Eat 2 & 5 A Day
Posted on 16 December 2019
Government nutritional advice is to eat two serves of fruit per day and five serves of vegetables to keep healthy, reduce the risk of cancer, coronary heart disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes to name just a few health issues associated with not eating your
daily recommended serves.
On average, Australians only eat around half of the recommended amount per day. More than one third of the average household’s rubbish bin contains food waste worth about $4000 per year. Problematic not only to your health but also to our planet as food waste that ends up in landfill emits harmful greenhouse gases.
There’s good news though. Supermarkets such as Woolworths have jumped on board this health initiative. They offer free fruit in all their supermarkets, have launched a Fresh Food Kids Discovery Tours nationwide inviting students to learn, touch and taste an array of fruit and vegetables at their stores
and established partnerships with organisations who have similar ambitions as them.
Imperfect fruit and veg Woolworths ‘Odd Bunch’ range not only helps customers to save money, it also helps minimise food waste. It’s a great idea – and has been a really successful program to date.
Eat more fruit and veg What can you do? Start with a menu plan so you only buy what you need each week, but make sure you incorporate vegetables and fruit into your plan to meet the daily recommended amounts and avoid waste.
- Eat more parts of your vegetables such as skins, stalks and leaves (just not Rhubarb leaves as they are poisonous).
- Use up your vegetables that are getting old and would otherwise be binned.
- Buy ugly and imperfect fruit and veggies to prevent them going to landfill whilst you save money!
These guidelines have been out there for quite a while now and we all know what we’re supposed to do, but old habits creep in, we get busy, make other choices but why not revisit these guidelines, look at the tips outlined above and make a decision to eat your 2 and 5s each day.