How many serves of vegetables is healthy?

Happy new year!  What a great way to start by talking about vegetables - my favourite food group.  I did not always like vegetables.  Growing up, I never ate lots of vegetables because it wasn’t cooked and served routinely in my family.  When it did, who would want to eat something that was hard or rough in texture, often bitter in flavour and often took a longer time to chew and swallow anyway?  Ironically, as a health professional, I now realise that they are the exact qualities of a healthy food because they make your gut work harder, slows down digestion and is lower in calories.

In the Australian Dietary Guidelines for Healthy Living eatforhealth.gov.au it’s recommended for all adults to have 6 servings of vegetables per day.  So that’s 6 full cups of salad, or 3 full cups of cooked vegetables every day!  (And fruit is counted separately.)   It’s surprising because if we take a looking at people’s supermarket items at the checkout I think the average person would have not even that in a week!  That means for each plate/bowl of food you have at any meal, it should be ⅓ full with vegetables.  And if you skipped vegetables at breakfast, then for lunch and dinner it should make half of your plate!

Dietitians also recommend people eat a rainbow coloured assortment of different vegetables, as this variety will ensure your body absorbs the right vitamins and minerals from this important food group.  It also doesn’t have to be necessarily fresh.  Fresh is best of course.  But if you’re time-poor, frozen vegetables is also fine.

Vegetable storage tips:

• Celery should be stored wrapped tightly in aluminium foil.  This way it keeps fresh and crisp for 2 weeks!
• All lettuces and leafy greens can be washed and dried (e.g. with a salad spinner) and stored in an airtight container for 1 week
• Broccoli and cauliflower can be washed, dried and pre-cut and also stored in an airtight container for 1 week