Could you pass the 10-a-day challenge?

Think the advice to double your intake of fruit and veg is bananas – and expensive? Red meat lover SARA MALM shows it can be done even on a tight budget

IMPOSSIBLE, ridiculous, unachievable. That seemed to be the general consensus at the suggestion last month by scientists that eating five portions a day of fruit and veg wasn’t enough and if we wanted to live longer, healthier, cancer-free lives, we needed TEN a day.

Doing so lowered the risk of stroke by 33 per cent, cancer by 13 per cent and premature death by 31 per cent, said a team of experts at Imperial College London.

But, given that the average Briton manages fewer than three a day as it is, it was also perhaps wishful thinking. Just one in five of us manage the five a day currently recommended by the NHS.

Others warned that upping fruitand-veg intake would be a financial struggle for many.

But how hard can it be? I set out to see just how do-able ten a day is, both in practical terms and costwise. As a diehard meat-eater, I worried it would be an unrealistic (and unpleasant) gear shift. My friends laughed when I told them my plan. And it did take planning.

My usual method of deciding what to have for dinner while whizzing round the food store after work went out of the window, replaced by an extensive shopping list for the week – variety, say nutrition experts, is key to benefiting from the widest range of vitamins and minerals.

And I found that the preparing and eating of ten a day was pretty easy. It also didn’t cost much: I calculated that over five days, I ate just £5.13 worth of fruit and veg. That’s a pound a day, give or take.

To eat five – let alone ten – portions of something in one day sparks visions of plates piled high with broccoli and blueberries; but when you look at it all laid out, it’s not a lot.

Here’s how I managed…