Daily Serving of Vegetables: You Won't Believe What It Looks Like

The_Stir

Move over picky toddlers -- parents hate eating their vegetables, too. At least that's the gist of a recent report by the CDC about how close we come to eating the recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables.

Only about a third of American adults eat two or more servings of fruit per day, and just over a quarter of us eat three or more servings of vegetables. So the vast majority of us can barely muscle down a banana plus a few baby carrots each day -- which doesn't even come close to the recommended amounts.

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Now prepare yourselves: I'm going to show you what the full recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables look like.

First, this is one serving of fruit and one serving of vegetable. The USDA counts 1/2 cup as a full serving. Lego mini-man included to show scale. This is about how much fruits and vegetables most Americans eat per day.

full serving fruit vegetable
full serving fruit vegetable

It's worse than that, though, because our favorite "fruit" is orange juice and our favorite vegetable is the potato -- both foods that deliver a lot of sugar with not a lot of nutrients. So yeah, fries and juice. That's what we're eating.

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Now here is the recommended daily amount of fruit and vegetables: 2 1/2 cups of vegetables and 2 cups of fruit.*

daily servings fruit vegetables
daily servings fruit vegetables

Keep in mind, this is how much fruit and vegetables you should be eating total, per day -- not all at one meal! Pickles count and if you cook your greens with bacon they still count as a vegetable, too.

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So what is it about vegetables? Is it a pain to cut them up and cook them? Do you find them un-delicious? Are you not quite sure what to do with them?

Do you hate eating veggies? Why?

Recommended daily amount of vegetables

Recommended daily amount of fruits

*If you're over 30 it's just 1 1/2 cups of fruit for you.

Images via Adriana Velez

Written by Adriana Velez for CafeMom's blog, The Stir.

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