How to eat more fruit & vegetables

CSIRO Report – Are you eating enough fruit & vegetables?

April 2017 saw the release of a report, which dove deep into the fruit, vegetable and juice consumption of 145,000 Australian adults. This report was compiled by the CSIRO and funded by Horticulture Innovation Australia.

The findings of this report were worrying; how can a country that prides itself on being the lucky country, be surrounded by open spaces and has a horticulture industry gross value of $8.73 billion, ranked third behind the meat and grain industries show that 4 out of 5 Australians are not eating enough fruit and vegetables.

Australian Dietary Guidelines

According to the Australian Dietary Guidelines Australian adults should be consuming 4-6 serves of vegetables per day and 2 serves fruit, as reported 4 out of 5 adults are not meeting these requirements. The key findings from this report were:

Despite most Australians having easy access to high-quality fruit and vegetables only 24% of women and 15% of men are meeting both the fruit and vegetable dietary guidelines.

What are we eating?

What are we eating and how can we boost consumption of fruit & vegetables? It was found that fruit and vegetable intake increased with variety. Adults who ate several different types of fruit and vegetables had the highest levels of consumption so how do we get people to eat a variety of these foods? Encourage 3 types of vegetables at meal times should help to increase the intake of vegetables. Sound easy enough right? It is but it seems most of us are not doing it.

Fruit and vegetables should play an important part of your daily diet. Grown the natures way, they are naturally good for you and contain essential vitamins and minerals that can help to keep you healthy including protecting you against some diseases. As a follower of a Tarian diet, out diet is predominately made up of fresh fruit & vegetables in particular green vegetables so how do we make it work? We make vegetables the main start of our meals not play the supporting role.

Links

To read the full report on fruit and vegetable consumption visit: Total Wellbeing Diet

To understand further the Australian Dietary Guidelines visit: Eat for Health 

And to find out how you can increase your fruit and vegetable intake, look at our range of Positive Eating programs we have on offer. Don’t be one of the 4 out of 5 who haven’t as yet found the power of plants.