BTW – as per who should have how many servings (as per age, sex etc) and what constitutes a serving size I found this web site to be more helpful than most:
http://www.mypyramid.gov & http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/vegetables_amount.aspx#

All that said, I do try to eat at least one piece of fruit and tomatoes every day (blueberries on gym days too)

db

While I don’t dispute that its good to eat some veg and fruit,
the figure 5 isn’t evidence based at all as I understand it.

The reasoning was that ‘5’ is reasonably attainable by most of the population, though a higher figure would have been preferable.

A proper trial i.e. long term (years) RCT is never going to happen, no money to be made from fruit and veg unlike with drugs!

And even if a trial showed no mortality or even morbidity benefit to fruit and veg, you can bet your bottom dollar that the spin doctors would mangle the statistics to find something.

More ‘woo’ = Saturated fat/red meat is bad, soy, vegetable oils, people who can’t metabolise carbohydrate (diabetics) should eat lots of the stuff!