Checking the NHS website for confirmation, I find that while one tomato counts as a portion, it takes two handfuls of blueberries to make another helping, and I’d need to put away a whole dessert bowl of lettuce.

I could then make up my total of 10 portions today by eating 14 button mushrooms, four heaped tablespoons of curly kale, 16 medium okra, eight spring onions, a large parsnip, 20 raspberries and one peach.

MacIver wrote:Does Polish vodka with apple juice count?

Animavore wrote:Though surely a "portion" differs between individuals?

7 Rules for Eating
Choose Food Over Food-Like Substances, Food Writer Michael Pollan Tells CDC

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
March 23, 2009 -- We Americans suffer a national eating disorder: our unhealthy obsession with healthy eating.

That's the diagnosis delivered by food author Michael Pollan in a lecture given last week to an overflow crowd of CDC scientists.

As part of an effort to bring new ideas to the national debate on food issues, the CDC invited Pollan -- a harsh critic of U.S. food policies -- to address CDC researchers and to meet with leaders of the federal agency.

"The French paradox is that they have better heart health than we do despite being a cheese-eating, wine-swilling, fois-gras-gobbling people," Pollan said. "The American paradox is we are a people who worry unreasonably about dietary health yet have the worst diet in the world."

In various parts of the world, Pollan noted, necessity has forced human beings to adapt to all kinds of diets.

….

Alan B wrote:The UK health professionals have recently suggested that we in the UK should increase our intake of fruit & veg. to seven or more 'portions' a day.
Telegraph

Checking the NHS website for confirmation, I find that while one tomato counts as a portion, it takes two handfuls of blueberries to make another helping, and I’d need to put away a whole dessert bowl of lettuce.

I could then make up my total of 10 portions today by eating 14 button mushrooms, four heaped tablespoons of curly kale, 16 medium okra, eight spring onions, a large parsnip, 20 raspberries and one peach.

The link below is not very informative:
NHS Portions - PDF
For instance it lists 'one orange' as a portion. Is that a 70g orange or a 200g orange? If it is a '70g' orange, will the 200g orange be equivalent to about three 'portions'?
It would be more informative if the 'portions' were expressed as an approximate (minimum) weight.

How do other countries' health advisory bodies deal with this?

Mondegreen wrote:I have the same complaint about the system over here in the States. Just give me the weight or mass of the food, ffs. Bananas can differ in size by 300%. Melons can be small or large. None of it is helpful. And, it's impossible to limit oneself to the recommended daily allowance of calories and eat all the "portions" of the various food groups they recommend. It's a mess.

Nicko wrote:Quite obviously, a "portion" is less than "too much" and more than "not enough".

Sometimes I worry about you people.

ED209 wrote:I think I heard by 'portion' they mean 80g.
Why don't they just fucking say 80g then