Eating Lots of Fruits And Vegetables Can Be Easy!

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Recommended vegetable servings

It's not "5-A-Day" anymore! The recommended amount of fruit and vegetable servings we should eat each day can be up to 10 servings depending on your age, gender, caloric intake and activity level. Although ten servings may seem like a large amount of fruits and vegetables to eat in one day, it can easily be accomplished.

Add Beans and Lentils

Beans and lentils are considered vegetable and protein servings so adding these into your vegetable count will boost the amount you are consuming each day. Potatoes also count as vegetables. Roasted or baked sweet potatoes and purple potatoes make particularly healthy contributions to your vegetable count. Drinking smoothies with added spinach contribute to vegetable servings as well as two to four fruit servings without much effort and with gustatory pleasure.

Each serving is usually about 1/2 cup of vegetables, 1 cup of leafy greens, or one piece of fruit about the size of a tennis ball. Often we eat more than one serving of a fruits or vegetables at a time without realizing. Attempting to eat the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables each day can motivate us to eat more fruits and vegetables for snacks, and a greater percentage of vegetables for meals as well as more fruit for desserts. Take August's (2010) Healthy Challenge while fruits and vegetables are especially abundant during the summer.