30 plants over one week. Doesn't sound hard, right? That is roughly four a day, one less than the recommended five a day.
But, what makes this "30 a week" different from the five a day? If you regularly hit your five a day by eating the same food every day, then you are probably miles off hitting the 30 a week, and Professor Tim Spector has a problem with that.
Tim Spector OBE is an epidemiologist, medical doctor and science writer and director of the TwinsUK registry at King's College London. He also runs the Zoe study - which was instrumental to learning about the impact of coronavirus on people during the pandemic. He says everything that we previously knew about food is wrong.
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Take the iceberg lettuce for example. Prof Spector describes the fridge staple as "a pointless food to eat," and said: "To pretend you're doing something healthy by having an iceberg salad is a waste of time".
The expert explained on Loose Women earlier this month: "Polyphenols are a whole group of lots of different chemicals which are defence chemicals in plants. Healthy plants have these chemicals, and when we eat them, our microbes use them as fuel.
"They basically are like rocket fuel for your gut microbes. So that's why there's a huge difference between foods and plants that have high polyphenol count and those that have nothing."
Iceberg lettuce has less polyphenols than other types of salad leaves as it is compact, protected from the elements, and has a lowered nutritional value as a result. Generally, the more colourful a plant, the higher the polyphenol impact.
Prof Spector's passion for gut health comes from scientific evidence that shows our immune system lives in our gut. He has done studies through his app the Zoe Health Study, which was the Covid symptom study, that suggest those with a poorer diet were more susceptible to the impact of coronavirus. There is also a direct link with a healthy diet/gut and preventing obesity, which can lead to many other diseases.
30 plants in a week challenge
For fairness, I'll add that I've been on a Slimming World diet since the beginning of the year. Slimming World focuses on "food optimisation" and encourages you to eat a plate "half full of speed food" with each meal - speed food is most fruit and veg. So my intake of plant foods has already increased this year for this reason. If I did this in December, I would come nowhere close to 30 plants in a week, and would more likely hit 30 different varieties of chocolate.
I am a bit of a fussy eater. I eat vegetables because I have to, not because I enjoy them. I took on this challenge with the idea of not trying to reach 30, but to eat what I would usually eat in a week, and seeing how I got on. I thought this would be a more realistic reflection of how easy it is to reach the 30 goal mark.
Every meal I ate was homemade and not processed - I'm not going to count any herbs I add to my dishes as they're dried herbs (processed), rather than cut from a plant.
What counts as a plant?
Nuts, seeds, pulses, whole grains fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices (including tea and coffee, wholegrain pastas and rice).
What I ate in a week
Monday Coffee (1), bran flakes (0), asparagus and cannellini bean soup, with garlic and onion (5), spaghetti Bolognese with carrots and wholegrain pasta (8)
Tuesday: Coffee, rainbow salad with sweetcorn, iceberg lettuce, cucumber, carrots, spring onion (12), naked burger and chips with spring onion (13)
Wednesday: Coffee, courgette and cannellini bean soup with garlic and onion (14), apple (15), same salad as the day before, bran flakes, chicken noodles
Thursday: Bran flakes, leek and potato soup (16), jacket potato and cheese, red grapes (17)
Friday: Coffee, banana (18), boiled eggs and bread, courgette soup, salmon and potatoes with purple broccoli (19)
Saturday: Raspberries (20), mushroom and egg omelette (21), crispy beef with peppers and rice (23)
Sunday: Veggie sausage with mushrooms, egg and Heinz beans (don't count as already had cannellini beans this week), Sunday roast with cauliflower, red cabbage, green broccoli, carrots and swede (27), strawberries (28)
Total: 28
What do I think?
I didn't quite hit 30, but I can see why and I can see how I could easily reach that figure. I did this the same week I was working a late shift, so I had less time to dedicate to my evening meals and cooked a little less than I usually would. I am also a mother to a toddler who is a fruit bat, so I avoid eating the berries that he loves so much as they are a little too pricey to buy a lot of. Adding some blueberries to my bran flakes as an example, could have pushed the total up a little.
I could also easily have added some nuts or seeds to my breakfast, but avoid doing this because of the Slimming World diet I'm on. Prof Spector himself says he could reach a total of 10 plants in just one breakfast by adding a variety of berries, seeds and nuts to his staple full fat yoghurt and kefir dish.
I also missed opportunity to add some vegetables to the chicken noodles I ate earlier this week - but at that point my fridge was pretty low on vegetables and was waiting for my Friday morning food shop. But stir fries/noodles are clearly a dish that would easily benefit from any veg and could easily hit five portions of plants.
My saving grace did come on Friday after I did a food shop with the idea of making a Sunday roast - another dish you can rack up the total of plant foods. But that food shop reminded me just how expensive it is to eat his way.
Until 2023, I used to eat a lot of processed food - frozen breaded chicken and fish, ready meals, pizzas, or ready made burgers etc. Now I cook everything from scratch and incorporate far more vegetables into each dish, and my food shop has gone up around £30 each week. The sad reality is that healthy eating is far more expensive than the alternative.
It would probably be harder to reach this too if I wasn't already on a diet plan focused on eating fruits and vegetables. In December, my lunchtime soups or salad would have been something like a ham or cheese sandwich, so my plant intake would have been much lower.
Do I feel better? Definitely. I have less reaction to foods now than I used to. I rarely feel bloated or lethargic after eating. I have far more energy and I would like to say I'm sleeping better but I have a teething toddler so can't really comment on that.
