5-a-Day Advice Could Be Fueling Obesity
It started in California as a public-private partnership between the National Cancer Institute and The Produce for Better Health Foundation. It was called the “National five-a-day for better health” program. This programme was not the result of any scientific investigation — it was quite simply a marketing campaign — a rather successful marketing campaign too, spreading across the world to many countries all with their take on this 5-a-day advice.
But in the UK the message is no longer a light-hearted campaign to encourage people to eat more fruit and vegetables, it has become a pillar of nutritional advice dished out by the government and sanctioned by the NHS. What is the premise for this advice?
In the UK the 5-a-day advice not only lumps all fruit and vegetables into one big pile but also allows for these fruits and vegetables to be consumed in various forms.
“Almost all fruit and vegetables count towards your 5-a-day. They can be fresh, frozen, canned, dried or juiced.” NHS website
On a nutritional level, this is quite farfetched. What are we saying? A portion of steamed, fresh broccoli delivers a comparable nutritional load to a dried banana? Canned peaches are a substitute for fresh spinach?
The NHS website details portion sizes so we can compare nutritional loads. It specifies that a portion of dried fruit is 30g and of green vegetables is 2 broccoli spears or 4 heaped tablespoons of cooked kale, spinach, spring greens or green beans.
I love that they specify portions of green vegetables in tablespoons. Could they make eating cabbage sound any more like having to swallow some disgusting medicine? And if you do feel the need to portion your green vegetables who the hell does it with a tablespoon? Anyway…
Dried Banana (30g):
Energy 104kcal; Protein 1.2g; Carbohydrate 26.5g (of which sugars 14.2g); Fat 0.5g; Fibre 3g.
Brocolli — steamed from raw (100g)
Energy 35kcal; protein 2.4g; Carbohydrate 7.2g (of which sugars 1.4g); Fat 0.4g; Fibre 3.3g.
Source: www.carbmanager.com
The 30g portion of dried banana delivers 14g of sugar, over 10x more than 100g of broccoli (which I am assuming is more than 2 spears) and there are endless comparisons we can make to highlight the nutritional imbalance that this advice encompasses.
Advocates of the 5-a-day will tell you that it is preferable for kids to be snacking on fruit instead of confectionery. This might be true but fruit is also full of sugar and the over-simplified nature of the advice actually causes confusion. When someone eats candy they know it’s not good for them so they are more likely to eat it in moderation. If people think that fruit is healthy then they may end up eating far too much of it, perhaps eating it on top of everything else that they are already eating or taking the approach that once they have eaten their 5-a-day it’s all good and they can crack on and eat whatever they like. The result could easily be overconsumption, particularly where the 5-a-day is derived from processed fruit products brimming with fructose.
Fruit juice is a further complication as it delivers a super-fast dump of sugar into the bloodstream without the benefit of the fibre obtained from raw, whole fruits. It rots your teeth too but is still happily consumed by adults and children alike in the belief that it must be good for them — it is one of their 5-a-Day after all.
Fresh fruits themselves deliver a huge diversity of nutrients too — for example, a banana contains 40% more carbohydrate than blackcurrants. By permitting foods that have been processed, such as tinned peaches, this diversity widens further — 100g of peaches tinned in juice (not syrup) contains over 10g of sugar which is 20% more than a fresh peach that already weighs in with 8.5g sugar per 100g.
All nutritional advice should aim to reduce the consumption of sugar and all processed foods. The 5-a-Day message would make more sense if it specified 4 portions of vegetables and one of fruit. What would make even more sense would be for the government to stop dispensing outdated, ill-conceived nutritional advice and invest some time and money into education.
All children should have food and the environment on the curriculum throughout their schooling. There should be compulsory exams on the subject (as there are for Maths and English) so that schools can be held accountable for the level of education that they are providing on the subject and, as far as possible, every child should leave school with a sound understanding of nutrition, cooking, farming, the food industry and the environment.
We must dispense with the outdated and dangerously over-simplistic nutritional advice currently served up by the government and bring food education to the top of the agenda — it is the only way to fight the tide of obesity and create a food industry fit for the 21st Century.
