How much is one portion of fruit and veg?

It's been a long time.  Sorry.

In the news recently: the idea that eating more fruit and vegetables may cut stroke risk.  Well, duh.

On the back of that came an increase in the recommended number of servings of fruit and veg a day - from five to seven (1) (2).  Panic all over my friends lists and around me: "We find it hard enough with five!" etc., etc.

Which got me to wondering how much exactly is one serving of fruit and veg?

The answer is 80g.  The recommendation of five originally was so that people would ingest the 400 g of soluble-fibre-containing* fruit and vegetable matter.

So, in the interests of SCIENCE, I decided to take some photographs of what 80g of various fruits and veg looked like.  None of these pictures actually shows 80g as sometimes it's hard to find one-of-something small enough to fit the 80g criteria. Still, it's interesting.

You get four portions of strawberries in a punnet.

This will be slightly less once the woody ends are cut off, but I'd say that you get around two portions of asparagus in a bunch.

Need to eat these.  This is about a quarter of a punnet of mushrooms.

This weighs 112 g - it's a very small leek and will probably be about one portion when the ends are trimmed.  A big leek might be three - four portions.

Also need to eat this - but it's a smallish courgette.

This is a fairly large orange, and in the end, I juiced it and used the juice to macerate the strawberries (the whole punnet) with some unrefined cane sugar, ginger and pepper (If I'd had some amaretto or gin, I'd have added that as well).   Juice doesn't really count (see footnote).  If I were eating this, though, I reckon it would be about three portions.

More of these as I remember.  The killer, it seems, is having to have five *different* fruit and veg a day.

**This is why fruit juice doesn't count and is actually worse for you than Satan's STDs.