I'm the first to hold my hands up and say I struggle to get my five-a-day in. As I've aged, I've certainly improved (long gone are the uni days of instant noodles and chicken nuggets), but even now, I often find myself chucking a Margherita pizza in the oven without a second thought.
So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that five-a-day is no longer the target - now the boffins are saying we need 30 different plants per week. That's four to five daily, but no repeats allowed. According to the whizzes at ZOE, who conducted the world's largest detailed nutrition study, 30 plants a week can enhance your gut microbiome diversity.
The experts explain: "This is because plants contain substances called prebiotics, which provide fuel for your 'good' gut bugs. The prebiotics in plants include different types of fibre and other carbohydrates, as well as chemicals called polyphenols. Polyphenols are responsible for the colours of many plants, and they also have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
"Different plants contain different prebiotics, which in turn feed different gut bugs. This means that eating a wide range of plants is likely to support the diversity of the bugs in your gut microbiome.". As a result, the 30 plants a-week diet can improve many aspects of one's health, including the risk of developing chronic illness, obesity and autoimmune issues.
The good news is that the weekly 30 doesn't just include fruit and veg. You can also count grains, nuts, seeds, and even herbs and spices. Much less intimidating!. I decided to get stuck in and set myself a challenge of hitting 30 plants in a week. I decided not to count coffee (I get more than enough!) or herbs and spices. I'm keen to overhaul my diet with more fibre, fruit and veg, without relying on just adding a bit of paprika or thyme here and there.
In bold are any plants that are new for the week. Breakfast. For breakfast, I usually have eggs with some kind of carb, but since I had some shallots from dinner the other night, it is easy enough to throw it in. Sadly, my Spanish omelette turned out more like Spanish scrambled eggs but I'm still please that I managed to start the day off strong with two plants.
Putting together a quick sandwich while working from home, I opt for wholewheat-seeded bread instead of the tempting tiger bread. I’ll often have just tuna mayo in a sandwich, but I had some cucumber we had in the house for dinner so I throw that in too. The bread has several different seeds in it, which all counted individually! That’s seven, making nine in total so far. Counting all the seeds feels like cheating but it's not! I'm chuffed that I've made such progress so quickly - this might be a lot easier than I expected.
Dinner. For dinner, I had a chicken satay with white rice, cucumber again, and spring onions to garnish. The sauce included Thai red curry paste and various other things listed below. Not including the cucumber, which I already had today, that’s seven plants, plus the nine earlier, which makes 16 in one day! The sauce had many plants, but I’ve counted only the biggest components:.
Chicken satay. Day one total: 16. Weekly total: 16. Dinner:. I have some friends over for a potluck dinner, which, as it turns out, is a really good way to get a big variety of plants in your diet all in one go. I ate a bit of:. The salad helps a lot! It turns out that having one or two dishes absolutely packed with plants makes it easy to eat basically what you want for the rest of the week. I'm already feeling better in myself - but that's probably psychological rather than my gut microbiome massively improving after two days. I do feel more accomplished when I get lots of fruit and veg in my diet.
Day two total:12. Weekly total: 28. For lunch, I had a seafood pasta:. Just one so far today so we’re not on track for a great day... I'm starting to worry about how I'm going to hit my 30 plants if the first two days were a fluke. For dinner, I grabbed a quick M&S meal deal to eat on the train. Luckily, I find one with a couple of plants to help bring my total up.
Not the best day but oh well! I've officially hit 30 after just three days. It's turning out a lot easier than expected! However, I’ve decided to keep going with it - I’ve had some especially veggie-heavy days, which aren’t all that common in my diet. To make sure I consistently hit 30 plants a week in future, I want to make sure every day is packed with plants and not just a few days here and there. Onwards!.
Day three total: Four. Weekly total: 32. Not my best day again. It's been a long day at work, which made it tricky to thing about incorporating lots of plants. Luckily, it was easy enough to throw some veg into the oven with the chicken and potatoes. I'm starting to feel a bit disheartened - maybe the first few days were a fluke?.
Day four total: Four. Weekly total: 36. Managed to sneak a few more plants in there, but it's getting really tricky with the 'no duplicates' rule now. Day five total: Three. Weekly total: 39. The only new item was the granola, which describes itself as being high protein. It contained oatflakes, soya protein, oat flour, barley flour, peanuts, chicory fibre, plus oil and sweetener.
