"Five a day" and healthy eating.

Latest research seems to go back and forward on healthy eating. 5 a day of fruit/veg seems to be regarded universally as beneficial for your health. There was some recent talk about increasing the recommended dose to 7 a day. However new worldwide research has apparently concluded 5 a day is right and that there is no additional beneficial effect by consuming more. I assume the reality is - your body benefits from a certain amount but excess is discarded as waste!

My point on this issue is the quality of the fruit and veg we consume.

Seasonality in vegetables are pretty much a thing of the past - particularly if you shop in supermarkets. there is nothing you cannot buy all year round - be it strawberries, lettuce or new potatoes - it is all there. How is this possible?

Some of it of course is imported from more favourable climes, but much of it is "forced" in UK (or Spanish) football pitch sized glass houses - fed by artificial light and hydroponics. I am sure much of the salad we consume has never seen soil - it is grown in water with a mix of chemicals. It is also cloned and hybridized to produce a standard product, grown (forced) quickly for profit and of course likely to have been regularly sprayed with bug retardants!

So with this is mind am I happy with my 5 or 7 a day?

I grow quite a lot of my own veg - and some fruit. I am lucky enough to have an allotment. I fertilise it with compost made by me, horse manure collected by me and seaweed gathered by me from the beach. I am entirely an organic grower - not a single chemical used.

But it is hard time consuming work. Of course it is massively seasonal and I acknowledge  produce would be lost without the use of a freezer but there are other and more traditional drying and storing methods.

Personally I have no doubt the effort is worth it. In many instances it does taste better, there is also the considerable satisfaction of growing your own food - but perhaps the main thing is I understand how it was grown and that it is unadulterated.

The reality is however that most people do not have the time or the opportunity to grow their own. Even someone like me struggles to grow more than 50% of what we consume.

So what to do?

My thought is to buy seasonal and local if you can. Much less salad in the winter - winter greens instead. I could make a list - but I am not going to - research it yourself. Having said all of that I would not beat myself up over it. As long as some of what I am eating is pretty decent I am massively better off than the junk food brigade.