Eating the right amount of fruits and vegetables can keep you healthy.
In your excellent article “Strategies for dodging colds, flu” (Living Here, Nov. 15), you suggest eating 10 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I have read articles in the past that suggest five servings. I have never been sure if it is meant to be a combined total of five fruits and veggies or five servings of each. No information is given as to what amount of a fruit or vegetable is considered a serving. I assume a serving would be a half-cup, as 12 one-cup servings would be 3 quarts, too much for a 130-pound woman to eat. Do you recommend equal quantities of fruits and veggies, or does it matter?
– Opal Ruff
Thanks for your great question – it’s time for us to update those fruit and veggie recommendations!
As you may remember, a number of years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture came out with its slogan “Eat 5 To Stay Alive,” meaning eat five servings of fruits and veggies per day. More recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teamed up with other organizations, including the Produce for Better Health Foundation, to come up with more specific (and increased) recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake for Americans based on age, gender and activity level; the more active you are, the more you need.
And because serving sizes can be confusing and at times misleading, recommendations are now made in cups of produce per day rather than servings per day.
For example, a moderately active female age 19 to 50 needs about 5 cups of fruits and veggies each day. (Moderately active means you get 30 to 60 minutes of exercise per day.) It’s usually recommended that you eat about two-thirds of this as vegetables and one-third as fruit, so that would mean roughly 2 cups of fruit and 3 cups of vegetables.
Why more vegetables than fruit? Vegetables tend to be a little more packed with phytonutrients than fruits, and they contain less sugar.
In case you’re wondering how to measure out cups of fruits and veggies, 1 cup usually refers to a measuring cup, just as you would use in cooking. But there are exceptions. In the vegetable group, 1 cup of raw or cooked vegetables, or 1 cup of 100 percent vegetable juice is considered a cup, but you actually need 2 cups of raw leafy greens for that amount.
In the fruit group, 1 cup of fruit or 100 percent fruit juice is a cup, while a half-cup of dried fruit is the equivalent of 1 cup for these purposes.
Eating more produce, and less high-fat and processed food, is strongly associated with a reduced risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. In fact, the American Institute for Cancer Research estimates that if the only change we made in our diets was to eat the recommended amount of fruits and veggies, cancer rates would drop by about 20 percent. Focusing on fruits and veggies as the mainstay of your diet should also lead to reduced caloric intake and weight loss.
Here’s a sample fruit-and-veggie menu for one day that provides more than 5 cups of produce. You’ll see that it’s not that hard to get your 5 cups in.
• Breakfast: A banana on your cereal plus a half-cup of low-sodium tomato juice.
• Midmorning snack: A half-cup of raisins or other dried fruit.
• Lunch: A large salad with 2 cups of raw spinach leaves, plus 1 cup of other veggies and fruits (tomatoes, carrots, shredded beets, cabbage, etc.).
• Dinner: 1 cup of cooked veggies, such as broccoli or cauliflower.
• Dessert: Half-cup of berries or cut-up fruit (plus a little dark chocolate, of course!).
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