The Mail
London, UK
23 May, 2007


Fruit and veg five times a day? 'It's just a myth'

A leading dietician has claimed people do not need to eat five fruit and vegetables a day to be healthy.

Catherine Collins, chief dietician at St George's Hospital in Tooting, says people can spread them out across a week instead. The advice flies in the face of the Government's Five A Day campaign which encourages people to eat five pieces of fruit and vegetables every day.

But Mrs Collins said: "The whole idea you must meet some vitamin and mineral target every day of your life is a marketing myth.You can eat lots of fruit and veg one day and not much the next, but over a week you will still get the right amount of nutrients."

She also said in The Guardian that taking extra vitamin pills might not do people much good either. "There is very little scientific evidence of any benefit whatsoever in taking a daily multi-vitamin," she said. "You cannot exist on a poor diet and shore yourself up with a multi-vitamin."

Her comments come after a study in the Journal of the National Cancer-Institute found men with prostate cancer who took more than seven multi-vitamins a week were 30 per cent more likely to get an advanced and fatal form of the disease. Dr Toni Steer, nutritionist with MRC Human Nutrition Research in Cambridge, said supplements were not as good as eating healthy food.

The British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK say there is no definitive evidence that taking vitamin supplements can affect the risk of getting either diseases.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...in_page_id=1798


You can read the Guardian article referred to here: Go easy on the vitamins

I agree. Consider that primitive man probably didn't evolve eating the same well-balanced diet every day of his life. He ate foods in season, and probably bulked up on certain vitamins that lasted him through the seasons where less was available. Just look at vegetarians, they can become low on B vitamins and go into sparing mode and it takes years for them to actually become deficient.

Its probably more important for children to get nutrients with more regularity, since they are growing and probably need more of certain nutrients during this time. I think they more often exhibit the diseases of vitamin diefiency, than adults.

Having said that, when you don't have pasta or a potato in a meal, it becomes very easy to get five servings of vegetables and fruit in your diet. We have two veggies with both lunch and supper, and a fruit with breakfast. So thats five right there. We even require our kids eat a fruit and a veggie at school, and potato/pasta doesn't count (though it doers in the eyes of the cafeteria folks). They have been given special permission to substitute a starch with our versoin of a veggie/fruit if necessary. Punishment for not eating one of each, is (gasp!) no dessert after supper.

She lives in Tooting. hehe Sounds like my kind of place.

to Catherine Collins, a dietician who actually makes sense.

I am so moving to Tooting when I am old.