Fruit and vegetables are the corner stone of a healthy diet. You can’t eat well without them. Period.
Unfortunately, 90% of Australian adults are not meeting the Australian Dietary Guidelines for fresh food intake, which recommends 5 serves of vegetables and 2 serves of fruit every day. Meeting your daily fruit and vegetable serves has been shown, through numerous studies of different populations, to reduce your risk of heart disease, help you maintain a healthy weight and reduce your risk of developing cancer.
These days it’s becoming pretty popular to juice, press or blend your fruit and vegetables as a way of upping your intake. This isn’t all bad, but there is something to be said for using your teeth and chewing whole food, you know, the old school way!
One of the greatest ways to get in plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables during the day is to make a fruit and vegetable tasting plate.
A tasting plate full of fresh, crisp vegetables and sweet, tasty fruit is the perfect thing to snack on during the day, serve your kids for afternoon tea or even take to the park for a picnic. You’ll be surprised at how much everyone will enjoy it! Get into the habit of serving chopped fresh fruit and vegetables when you entertain people instead of crackers and cheese. Your guests will thank you for looking after their waistlines and you wont feel so full after your dinner as well.
Be inspired this week to eat more fresh produce and reap the rewards of a healthy, happy body! Don’t forget to choose seasonal, good quality produce, it’ll taste better that way!
- Office munchies – If you find yourself in an office that enjoys to nibble while they work, why not encourage them to make up a tasting plate instead.
- Stay at home boredom – If you are a work from home parent, stay at home mum or you suffer from boredom eating, make yourself up a tasting plate at the beginning of the day and leave it out on the coffee table or kitchen bench for you to nibble and munch on throughout the day.
- Healthy afternoon tea – If you struggle to get your kids eating healthy food, regularly start putting together a tasting plate for their afternoon tea and stop offering ‘junk’ foods. You’ll get a bit of protest at first but if you don’t make a big deal of it, eventually they’ll start picking away at the cut fruit and vegetables and before you know it, after a couple of days the plate will end up empty.
Fruit and Vegetable Tasting Plate
Equipment
- Sharp knife
Ingredients
- 2 banana
- 1 punnet strawberries, fresh
- 2 apple, red
- 2 orange
- 2 kiwi fruit
- 1 cup sugar snap peas
- 1 carrot
- 1 capsicum, red
- 1 tomato, common
Instructions
- De-seed the capsicum, de-core the apples and peel bananas.
- Cut up all fruit and veg into strips. Arrange on a platter and serve with hummus or low fat greek yoghurt with herbs
