By Zoe Harcombe
Last updated at 9:55 AM on 24th January 2011
With great fanfare, it was reported last week that the current health advice about eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is outdated, and that scientists now believe that eight portions is more beneficial.
While many people grumbled about how on earth they would manage those extra portions, I allowed myself a wry smile.
For more than two years I’ve known that the ‘five-a-day’ mantra we’re all so familiar with is nothing but a fairytale
Of course, they are tasty, colourful additions to any meal. But in terms of health and nutrition, fruit and veg have little to offer, and telling us to eat eight portions a day is compounding one of the worst health fallacies in recent history.
Surprised? Many people will be, and no doubt some dieticians and nutritionists will reject my arguments. But science backs me up.
The latest findings come from a European study into diet and health looking at 300,000 people in eight countries.
It found that people who ate eight or more portions of fresh food a day had a 22 per cent lower chance of dying from heart disease. Yet just 1,636 participants died during the study from heart disease, which is about half of one per cent.
Out of that very small proportion, fewer people died from the group that ate more fruit and veg.
However, the researchers cautioned that these people may have healthier lifestyles generally. They may be less likely to smoke; they may eat less processed food; they may be more active.
What we should not do is to make the usual bad science leap from association to causation and say ‘eating more fruit and veg lowers the risk of dying from heart disease’.
Vegetables offer some vitamins, but your body will be able to absorb these only if you add some fat, such as butter or olive oil
This survey comes not long after another large study, which examined half a million people over eight years, reported that fruit and veg offer no protection against breast, prostate, bowel, lung or any other kind of tumour. Those eating the most fruit and veg showed no difference in cancer risk compared with those eating the least.
So how have we been duped for so long?
You might assume our five-a-day fixation is based on firm evidence. But you’d be wrong.
It started as a marketing campaign dreamt up by around 20 fruit and veg companies and the U.S. National Cancer Institute at a meeting in California in 1991. And it’s been remarkably successful.
People in 25 countries, across three continents, have been urged to eat more greens, and have done so in their millions, believing it was good for them.
No doubt it was set up with the best intentions — to improve the health of the nation and reduce the incidence of cancer. But there was no evidence that it was doing us any good at all.
The fact that our own government has spent £3.3 million over the past four years on the five-a-day message shows how pervasive this belief is.
People are convinced that fruit and vegetables are a particularly
For a long time, I too was a believer. I was a vegetarian for 20 years. It is only after nearly two decades of my own research — I am a Cambridge graduate and currently studying for a PhD in nutrition —that I have changed my views.
The message that fruit and veg are pretty useless, nutritionally, gradually dawned on me.
The facts are these. There are 13 vitamins and fruit is good for one of them, vitamin C.
Vegetables offer some vitamins — vitamin C and the vegetable form of the fat-soluble vitamins A and vitamin K1 — but your body will be able to absorb these only if you add some fat, such as butter or olive oil.
The useful forms of A and K — retinol and K2 respectively — are found only in animal foods. As for minerals, there are 16 and fruit is good for one of them, potassium, which is not a substance we are often short of, as it is found in water.
Vegetables can be OK for iron and calcium but the vitamins and minerals in animal foods (meat, fish, eggs and dairy products) beat those in fruit and vegetables hands down. There is far more vitamin A in liver than in an apple, for instance.
But surely, people ask, even if there is no evidence that increasing our intake of fruit and vegetables will help prevent disease, they remain good things to eat?
I don’t think so. If people try to add five portions of fruit and veg — let alone eight — a day to their diet, it can be counterproductive. Fruit contains high levels of fructose, or fruit sugar.
Among dieticians, fructose is known as ‘the fattening carbohydrate’. It is not metabolised by the body in the same way as glucose, which enters the bloodstream and has a chance to be used for energy before it heads to the liver.
Fructose goes straight to the liver and is stored as fat. Very few people understand or want to believe this biochemical fact.
Another argument that is often put forward by dieticians on behalf of fruit and vegetables is that they are ‘a source of antioxidants’.
They believe we need to have more antioxidants in our diet to counteract the oxidants that damage the body’s cells, either as a result of normal metabolic processes or as a reaction to environmental chemicals and pollutants.
But I would rather concentrate on not putting oxidants such as sugar, processed food, cigarette smoke or chemicals into my body.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1349960/5-day-fruit-vegetables-myth-claims-nutrition-expert.html#ixzz1CcCwT0aD
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#1 - Feb. 7, 2011, 2:54 a.m.
Very insightful. I suppose your diet did not include brans,nuts, seeds and/or oils derived from same. Since you are a PhD student, you might also want to contact experts such as Prof. Donald Abrams, PhD, UCSF; Prof Christopher Gardner, PhD,Stanford University, Dr. Ajit Varki,PhD at UCSD. Their research may be useful to you in making your conclusions. |
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#2 - Feb. 7, 2011, 10:51 a.m.
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#3 - Feb. 9, 2011, 3:32 p.m.
I dont get the point of regulating your food intake when you can get rid of old age symptoms using creams and simple exercises |
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#4 - Feb. 10, 2011, 10:10 a.m.
Jessica
If you didn’t know yet: fruit is the ultimate brain fuel. Fruit has a positive effect on our brains. The way this works still has to be found out and many scientists are looking into it as we speak. What we do know is that if you consume fruit effectively, your brains can recall information faster and more easily. |
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#5 - May 13, 2011, 3:51 p.m.
personal training
I think this debate will continue to roll on, in a similar way that it does for salt in the diet, bread, eggs and chocolate. What I would like to pick up on, however, is that fruit such as apples have great fibre content, which most would agree, is an essential element of any diet. Other fruit & veg are known to contain cholesterol reducing elements (eg pectin from grapefruit). There are a whole lot of good reasons for eating 5 or more portions of fruit and veg, as part of a balanced diet, including appetite suppressors (again, like the apple that also helps maintain a balance sugar level through the day) as part of a weight loss or fitness plan. Again, most would agree that having a healthy diet also means not getting hungry and snacking out on fast (fatty) foods. I also agree with the comment about “brain food” - especially as there is much about the brain we do not yet fully understand (nor actually use in a conscious manner). |
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#6 - May 25, 2011, 1:53 a.m.
stemcellconclave
i do not agree with 5-a-day fruit and vegetables is a myth claims nutrition expert because its my own experience, only the thing is we should be knowing what to eat when and specially concentrate on the selection of fruit or veggies.it should full of nutritious…….. |
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#9 - Jan. 16, 2013, 11:28 p.m.
Larrybrown
Hi, |
