What Does 5 Serves of Veggies Look Like?
5 serves you say? So what is a serve?
I often have clients saying to me, “oh yeah – I easily meet 5 serves of veg a day.” But often they don’t realise what one serve actually is and are a little shocked when we go through serving sizes in a little more detail. So, what better time to talk about what a serve looks like, than during National Nutrition Week.
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (www.eatforhealth.gov.au) provides guidance around what a serve is and the number of serves we need per day to reach our nutritional recommendations. I’ve summarised these guidelines for you below.
Vegetables & Legumes/Beans
A standard serve of vegetables is about 75g:
|
½ cup |
Cooked green or orange vegetables |
Broccoli, spinach, carrots or pumpkin |
|
1 cup |
Green leafy or raw salad veggies |
Rocket, lettuce, cucumber, |
|
½ cup |
Cooked, dried of canned beans, peas or lentils |
|
|
½ medium |
Potato or other starchy vegetables |
Sweet potato, cassava or taro |
|
1 medium |
Tomato |
Children and Adolescents:
|
2-3 years |
4-8 years |
9-11 years |
12-13 years |
14-18 years |
|
|
Girls |
2 ½ |
4 ½ |
5 |
5 |
5 |
|
Boys |
2 ½ |
4 ½ |
5 |
5 ½ |
5 ½ |
Adults:
|
19-50 years |
51-70 years |
70 years + |
|
|
Women |
5 |
5 |
5 |
|
Men |
6 |
5 ½ |
5 |
Pregnancy + Breastfeeding:
|
18 years or under |
19-50 years |
|
|
Pregnant |
5 |
5 |
|
Breastfeeding
|
5 ½ |
7 ½ |
So, let’s make it practical. Check out a meal plan suggestion below where we specifically look at including 5 serves of vegetables across the day.
Breakfast – typically Australian’s are very poor at including veggies at breakfast. A great way would to include veggies at breakfast would be adding some ½ - 1 cup or sautéed spinach and mushrooms to an omelette or egg dish. This would give you 1- 1 ½ serves of veggies for the day! Winning!
Lunch – go heavy handed with the salad in your sandwich or wrap. Try to add 2 cups of salad veggies to your lunch. This might look like 1 cup of salad leaves and another cup of sliced cucumber, shredded carrot and beetroot. This equate to 2 serves of veggies.
Getting closer….3 serves down….2 to go.
Dinner –we are pretty good at including salad and/or veggies at dinner. Try and do the healthy plate model and make up ½ the plate with salad or veggies. I suggest adding ½ small roasted sweet potato to your evening meal (1 serve), along with ½– 1 cup of roasted carrot and zucchini (1 serve).
And voila! There you have it….5 serves DONE + DUSTED.
--
Emma Caldwell
Accredited Practicing Dietitian
Fitwise Physiotherapy
Consulting at our Armadale and East Melbourne rooms
Source: https://www.eatforhealth.gov.au/sites/default/files/content/The%20Guidelines/n55g_adult_brochure.pdf