Join Today & Get 4% Cash Back Then 6, 7...Up to 10% Off Reorders!

June 14, 2008, 9:08 am
Flag as Inappropriate skatss  

We're told to have 5 servings of fruit or vegetables a day and some people feel as if that's too much to even try to get through. They really don't know how much one serving equals. When you know what a serving is, getting down the 5 servings isn't that hard.

The guide below shows that one serving is less than what you might think.

One serving equals:

1 medium piece of fruit

1/2 cup fruit (raw, canned, or frozen)

1/2 cup cooked vegetables (canned or frozen)

1 cup raw vegetables

1/4 cup dried fruit

4-6 oz. of 100% juice (serving size depends on the type of juice)

1/2 cup cooked peas or beans

You can easily add a serving of veggies by throwing a half cup of any frozen veggies into your pasta sauce before heating it up for dinner. Add a quater cup of dried fruit to your cereal in the morning or eat a half handful of dried fruit at any moment of the day when you get hungry. Bingo, another serving has been eaten and you hardly felt it!

The only thing to be considered there is that dried fruit has very concentrated sugars, and is sticky. You would want to consider eating those at a time when you had access to a toothbrush.

That is a great and very helpful list. Thank you so much for sharing it. I have wondered what the actual break down was.

OK...I knew some of these, actually most of the times I eat, I really don't give much attention to the serving size. I just eat in small portion or whatever I feel like at the time.

I normally aim for one cup of veggie/fruit per meal based on the guidelines for a serving. To many school lunches cemented it in my brain over the years (entree, fruit, veggie, starch, milk). I normally stay away from dried fruit due to cost unless its something I dried myself so it lacks the extra sugars and stuff they add to commercially processed fruit.