Question:
I’m trying to eat healthier by adding more fruit and veges to my diet, but I’m having difficulty sticking with it when I’m busy or stressed. Do you have any tips to help me eat more of these daily without it feeling like a chore?
Answer:
We all know that eating more fruit and vegetables is good for our health. So it’s perhaps alarming to know how few of us eat the recommended five-plus servings every day. Indeed, most New Zealanders do not meet health targets.
The 2022-23 New Zealand Health Survey found only 6.7% of adults and 4.9% of children ate the recommended five servings daily.
People who eat more fruit and vegetables are physically and mentally healthier. Interestingly, they suffer less depression and have lower rates of cardiovascular disease, various cancers and other chronic diseases. So, why do we not do what we know is good for us?
In May, the Ministry of Health published a report, Rebalancing our Food System, which identified several hurdles consumers face in eating a healthy diet. For starters, our food environments often drive the consumption of unhealthy food. For instance, the Healthy Location Index developed by the University of Canterbury found that fast food outlets were located in much higher density in high-deprivation suburbs such as Auckland’s Ōtara and Māngere East than in low-deprivation suburbs like Remuera. Hence, access to healthy food is unequal.
Plus, food is getting more expensive. In many cases, less nutritious processed foods are cheaper than more nutritious options like fruit and vegetables, so those with a limited budget may abandon fruit and vegetables.
And those with limited food skills and knowledge may struggle to include fruit and vegetables in their diet. When life gets busy, it’s also easy to ignore more nutritious foods that take longer to prepare in favour of quick and easy convenience meals.
Successful healthy eaters emphasise their personal food preferences to motivate their dietary changes. So, if you want to eat more fruit and vegetables, the first logical step is to choose fruit and vegetables you find tasty, as you’re more likely to eat them. That means don’t force yourself to eat Brussels sprouts if you hate them; choose a green vege you enjoy, instead.
Studies show that planning meals and snacks for the day or week significantly boosts fruit and vegetable intake. Focus particularly on increasing the frequency of daily meals and snacks that include fruit or vegetables.
For example, if you eat vegetables only at dinner and have fruit as a snack, it is much harder to achieve five-plus a day than if you routinely include vegetables with your lunch and dinner, and fruit with your breakfast and snacks.
Top tips
Vege-up your meat dishes – whether it’s a casserole, mince, pasta or soup, add more chopped or grated vegetables to the mix. It will increase your vege intake and stretch your food budget. Better still, include one or two vegetarian meals in your weekly dinner plan.
Choose frozen or tinned fruit and vegetables, too – they’re nutritious, handy and often more cost-effective than fresh produce. But if you are buying fresh, buy in-season produce to stretch your budget.
Reduce waste by using the whole of the vegetable or fruit, if possible. For example, broccoli stalks can be blitzed in a food processor and added to vegetable fritters, or peeled and chopped and added to salads or stir-fries.
Keep a bowl of fresh fruit on your bench – studies show that we eat food we can see and quickly access, so make your fruit visible.
Likewise, when preparing dinner, peel and chop up a few more veges, such as carrots, beans and capsicums, and store them in visible containers in the fridge for easy snacks the next day.
