Unlimited Jargon

"One of your five a day".... yeah right.

I'm not a health nut. I don't spend my life looking for reduced fat, high in omega 3, carol vorderman approved yoghurt.

Nonetheless I think the "5 a day" campaign to help people eat better is not necessarily a bad idea. Now naturally any advice from the government should be taken with a great deal of suspicion e.g. don't save your money but spend it = save as hard as you can, but this seems reasonable, if a bit of a hassle.

Anyway I took fruit and veg to mean one banana, a few raisins, a bit of salad in a sandwich and so on. However apparently this isn't good enough.

Today I bought a bag of grapes and according to the advice to get "1 of your 5 a day" I must eat 20 grapes! Now I don't know about you, but 4 or 5 grapes is about all I normally want. To put it another way, to get your full five you'd have to eat 100 grapes. That doesn't sound very healthy for me or my digestion.

This isn't the only case though. Whenever I'm in supermarkets now most of the supposedly healthy products firmly tell us just how much we have to eat get 1 of our five a day and normally it is such a high figure, you'd have to eat half the world's supply.

I think the problem is two-fold. Firstly a lot of food which claims to have fruit or vegtables has such a tiny amount that it is irrelevant (I've seen drinks and juices with less than 4% fruit before now). Secondly some companies are deliberately stating you have to eat a set large amount of the product to convince you to over consume (and then buy more).

Either that or the "five a day" advice actually means a lot more than it suggests.

Labels: Miscellaneous

posted by Caesar on Friday, February 06, 2009