University of Virginia Health System

Five-A-Day Is Only Halfway There Now

National Cancer Institute ups suggested fruit/vegetable intake from 5-a-day to 9-a-day

< September 3, 2002 > Those of you who have been struggling to eat the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, brace yourself.

There is a new message coming from the National Cancer Institute (NCI): Nine a day is what is needed.

"The recommendation is not five-a-day anymore. It's five to nine servings a day," says Lorelei DiSogra, director of the 5 A Day Program at NCI.

Since 1991, both the food pyramid and dietary guidelines have recommended that people eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. While five is good, nine is apparently much better when it comes to health benefits.

"It's not a new number. It's a range. The range has always been there," DiSogra says.

Dietary guidelines recently released by the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of Health and Human Services recommend that children ages 2 to 6 eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day for good health. Children over the age of 6 should eat six servings; active women and teens should eat seven, and active teen boys and men should eat nine.

The new numbers are the theme of "5 A Day" week, which runs Sept. 22-28. "Eating 5 to 9 and Feeling Fine: Fruits and Vegetables Anytime!" is the new theme song of the "5 A Day" Program, which will be retaining its name.

"After all these years, we decided we needed to start clearly communicating," DiSogra says. "We didn't just make this up. It's just that adults really need to eat nine servings. That's what the science says."

The vitamins, minerals, fiber and, especially, the phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables appear to reduce the risk for heart disease, hypertension, certain types of cancer, diabetes, and other diseases.

Adding fruits and vegetables to your diet can lower blood pressure quickly and dramatically in just a few weeks.

Americans are actually doing pretty well, eating an average of 4.9 servings a day, according to the NCI. However, with more than 60 percent of adults in the United States overweight or obese, more fruits and vegetables are definitely going to be better.

The NCI is launching a special campaign to reach African-American men between the ages of 35 and 50. African-Americans have the lowest intake of fruits and vegetables and the highest rates of many diet-related diseases such as diabetes. African-Americans also have the lowest awareness—less than 14 percent—of the importance of this component of the diet, the cancer group says.

Other groups who lag in their consumption of fruits and vegetables are school-aged children, teenagers, men aged 20 to 59, and lower-income and less educated populations.

The final message from the "5 A Day" folks is that nine a day is not going to be as tough as you think because servings are smaller than you think: A cup of cooked fruits or vegetables constitutes one serving, as does a cup of dried fruit, a cup of 100 percent fruit juice, one cup of salad, or a cup of tomato sauce over pasta.

Although both fruits and veggies are naturally low in calories and high in fiber and water, try to tilt the balance in favor of the vegetables, says Dawn Jackson, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and a dietician with Northwestern Memorial Wellness Institute in Chicago.

"One serving of fruit is about 60 calories, and veggies have about 25. It's about one-third less," she says. "Try to have two to three servings of fruit, but then really try to bulk up on the vegetables."

Always consult your physician for more information.

Online Resources:

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American Dietetic Association

American Journal of Public Health

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

National Soft Drink Association

Surgeon General's New Recommendations on Obesity

US Department of Agriculture

For more information about healthy eating, __________________.

Kids Too Sweet on Soft Drinks

In the same week that the nation's second-largest school district banned soft drinks on campus, a new study reports that typical grade-school kids drink an average of one can of soda a day.

The researchers also found children who drank the most soda were less likely to eat fruits and vegetables.

It is not clear if soft-drink consumption leads to poor diets or the other way around.

"But the bottom line is we need to pay a lot more attention to enabling kids to consider more healthy beverage selections," says study co-author Karen Weber Cullen, a registered dietician and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

Americans, predictably, are major consumers of soft drinks. The average person consumed 55.9 gallons of soft drinks and 6.1 gallons of sweetened fruit drinks in 1999, according to Beverage World.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles school system decided to fight back. The school board voted to ban the sale of soft drinks on all campuses starting in January 2004.

Cullen and her colleagues surveyed 504 Houston schoolchildren about their eating and drinking habits. The kids were in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how consumption of soft drinks is related to healthy eating as a whole, Cullen says. Results of the survey appear in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The children in the study liked sugary drinks. On average, they reported drinking about 20 ounces of beverages other than water per day, and about half were sweetened beverages such as soft drinks and punch.

None of the children reported drinking diet beverages. "That's an easy thing for kids to know," Cullen says. "They may not be able to report how many ounces of meat they had, but they know if they're drinking a Diet Coke."

The kids with the highest consumption levels reported drinking about 20 ounces of soft drinks a day, equal to nearly two regular-sized cans.

Those who drank the most tended to come from the least-educated families, and were more likely to be minorities. They pulled in more calories—an estimated 330 a day—from soft drinks. Their diets suffered too, Cullen says.

"Those students were eating twice as much of what we call high-fat vegetables—french fries, tater tots, items that are far from being a vegetable anymore," she says.

Those students also ate 60 percent less fruit, Cullen says.

"This just highlights the need for everyone to step back and look at what's driving the need for these kids to drink these things instead of water and milk at meals," she says.

Sean McBride, spokesman for the National Soft Drink Association, points out the students surveyed drank an average of only one can a day.

"Our advice to consumers remains as it has been for decades: whether you're a child or an adult, you need to eat a variety of foods in moderation," he says. "Just because you consume soft drinks doesn't necessarily make your diet a poor diet."

Always consult your child's physician for more information.