Q: How many fruits and vegetables should my children eat each day?

A: I’m glad you asked this as a few months back there was a lot of noise in the media and newspapers about a new generation of children growing up undernourished because their parents have gone overboard with healthy eating and were giving them far too many fruits, vegetables and low fat products and not enough carbohydrates and protein for energy.

Children have high energy needs and that’s why, unless there is a serious weight problem, I don’t advise dieting or low fat products. Children, at least until the age of five, should be given full fat dairy products. As far as fruits and vegetables go I recommend 3 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit each day. Older children, over age 6 years should have 3-5 servings of foods from vegetables and 2-4 servings from fruit.  A serving of vegetables is 4 oz of cooked vegetables or 8 oz of raw vegetables or a glass of vegetable juice. A serving of fruit includes 1 medium apple, banana, orange, 4 oz of chopped, cooked, or tinned fruit (use unsweetened not tinned fruit in syrup) and a small glass of fruit juice. If your child eats a larger serving, such as 2 apples, then count it as two servings.

 

Remember that these are just general guidelines and your children don’t need to eat the exact number of recommended servings each day. Instead, his or her diet, over a period of a week or two, should average out to the recommended servings. So on some days they may eat more and some days less than the recommended number of fruit and vegetable servings.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 1:40 am and is filed under Ask Marilyn, Children's Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.