Trés Chic: How Many Fruits and Vegetables Should I Eat: A Visual Guide

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

How Many Fruits and Vegetables Should I Eat: A Visual Guide

People who get enough fruits and vegetables in their diet tend to have healthy weights, says Colleen Doyle, the director of nutrition and physical activity for the American Cancer Society, and "weight is the key factor for cancer risk."

The whole confusing and vague idea of eating enough "servings" has pretty much been scrapped, and now the powers that be (the USDA, CDC, Department of Health & Human Services) are talking cups. Yes, normal measuring cups—the kind you actually use in the kitchen. Someone who eats, on average, 2,000 calories a day needs about two cups of fruit and two and a half cups of vegetables per day, says Dr. Lilian Cheung, a lecturer in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. But individual needs will vary based on age, physical activity, and gender, so the easiest way to find out what's right for you is to use the CDC's online calculator.

So what counts as a cup of produce? We've created a visual chart based on data from the USDA and some chopping and measuring in our test kitchen. For most produce, the suggested one cup is directly equal to one cup of the given fruit or vegetable, but there are a few exceptions, like raw leafy greens (two cups are actually counted as one cup toward your daily ration of vegetables) and dried fruit (a half cup is counted as one cup). Don't panic—when all was measured and we had a visual frame of reference, four and a half cups a day seemed a lot more doable than we originally thought.

Vegetables