Could eating pizza give you your ‘five a day’?

The government says we should all eat at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day. A portion is taken to be 80g.

Why? Because the evidence is that consuming five portions a day will reduce your risk of certain diet-related chronic diseases.

The problem with the present definition, though, is that less than a third of us are actually reaching the target.

Data from the latest National Diet and Nutrition Survey shows that just 10 per cent of boys and 7 per cent of girls aged 11-18 meet the current “five a day” recommendation.

Redefining ‘five a day’

So Public Health England (PHE) is considering a redefinition of “five a day” which would allow more products to display the logo.

At the moment, the term only applies to fresh fruit and vegetables – which means that meals like salads are ineligible.

“A fruit salad with some seeds mixed in cannot use the logo as it is not 100 per cent fruit or vegetable,” says Dr Alison Tedstone, PHE chief nutritionist.

“But of course eating this would help people meet the government recommendation of five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables a day.”

‘Composite foods’

Few would disagree that a salad with seeds is a healthy option, but definitions become more difficult when considering “composite foods”.

The term refers to dishes or meals with more than one kind of food in them: pizzas, casseroles, pies, spaghetti bolognese and sandwiches.

A PHE discussion paper last month looked at ways of extending “five a day”. It looked at 339 food products across 27 composite food categories, and found that 40 per cent “contained at least one portion of fruit and/or vegetables per serving”.

However, only seven out of the 339 products were also low in total fat, saturated fat, total sugars and salt.

Vegetable to pizza

The challenge, then, is to revise the “five a day” definition while not promoting over-consumption of calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar.

A PHE spokeswoman told Channel 4 News it was incorrect to suggest the agency would be endorsing eating pizza as a way of achieving your five a day requirement.

But that is pretty much how it is in the United States. In 2011 the US Department of Agriculture, which has responsibility for food in schools, moved to change a ruling that a serving of two tablespoons of tomato paste on school lunch pizza counted as one half-cup serving (or portion) of vegetables – although the tomato is in fact a fruit.

The USDA proposed that a vegetable serving of tomato paste should be a whole half-cup serving, not two tablespoons. One food industry lobbyist argued that such an increase would render the pizza inedible. The change was blocked.