We all start from different places along the continuum of health. If you’re asked to count how many different fruits and vegetables you eat in any one day and you have to include potato chips and tomato sauce (also known as fries and ketchup) to get any kind of reasonable number (well, any reasonable number over two!), the bad news is that you’re being very naughty. The good news, though, is that a few small changes will add up to a huge improvement.
And, as anything that’s simple is easier to implement than complex solutions, a good starting place is to go to the supermarket and look around the fruit and vegetable department. Pick four fruits that you can eat exactly as they come (apples, mandarines, bananas, pears, grapes) or ones that need a knife to peel or cut (oranges, melons, kiwifruit, pineapple). Decide to eat fruit for breakfast. If you’re always on the run in the morning, choose the easy options for fruit you can take with you and munch on the way. If you have a steadier pace, you can sit and cut your fruit as you eat it.
You might want to still have the kind of breakfast you’ve been eating up until now. Easy. Have a piece of fruit first and then a little less of whatever it is that you usually eat.
That’s the fruit sorted. For the vegetables, it depends on how much cooking you do. If you don’t like to cook, even a simple salad can add a whole heap of vegetables to your day (lettuce, cucumber, grated carrot and a couple of favourite salad fruits thrown in like avocado, tomato and lush grapes). You can add different vegetables to the mix as you become more adventurous. Try it this week. Wherever you’re starting from, add a few more fruit and vegetables to your day.