - wheat (the small print on the seeded bread bag adds barley flour, about 5 seeds and vegetable oil)
Potato,
Peas, sweet corn, carrots, sometimes baked beans (in tomato sauce) or tinned tomato or a little celery
Apple, plum, pear, blackcurrants, gooseberries (all home-grown and stored or frozen). And I've just picked a couple of sticks of rhubarb for tonight.
There is a lettuce in the fridge, to go with my bread & cheese lunches, usually in summer I eat salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomato, celery) but in autumn an apple, and when the eaters go soggy, some stewed fruit.

So that's 10 that I eat lots of + maybe 8-10 others.
How can I get up to 30? Well....sugar comes from a plant, and cocoa beans (I'm sure my chocolate biscuits are full of plants). But apart from very occasional and seasonal fruits I'm not sure I can get any further.

So just for fun - how many plants do you eat?
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Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
fabindia
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Re: Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

Post by fabindia »

Hi Mo,
Yes this is a tricky one. I'm sure going back many millennia our hunter-gathering ancestors ate a far more varied diet than we do. Indeed on of the concerns concerning food security is just how dependent the world is on a relatively few varieties of food - rice, wheat. If these fail or are destroyed by disease then we could be in big trouble.

The simple basic premise for a good diet is 'eat real food (not junk), mainly plants'.

As you suggest you suggest, let's count the basics of what we eat regardless of portion size:

1. Wheat (bread, pizzas, etc)
2. Rice (white and brown - though still only counting as one
3. Potato - a real UK staple - chips, mashed, baked
4. Tomatoes - we get through lots out here. Basis for pizza sauce, curries, etc.
5. Cauliflower
6. Broccoli
7. Cabbage - cooked, raw, pickled (red) and fermented
8. Celery
9. Onions - white, red, pickled
10. Jalapenos - plus other of the chilli family - red, green,
12. Peppers (bell peppers_ green, yellow, red
13. Ginger
14. Garlic
15. Coriander - not the spice but the green leaves - we make a spicy coriander dip
16. Aubergine
17. Lemon
18. Limes - lots of them
19. Water melon
20. Pineapples - they are 5 for about £2.50 here
21. Papaya
22. Apple
23. Orange
24. Chickpeas
25. Black-eyed beans
25. Red lentils
26. Urad lentils
27. Moong beans
28. Lettuce
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kitla
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Re: Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

Post by kitla »

aha I beat you! I just made a list & got to 33. I do get some out of season fruit like strawberries & blueberries most weeks, against my principles but little toddler Alice is a picky eater atm so I tend to indulge her when its something healthy.
Apples/Pears/Bananas/oranges/grapes/strawberries/blueberries/lettuce/tomatoes/cucumber/peppers/onion/garlic/ginger/tumeric/basil/origano/thyme/sage/chillis/ leeks/ cabbage/ carrots/ cellary/ potatoes/ parsnip/ sweet potato/ squash/ courgette/ peas/ green beans/ baked beans/ rice/
I suppose I've cheated as I dont use all those herbs every single week. But I could add the occasional advocado & today its mint sauce!
"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."
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lancashire lass
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Re: Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

Post by lancashire lass »

Mo wrote: 19 Feb 2022, 13:55 I was reading the Guardian this morning and this article includes the statement
If you have a diverse, balanced diet, aiming to eat 30 plants and vegetables a week – not a problem.
I'm not sure what it means. Is it portions / week, and if so what is a portion. Or 30 different plants.
I followed your link but the article was all about breakfast foods (cereal, cooked breakfast, none, coffee) and no mention of the diverse, balanced diet. So I googled the statement ... still not the Guardian but in the Daily Mail published 16 October 2019. The statement recommends:
eating and drinking 30 different plant foods each week
So, not really portions but different types (seeds, grains, fruits, vegetables, spices which can be produced from pods, roots or seeds) The purpose is to stimulate and provide an environment for gut flora (bacteria and other non-pathogenic microbes) to flourish. Many of these microbes breakdown food and in turn, synthesise vitamins and a whole range of other metabolites in the gut which are supposedly health promoting to keep away cancers as well as provide nutrients not normally available in foods directly.

Personally, I think it is just another fad like the probiotic yogurts. I haven't got anything against probiotics and by all means carry on but there comes a point when a day-to-day diet should just be varied enough to include a wide range of nutrients rather than "counted". With global famines and climate change/carbon footprint, there comes a point when people should just be sensible about they eat and be thankful - some people are just grateful to simply have food on their plate let alone worry about what to feed their gut flora.
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Mo
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Re: Eating plants - a balanced & varied diet.

Post by Mo »

lancashire lass wrote: 03 Mar 2022, 19:36 .... the article was all about breakfast foods (cereal, cooked breakfast, none, coffee) and no mention of the diverse, balanced diet. So I googled the statement ... still not the Guardian but in the Daily Mail published 16 October 2019. The statement recommends:

eating and drinking 30 different plant foods each week
The article was indeed about breakfasts, but the sentence I quoted was in the second paragraph (about oats)
lancashire lass wrote: 03 Mar 2022, 19:36 Personally, I think it is just another fad ....
Yes I think you're right. I only counted because it seemed a high number, and posted as a bit of fun.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
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