The secondary title of this post could be "Holy Crap I'm Not Eating Nearly Enough Fruits and Vegetables!"
I was vaguely aware that the USDA changed the food pyramid to a food plate. But I did not get the memo that the serving sizes of fruits and vegetables had changed. A cup of leafy vegetables used to equal a serving size of veggies, now it equals half a serving. A half a banana used to count as a serving of fruit, now a small banana only counts as half a serving. WHAT?!?!
I think its one thing to be aware of something, like most of us realize we're probably not eating enough fruits and vegetables, or I should probably eat less fried foods or drink less soda... but its a bit different when you plug the numbers and find out how far off the mark you really are. Like budgeting. When you know you went over budget for the month and you figure it was about $100 - $150, nothing you can't make up for next month, but then you run the numbers and realize you went $1500 over your budget that month.
I decided to see how many fruits and vegetables I should be eating a day. I went to www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov, when I plug in my age, activity and sex, it came up with 1.5 servings of fruits and 2.5 servings of vegetables a day. Now, I used to be lucky if I ate that many in a week, so I know I'm doing better, but I'm still not there yet. Despite my attempts to eat more fruits and vegetables at breakfast and lunch, I think I'm STILL at least half a cup short of each by dinner time.
You may be thinking, okay Tiff, only half a cup of each at dinner (or an afternoon snack) isn't that bad. No, its not. But I feel like I'm eating a lot of fruits and vegetables already. To me, this just emphasizes how short I've fallen for so long. Right now I usually eat veggie sticks (carrots, broccoli, peppers, etc) and hummus, a spinach salad, a smoothie (yes I make it at home so I know what goes into it), and a piece of fruit, and I'm
still half a serving short of each for the day.
That doesn't even consider how I'm letting my family fall short every day as well. Granted the kids have less to eat each day, and I think they do okay most days on fruit, but I definitely need to make more kid-friendly vegetable servings a priority.
As a result of what I recently discovered, my current goal is eat my 1.5 servings of fruit and 2.5 servings of vegetables at least five days a week. The other two days need to at least come out to that total between the two days. I know that on days I'm not at home all day are going to be more of a challenge so I need to prepare for times when I'm not going to be home and bring something along with me. For my family I'm going to make sure to have more fruit and vegetable options as snacks and at dinner, and if we're out-and-about to bring enough for all of us.
