Healthy Eating: What Counts?

What counts?
The following count towards your 5 A DAY:

Fresh fruit and vegetables.
Frozen fruit and vegetables.
Tinned or canned fruit and vegetables. Buy the ones tinned in natural juice or water, with no added sugar or salt.
Dried fruit, such as currants, dates, sultanas and figs.
Fruit and vegetables cooked in dishes such as soups, stews or pasta dishes.
A glass (150ml) of unsweetened 100% fruit or vegetable juice. Juice counts as a maximum of one portion a day, however much you drink. That's mainly because juice contains less fibre than whole fruits and vegetables.
Smoothies. A smoothie containing all of the edible pulped fruit and/or vegetable may count as more than one portion but this depends on how it's made. Smoothies count as up to a maximum of two portions per day.
Beans and pulses. These only count as one portion a day, no matter how many you eat. That's because they contain fewer nutrients than other fruits and vegetables.
Fruit and veg in convenience foods, such as ready meals and shop-bought pasta sauces, soups and puddings. Some ready-made foods are high in salt, sugar and fat, so only have them occasionally or in small amounts. You can find the salt, sugar and fat content of ready-made foods on the label.

What doesn’t count?
Potatoes are a vegetable, but they don't count towards your 5 A DAY.

Potatoes are classified nutritionally as a starchy food. That’s because when eaten as part of a meal, they are generally used in place of other sources of starch, such as bread, pasta or rice.

Other vegetables that don’t count towards your 5 A DAY are yams, cassava and plaintain: they are also usually eaten as starchy foods.

However, other root vegetables such as sweet potatoes, parsnips, swedes and turnips do count toward your 5 A DAY, because they are usually eaten in addition to the starchy food part of the meal.

While potatoes don’t count towards your 5 A DAY, they do play an important role in your diet. They are a great choice of starchy food, particularly if they are not cooked in too much salt or fat. They are a good source of energy, fibre, B vitamins and potassium. Although potaoes don’t contain much vitamin C compared to other vegetables, in Britain we get a lot of our daily vitamin C from them because we eat so many.

A wide variety
To get the most benefit from your five portions, eat a wide variety of fruit and vegetables.