We welcome back our guest blogger, Stacey Mensah. This week Stacey reflects on the new research conducted by Imperial College London that found we need to eat more than 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day to achieve a significant health benefit.

Welcome back to the Lake Foundation!

I hope this week hasn’t been too depressing for you with the arrival storm Doris. This has been a week of great reflection for me as I look back on how I became the person I am today. I’ve been particularly looking at my eating habits and how they formed. This comes at quite an interesting time as new studies have found that eating greater amounts of fruit vegetables can lower your risk of disease. Honestly, I’ll give them an A for effort. Studies like this one are not going to comfort you when it’s a movie night and you have no food; or, when you’re coming from work and you ‘happen’ to stumble across the infamous golden arches. Ultimately, people are going to treat studies such as these as a pick ‘n’ mix or an all you can eat buffet. So, here is what’s on the menu, or rather what the study has found.

Eating 10 portions of fruits and vegetable​s every day​ could significantly reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, a new study has found. The study, that was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, also identified which fruit and vegetables provided the greatest protection against disease.

The research found that apples, pears, citrus fruits, green leafy vegetables and cruciferous vegetables may help protect against heart disease, cardiovascular disease, ​and early death. The foods that were found to prevent cancer were green vegetables, yellow vegetables such as peppers and carrots, and cruciferous vegetables.

Other studies have also supported this thesis, as a separate study that was published in the Thorax journal, found that a fruit and veg rich diet is linked to a much lower risk of chronic lung disease. I’m guessing this isn’t something we haven’t already heard before. I don’t know about you but what I’m particularly interested in is how we fit 10 portions of fruit and veg into our daily intake. With all the dinners and drinks the working women have​ scheduled during the week you really don’t want to be that friend who is taking out her Tupperware containers at the dinner table.

Having just lost 10 pounds from switching up my eating habits I would suggest making your meals in advance – which means making them from scratch and staying away from processed foods. At the beginning, ​it’s best not to be over ambitious as you will have lots of leftover food. Another suggestion would be to invest in a smoothie maker. Thankfully I was gifted a Nutri-bullet a while back so it has made eating vegetables and fruit much easier. The main thing to keep in mind is that you want to ​strike a balance – you don’t want to overload on sugar.

Comment down below on how you manage to eat 10 portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

We would love to hear from you….