Join Dr. Sarah on her Science Strolls and learn more about the Nutrivore Philosophy!
The concept of Nutrivore is very simple: Choose foods such that the total of all the nutrients contained within those foods adds up to meet or exceed our daily requirements for the full complement of essential and nonessential (but still very important) nutrients, while also staying within our caloric requirements. The easiest way to do this is to have the foundation of the diet be a wide variety of nutrient-dense whole and minimally-processed foods including selections from all of the nutritionally distinct food families.
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Confused by differing public health dietary guidelines? Should we be aiming for ‘5 a day’ as recommended by the World Health Organization, or ‘myplate’ as outlined by the USDA, or should we be consulting with and following the advice of a nutritionist, registered dietitian, or other healthcare professional? Wondering how many daily servings of fruits and veggies you should be aiming for? I’ve got you covered! From ideal targets to maximize health benefits based on dose response curves and your individual size, to what counts as a vegetable, and how to hit those targets to obtain all the nutrients our bodies need from the foods we eat. Let’s dig in and see what the science has to say!
Fruit and Vegetable Serving Targets
Every serving of fresh, whole fruit or vegetables, we eat daily reduces the risk of all-cause mortality (a measurement of overall health and longevity) by 5% to 8%, with the greatest risk reduction seen when we consume eight or more servings per day. In fact, consuming 800 grams of vegetables and fruits daily reduces all-cause mortality by 31% compared to eating less than 40 grams daily. A 2017 meta-analysis showed that 2.24 million deaths from cardiovascular disease, 660,000 deaths from cancer, and 7.8 million deaths from all causes could be avoided globally each year if everyone consumed 800 grams of veggies and fruits every day!
Eating vegetables and fruit in abundance results in a lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis and bone fragility fractures (including hip fracture), cognitive impairment and dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease), neurodegenerative diseases, asthma, allergies, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, depression, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory polyarthritis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, acne, seborrheic dermatitis, and lowers markers of inflammation. And every little bit counts!
What is the recommended amount of each we should we be aiming for to maximize our overall well-being? For fruit, most studies show either 2 or 3 servings per day, where a serving is defined as 1 cup, chopped. Consumption of fruit shows a U-shaped dose response, meaning that when going from 0 to ~ 3 servings of fruit per day each serving adds some measure of benefit, and from 4 to 5 servings you have less benefit, but it’s not a perfect U-shape which means that 6 servings is more beneficial than 0. All this to say that fruit is not “nature’s candy” – there are lots of benefits to be had from including fruit in your diet, including frozen, canned, dried, and fresh fruit.
For vegetables, you get really steep benefits going from 0 to 1 or 2 servings per day, and then you still add benefit going from 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 servings before it starts to level off. Most studies show that benefits from vegetables level off around 3 to 5 servings, although some studies show it doesn’t level off until 8 servings per day. Overall, while the benefits may start to plateau, there is no backslide.
Bottom line, when it comes to adding fruits and vegetables to our diets, any bit of progress is going to yield health benefits over the long term. If you’re struggling to include enough fruits and veggies in your daily routine, think of the lower end of these ranges as a good goal, which translates into 2 servings of fruit per day and 3 servings of vegetables. Easy ways to maximize fruit and veggie intake are including stir-fry, smoothies and soups in your regular routine, keeping in mind that frozen fruit and veggies, canned fruit and veggies, and dried fruit all contribute to this overall goal. Once that is manageable, try increasing vegetables to 5 servings per day. After that, try incorporating different colors and mixing up the fruit and vegetable families to add as much diversity as possible. And remember – preparing nutrient-dense foods in ways that you enjoy eating them does not negate the nutrients you’re getting from them!
Dose Response in Foods
The dose response of foods varies. For instance, some foods have a linear or curvilinear response meaning the more of them you eat, the healthier on average you’ll be. This category includes vegetables, pulse legumes, seafood, and whole grains. The food groups in this category are especially interesting when you consider all the prevalent food toxin myths regarding phytates and oxalates in vegetables, lectins in legumes, and pollutants like heavy metals and microplastics in seafood. Some of the best evidence for these “toxins” not being problematic is that health benefits continue to increase when eating more of these foods!
Other foods have a “Goldilocks” zone, meaning there is a happy medium where you get the most benefit from consuming them, but either more or less than that is not as good. This category includes nuts, eggs, dairy products, and fruit. These foods are all healthy, it just means that in the optimal “Goldilocks” zone you are getting the most benefit from all of the nutrients that food contains. When you eat a lot more of that food you are getting too much of something that is not great in large amounts or not leaving enough room in the diet for other foods that are really important.
Overall, dose response curves for different food groups tell us how much of the foods would be optimal to eat and what the composition of a healthy diet can look like, in addition to what food compounds are legitimately worth worrying about.
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Is it OK to Exceed Fruit & Veggie Serving Targets?
When you look at the relationship between vegetables and health, the more you eat the better. Studies show that you get the most benefit when you go from 0 to 1 or 2 servings of veggies, with benefits starting to level off anywhere between 3 and 8 servings, depending on the study. Eating above that amount is not going to give you additional benefits, but there’s no harm in it either. So go ahead – load up on Brussels sprouts, zucchini, bell peppers, starchy vegetables, and any other veggies you enjoy.
When it comes to fruit, which has an asymmetrical U-shaped dose response, you also get a lot of benefit when going from 0 to 1 or 1 to 2 servings of fruit before plateauing at about 3 servings. When you go much beyond that you don’t get as much benefit as if you stopped at 3 servings and this is probably related to the impact of high fructose consumption. Even though benefits from 5 or 6 servings per day is not as good as 3, it’s still better than 0.
Overall, with veggies there’s no maximum amount to eat, but with fruit the sweet spot is ~ 3 servings per day. It’s also important to remember not to skew towards one food group so that you have room to include other important foods in your diet such as legumes, nuts and seeds, and seafood. They all benefit us in different ways and overall dietary diversity is extremely important when it comes to overall health.
Do Serving Sizes Differ Based on a Person’s Size?
Serving targets are based on large scale studies that average huge amounts of data. On average, a serving of fruit or vegetables is equivalent to 1-cup diced, measured raw, or 2 cups raw for leafy greens. By using our fist to visually approximate serving sizes we are building in a scaling factor for serving targets based on different-sized people! A 1-cup serving is equivalent to a fist, 2-cups for 2 fists, and we can extend this to other serving sizes like using the tip of our thumb to approximate 1 tablespoon. Another benefit to using visual approximations when it comes to servings is that it is a less rigid approach such that we don’t have to measure all of our foods, figuring out exactly how many cups of fruits or cups of vegetables we are consuming daily. This less rigid approach helps us to develop a more intuitive and sustainable approach to healthy eating. You can find a cheat sheet with serving sizes and visual approximations for all food types here.
5 Servings of Veggies Per Day?
If eating five or more servings of veggies feels intimidating, you’re not alone! In fact, the average vegetable consumption for Americans is a mere 1.64 cup equivalents of vegetables per day, which is about one third of optimal intake.
While the majority of studies show that adding up to 5 servings of vegetables to our diet daily continues to add health benefits, there are a number of studies that show that health benefits level off at 3 servings of veggies per day, and a few studies show the magic number is 8. What this tells us is that there is no scientific consensus at this point, which means the data is open to interpretation, so if 5 veggies daily feels intimidating, aim for 3!
What’s important to know is that every bit counts—you’ll get way more health bang for your veggie serving buck going from zero to some than you will from going to quite a lot to even more—so it’s okay to work up to that intake slowly over time.
Everything You Need to Jump into Nutrivore TODAY!
Nutrivore Quickstart Guide
The Nutrivore Quickstart Guide e-book explains why and how to eat a Nutrivore diet, introduces the Nutrivore Score, gives a comprehensive tour of the full range of essential and important nutrients!
Plus, you’ll find the Top 100 Nutrivore Score Foods, analysis of food groups, practical tips to increase the nutrient density of your diet, and look-up tables for the Nutrivore Score of over 700 foods.
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Does it Count as a Fruit or Vegetable?
When we’re considering serving targets for fruits and vegetables, certain foods are difficult to classify so let’s discuss what counts as a fruit and what counts as a vegetable. In nutritional sciences, we use the culinary definitions of fruits and vegetables rather than the botanical ones because they align with the nutrient content of these foods. For example, cucumber is nutritionally similar to celery, and winter squash is nutritionally similar to sweet potatoes. So, it makes more sense to classify them as vegetables from a nutrition standpoint.
Basically, if we mainly use them in savory applications, even if they’re botanically fruit, we call them veggies! That means that tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, avocados, olives, and squash all count as vegetables when it comes to serving targets!
How to Get 100% of the Daily Value of Every Nutrient!
There are millions of different combinations of foods one could eat in order to get one hundred percent of the daily value of every nutrient (including vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals). In fact, if you eat mostly whole foods and try to eat as many different foods as possible, while making three-quarters of your plate come from plant foods including fruits, vegetables, pulse legumes, nuts and seeds, and whole grains, and ensuring that the quarter of your plate dedicated to animal foods includes some seafood, the chances are very high you will get there without trying. However, if you want to get there very efficiently the Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix is an easy-to-use and flexible weekly checklist designed to help you maximize nutrient-density, without weighing or measuring your food, without having to use a food tracking app or analyzing micronutrients, and while eating the right amounts of all those superfoods known to improve health outcomes!
Easily track your servings of Nutrivore Foundational Foods!
The Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix
The Nutrivore Weekly Serving Matrix digital resource is an easy-to-use and flexible weekly checklist designed to help you maximize nutrient-density and meet serving suggestions of Nutrivore foundational foods, all without having to weigh or measure your foods!
Includes a 22-page instructional guide and downloadable interactive guides.
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cITATIONS
Expand to see all scientific references for this article.
Aune D, Giovannucci E, Boffetta P, Fadnes LT, Keum N, Norat T, Greenwood DC, Riboli E, Vatten LJ, Tonstad S. Fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of cardiovascular disease, total cancer and all-cause mortality-a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective studies. Int J Epidemiol. 2017 Jun 1;46(3):1029-1056. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyw319. PMID: 28338764; PMCID: PMC5837313.
Lee SH, Moore LV, Park S, Harris DM, Blanck HM. Adults Meeting Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations – United States, 2019. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022 Jan 7;71(1):1-9. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7101a1. PMID: 34990439; PMCID: PMC8735562.
Wang X, Ouyang Y, Liu J, Zhu M, Zhao G, Bao W, Hu FB. Fruit and vegetable consumption and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. BMJ. 2014 Jul 29;349:g4490. doi: 10.1136/bmj.g4490. Erratum in: BMJ. 2014;349:5472. PMID: 25073782; PMCID: PMC4115152.
How to Use the Nutrivore Score
