What if instead of broccoli, one decides to eat lentils? What if one gets their fiber through some healthy granola? If one eats, in a day, tofu, peas, broccoli, lentils, and some kale, could one consider themselves “doing good” without those all being technically vegetables?
On the plus side, some chickpea fritters or bean burritos sound amazing, and still love tofu/edamame. We can fit some broccoli and a good smoothie in too. But It seems these “don’t count” and I wanna know why!!
We don’t need an exact number of vegetables. There is lots of evidence that a diet that is high in fruit and veg is healthy.
Various health organisation around the world hence want us to eat much more fruit and veg, in order to do they come up with various recommendations on how to achieve that. So the 5 a day recommendation is just a catchy minimum.
In terms of what you actually need to eat, it’s a variety of fruit and veg.
>What if one gets their fiber through some healthy granola? If one eats, in a day, tofu, peas, broccoli, lentils, and some kale, could one consider themselves “doing good” without those all being technically vegetables?
In general terms don’t try and base what you eat on mechanistic reasoning. We have evidence that fruit and veg is healthy, and there are many reasons we believe is the reason, of which fibre may be a tiny aspect. There is no evidence that fibre or vitamin supplements can replace fruit and veg.
>On the plus side, some chickpea fritters or bean burritos sound amazing, and still love tofu/edamame. We can fit some broccoli and a good smoothie in too. But It seems these “don’t count” and I wanna know why!!
What do you mean they don’t count? I think pretty much every health organisation around the world has fairly decent recommendations. So I’m a bit confused by what you are basing your opinion on.
Here is a more detailed health recommendation. You need fruit and veg, plus other stuff like beans and nuts are also good for you.
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>Healthy Diet Indicator 2020 (HDI-2020)1
Dietary elementCriteria for scoring (quantitative intake in one day)Scoring2
1 Fruits, vegetables ≥400 g 0/1
2 Beans and other legumes >0 g 0/1
3 Nuts and seeds >0 g 0/1
4 Whole grains >0 g 0/1
5 Dietary fiber >25 g 0/1
6 Total fat <30% total energy 0/1
7 Saturated fat <10% total energy 0/1
8 Dietary sodium <2g sodium 0/1
9 Free sugars <10% total energy 0/1
10 Processed meat 0 g 0/1
11 Unprocessed red meat ≤71 g3 0/1
>
>https://academic.oup.com/cdn/article/4/12/nzaa168/6006263