20/02/2023
5-a-day sounds cool, but how about 30-a-week? 🍇🥬🌽🥫🥜
Where 5-a-day includes only fruit and veggies, 30-a-week includes all plant foods. We all know that eating plant foods is good for us, but eating a large variety of plant foods is even better 😬
Plant foods include:
🍓Fruit and vegetables
🫘Legumes
🍚Grains (wholegrain >> white)
🥜Nuts and seeds
🌿Herbs and spices (each count as 1/4)
The American Gut Study (the largest study to date of the human microbiome), found that people who regularly ate more than 30 different types of plant foods each week had a significantly more diverse gut microbiome than those who ate 10 or fewer plant foods a week!
The research also showed that people who ate 30+ had more ‘good’ bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These guys have many health benefits including anti-inflammatory, immunoregulatory, anticancer and are cardiovascular protective.
I challenge you to aim for 30 plant foods a week - by replacing more processed foods with fruit and vegetables, making use of frozen fruits and veggies, adding tinned legumes to meals, trying new recipes, adding new plant foods to your trolleys and ‘spicing up’ your meals.
🍇🥬🌽🥫🥜
